Ronald Reagan Movies

Want to know the best Ronald Reagan movies?  How about the worst Ronald Reagan movies?  Curious about Ronald Reagan box office grosses or which Ronald Reagan movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ronald Reagan movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) was a American actor. He appeared in movies from 1937 to 1964.  Reagan’s second career, politics, far out shined his movie career.  Sixteen years after making The Killing, Reagan became the 40th President in United States history.  Since this is a movie website….those will be the only two sentences about his second career.  His IMDb page shows 81 acting credits from 1937-1989. This page ranks 54 Ronald Reagan movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  His television appearances, uncredited roles, shorts and documentaries were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part:  Recently we got a hold of the Warner Brothers box office ledgers from the Golden Era of Hollywood. One of the actors that had many movies listed in those ledgers was Ronald Reagan.  This got us thinking….which can be dangerous…..Reagan’s movie career is almost considered a joke….with descriptions of his career being: “failed actor”, “B movie player” and “Bonzo’s buddy”.  Was his career as bad as some would say?  Well let’s find out.

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Win one for the Kipper…Ronald Reagan in 1940’s Knute Rockne All American

Ronald Reagan Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.

Ronald Reagan Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)  *** If domestic and worldwide are the same…then worldwide grosses are unknown
  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Ronald Reagan movie received.
  • Sort Ronald Reagan movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
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Ronald Reagan and George Murphy (I think) in 1943’s This Is The Army…Reagan’s monster box office hit

Possibly Interesting Facts About Ronald Reagan

1. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois in 1911.

2. In the early 1930s, Ronald Reagan, was an baseball announcer for the Chicago Cubs.   His specialty was creating play-by-play accounts of games using as his source only basic descriptions that the station received by wire as the games were in progress

3. While traveling with the Cubs in California, Reagan took a screen test…which resulted in him signing a seven year contract with Warner Brothers.

4. Ronald Reagan’s two best-remembered lines were delivered while he was flat on his back in bed:  “Win just one more for the Gipper!” in 1940’s Knute Rockne All American and “Where’s the rest of me?” in 1942’s Kings Row.

5. Ronald Reagan’s This Is The Army (1943) was the 5th biggest hit of the entire 1940s.  If it was included on Box Office Mojo’s Top Adjusted Gross Hits of All-Time…it would rank in 24th place…right ahead of Jurassic World and The Godfather.

6. As Captain in the U.S. Army, Ronald Reagan signed Major Clark Gable‘s discharge papers in June 1944.

7. Ronald Reagan’s favorite all-time movie was 1952’s High Noon.

8. Check out Ronald Reagan‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Was his movie career as bad as many people suggest? Currently we have 403 actors and directors in our database.  Here is how he ranks in five different categories.

  • Ronald Reagan has 13 $100 million dollar box office hits. That ties him for 146th place in our rankings.
  • Ronald Reagan’s percentage of $100 million dollar hits to movies made is 24.07%.  That % puts him in 294th place.  Other actors near him in the rankings?  George Clooney and Natalie Portman.
  • Ronald Reagan’s movies earned a total of 14 Oscar® nominations.  That ties him for 298th place in our rankings.  Other actors tied with him in the rankings? Drew Barrymore and Lucille Ball.
  • Ronald Reagan’s average critic/audience rating per movie is 57.00%.  That % puts him in 354th place.  Other actors near him in the rankings?  Julia Roberts and Nicolas Cage.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. 
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31 thoughts on “Ronald Reagan Movies”

  1. Cogerson

    I heard a joke by Reagan which I found so funny I thought I would share it.

    Reagan mentioned that he had starred on TV in Death Valley Days, which, for you young folks, opened with a film of a wagon being pulled by a team of 20 mules across Death Valley.

    Reagan’s line was “I co-starred with mules on Death Valley Days. It was great training for dealing with Congress.”

    Reply

    1. Hey John
      1. First of all….good to hear from you.
      2. Secondly….funny Reagan joke….I always liked him as the President….and his sense of humor is a big reason for that.
      3. Thirdly….thanks for the visit and the comment.

      Reply

  2. 1 STEVE Ronnie was always tagged as a B movie man and the taunt followed him around even when he was running for President. However I loved his B movies my favourites being The Last Outpost, Hong Kong, Tropic Zone and especially Law and Order (1953) with Dorothy Malone and Tennessee’s Partner (1955) with John Payne, with Payne playing Tennessee and Ronald the Partner of the title who was called “Cowpoke”! Ronnie was in some notable A movies as well and he will certainly always be remembered as Drake McHugh in King’s Row in which he woke up after an operation and realising that his legs had been amputated uttered as Bruce mentions the great one-liner “Where’s the rest of me?”

    2 Overall your video had a 95% appeal to me and I liked the opening quip of the type that Ronnie used to roll off regularly. There was an abundance of fine POSTERS and I will highlight at random Law and Order, Hellcats of the Navy, She’s Working Her Way Through College Storm Warning and Brother Rat which co-starred Jane Wyman whom Reagan married and who claimed that one of the reasons for their later divorce was his ”obsession with politics” causing him to neglect her. Excellent STILLS were those with Shirley Temple, Pat O’Brien, Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn and the wonderful Arthur Kennedy and especially the separate beds scene with Bonzo providing a ‘three’s company’ touch! Also worthy of a special mention were the one from The Killers and the lovely coloured solo of Ronnie.

