It is one of the great movie-biz gags, and probably entirely apocryphal: Upon learning that Ronald Reagan would be running for office, an aide to Warner Brothers head Jack Warner informs his boss.

"Get this: Ronald Reagan for governor."

"Nah," says Reagan's former boss, making a snap casting decision, "Bob Cummings for governor. Reagan for best friend."

The joke refers to the perception that Reagan, despite his all-American good looks, was never really a leading man, that he had neither the versatility, depth nor charisma to seduce audiences. His presidency certainly dispelled the opinion about the third failing. Now a new "Signature Collection" (Warner) of five features Reagan made during his 1940-1952 tenure lets us address the first two.

The best known of the five is the earliest (1940), "Knute Rockne: All American," with Pat O'Brien as the famed Notre Dame coach and Reagan in the supporting role of the ill-fated player George Gipp, the man who provides the team's inspiration and Reagan's eventual tagline "Win just one for the Gipper." If less than Capra-esque in its sentimentalized review of Americana, it remains an inspirational entertainment.

In just about everybody's opinion, including his own, Reagan's best role and best performance were in 1942 "Kings Row," in which he shares the screen with Cummings. They're best pals in this small-town melodrama, replete with secrets and revelations, given gravity by Sam Wood's direction and James Wong Howe's terrific cinematography — and by a shattering twist that most people already know, but won't be spoiled here — just in case.

"The Hasty Heart," a story whose origins as a stage play are all too apparent, has Reagan again in a supporting part and back in the hospital. This time he's a wounded World War II soldier in the same ward as Scottish officer Richard Todd, who has not been told his diagnosis. Patricia Neal, in one of her earliest appearances, is the unit nurse. Reagan's in yet another uniform in 1952's "The Winning Team," a lackluster sentimentalized biography of legendary baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander; Doris Day portrays his supportive wife.

The most intriguing title in the set is 1951's "Storm Warning," a noir-ish drama starring Ginger Rogers as a woman who discovers the husband of her sister (Doris Day) is a Ku Klux Klanner. Reagan's the crusading DA attempting to bring him to justice.

The set contains Warner's usual array of well-chosen, matinee-style extras — a Porky Pig cartoon tips the cap to Reagan's stint as baseball announcer, while an Oscar-winning short featuring the Marine Band hits the patriotic note.

The other new "Signature Collection" set (Warner) with six films starring James Stewart is a serious bargain, considering it contains a new remaster of 1953's "The Naked Spur," directed by Anthony Mann.

Filmed in gorgeous Technicolor, it sets a bitter-to-the-point-of-sociopathic bounty hunter Stewart on the trail of outlaw Robert Ryan, and on an odyssey in which he will rediscover his humanity with some help from Ryan's Calamity Jane-style sidekick, Janet Leigh.

Filling out the package: