Gipp, Reagan wrote, was “a man I had always admired” as “one of the greatest football players of all time,” and the portrayal served as “the springboard that bounced me into a wider variety of parts in pictures.” Two principal reasons undergirded the actor’s enthusiasm for the part. Twenty years after Gipp perished in 1920, and nearly a decade after Rockne’s death in a plane crash on March 31, 1931, Reagan concentrated on what he would call, in an article for The Saturday Evening Post, “the role I liked best.” That connection, though, lay over a quarter of a century in the future. Little did the sports announcer-turned-actor know how portraying Gipp in the 1940 film Knute Rockne All American would contribute to Reagan’s third and most significant career. “My reward was the part of George Gipp - the immortal Gipper.” In his post-White House, 748-page autobiography, An American Life, Reagan confesses he “never thought about getting paid” for this aspiration. “I wanted to tell the story of Knute Rockne,” Reagan admits in his pre-politics memoir, Where’s the Rest of Me? His ardor to bring Rockne to the big screen even drove him to try his hand at writing a script. He carried with him a dream beyond acting.

Then, after graduating from college in 1932 and working nearly five years in sports broadcasting, the Illinois native headed west to Hollywood. Throughout his youth a century ago, Ronald Reagan followed the life and career of a certain football coach. The 29-year-old actor’s resolute campaign to play a small yet memorable role in the movie about his hero showed determination that, decades later, directed higher ambition.

Alter ego extravaganza