    3 Bruce agrees with you on 4 of the Top 5. WH also highlights an oddity in relation to Ronnie in that High Noon was apparently Reagan’s all-time favourite movie. Yet Ronnie as President was regarded as being on the ‘right’ of American politics and many of those stars who were regarded as supporters of ‘right wing’ politics apparently detested High Noon, particularly the Duke who complained that it insulted small town America by portraying its inhabitants as cowards. Wayne also criticised Cooper for playing Marshal Will Kane whom the Duke called a “sniveller whose wife had to step in and save him” from the vengeful gunmen who chased him through the town.. Anyway good stuff from you too.

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, comment, info, trivia, observation and comparison, much appreciated. Glad the posters and stills met with your approval.

      Pure coincidence that my latest video is ex-US President Ronald Reagan and tomorrow is the 4th of July. It just nicely worked out that way.

      There are a bunch of fairly obscure Reagan movies that scored higher than Bedtime for Bonzo, Cattle Queen of Montana and Hellcats of the Navy but they were jettisoned so I could include those three low-scoring but more popular movies. How do I know if a film is obscure? It gets a low number of votes at IMDB, this usually results in an inflated score.

      See Bruce’s chart for a more comprehensive list of Reagan’s movies, consider mine the populist chart. [wink]

      I haven’t seen Kings Row, Dark Victory or Knute Rockne (“win one for the Gipper”).

      Looking at my files there are no top-scoring 10 out of 10 movies in Reagan’s filmography, but there are three scoring 9 – The Hasty Heart, Dark Victory and Kings Row.

      Reply

      1. Hey Steve….I will be checking out your video later. Kings Row is one in which you should check out….without a doubt Reagan at his acting best.

        Reply

    2. Hey Bob…good review on Steve’s Ronald Reagan video….I will be checking it out later tonight. Good to see Steve and I agree on 80% of our Top 5s.

      Reply

  3. 1 Ronald Reagan was a few weeks away from his 70th birthday when he entered the White House and whilst many were concerned about his age it was said that conversely those who preferred “small government” happily convinced themselves that he would not interfere too much as he would need to sleep until noon every day !

    2 His co-star from The Hasty heart (1959) Richard Todd told in a television interview about how he and Ronnie exchanged Christmas cards in the years after they made that movie but that once Reagan got to the White House the cards to Todd stopped.

    3 In the 1950s I loved watching most of those B movies that would often be mocked in later years and my special favourites all of which are listed above were Law and Order The Last Outpost, Tennessee’s Partner (with John Payne another B movie fave of mine) Hong Kong and Tropic Zone.

    4 It helped that Ronnie’s leading lady in the last four movies was the lovely Rhonda Fleming probably my favourite B movie actress in the 1950s. Steve would have loved the posters for Law and Order which had a great tagline FRAME JOHNSON THE LAST OF THE GREAT SHOOTING MARSHALS – and no prizes for guessing who played Frame !

    5 Bruce mentioned in his Golden Holden page that Bill was Reagan’s best man at Ronnie’s wedding in 1952 , and as the saying goes “what goes around comes around” because when Holden’s Oscar winning Stalag 17 had its Belfast premier its supporting feature was Ronald Reagan and Rhonda Fleming in Tropic Zone. I can still vividly remember going to a top Belfast cinema to see that double bill on a glorious sunny afternoon way back in 1953.

    Reply

    1. POSTSCRIPT TO REAGAN POST

      1 Hasty Heart was of course 1949 and not 59 – apologies.

      2 I was aware that Bogie and Cagney had acted with The Dead End Kids but never knew that Reagan also had that honour – thanks for that little nugget Bruce.

      BOB

      Reply

    2. Hey Bob…..thanks for your Ronald Reagan comment. (1) funny comment about the 40th President. (2) I wonder why the Xmas cards stopped….seemed an assistant to an assistant could have kept that going. (3) Glad his B movies of the 1950s entertained you….I can imagine little Bobby eager to see all of those B westerns back then .(4) have to admit that I am not too familiar with Fleming..but when I do a page on her I will learn fast. (5) now that is a interesting double feature….thanks for sharing these movie thoughts they are greatly appreciated.

      Reply

  4. Hi Bruce,

    I am truly happy that Mr Reagan has his page. I realise many find his carreer somewhat of a joke however it is important to note that his carreer was interupted just as he had reached a level of popularity akin to Flynn or Wayne. When the call of duty came he dropped it all to serve his country. Those of the stature of Taylor, Stewart or Fonda survived the call but they did have a little more of a carreer before leaving for war. Some though, like Wayne, never left for fear of destroying their fledgling carreers. Don’t get me wrong; I am not criticising Wayne (somewhat of an idol for me) as he more than atoned for his regret by becoming the superpatriot that he was, however Reagan did selflessly sacrifice. This, in my view, should silence any who diminish Mr Reagans movie carreer.

    I loved his last role in The Killers….he was mean….talk about against type.

    Marcel

    Reply

    1. Hey Marcel….glad you found and liked my Reagan page. I agree with you 100%…..after hitting a massive home run with This Is The Army…he had that 4 year absence from movies….and his immediate movies after that were pretty successful too…..seems when he reach the 1950s he slipped into the B actor category that he was eventually remembered for….but I think from 1937 to 1949…he was a very successful actor.

      I think you can add Gable to the list of star’s that served…as Gable seemed to be on a death wish after the loss of Carole Lombard. I actually think Stewart’s military career is more impressive than his movie career….which is saying a lot….because Stewart had one of the greatest careers ever.

      I agree 100% with you about The Killers….though from what I read he really did not enjoy playing such an evil character in that one. Thanks for the visit and the comment.

      Reply

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