Ronald Reagan

West Point classmates J.E.B. Stuart and George Custer are posted to Kansas Territory, where they clash with the abolitionist John Brown and his violent crusade against slavery. Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Ronald Reagan star in this highly fictionalized Warner Bros. western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · History

A wartime Technicolor musical comedy directed by Michael Curtiz, adapted from Irving Berlin's 1942 Broadway stage show. George Murphy plays Jerry Jones, a dancer wounded in World War I who becomes a producer and, 25 years later, mounts an all-soldier revue packed with Berlin songs. Ronald Reagan co-stars as his son Johnny, a corporal in the WWII-era production. The large ensemble cast includes Kate Smith singing "God Bless America," boxing champion Joe Louis, and Irving Berlin himself performing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." All proceeds went to the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The film is not listed in the Catalog of Copyright Entries and is in the public domain.

Musical · Comedy

An Army Air Forces short about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots in American history, made by the First Motion Picture Unit and narrated by Captain Ronald Reagan — the future president's own unit produced the film. It follows Black cadets through flight training at Tuskegee and into combat over Europe with the 332nd Fighter Group, pushing back against the Army's own official skepticism that Black men could fly fighters. Short, pointed, and a remarkable artifact of what the wartime government chose to say on film. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain.

War · Documentary · Short