‘Gipper’ to Return to Notre Dame, Put Stamp on Rockne

President Reagan, who played the role of Notre Dame football player George Gipp in a 1940 movie, will visit Notre Dame University on March 9 in connection with the issuance of a new postage stamp honoring football coach Knute Rockne, the White House said today.

In the film “Knute Rockne, All-American,” Gipp, a mainstay of the Notre Dame team, dies midway in the movie. In a climactic scene, the late Pat O’Brien, playing Rockne, urges the team during half-time to go out on the field and “Win one for the Gipper.”

The phrase has become a political trademark for the President.

The film was made at Loyola University in Los Angeles but Reagan was reunited with O’Brien at Notre Dame 41 years later when he visited the school on May 17, 1981, less than two months after being wounded in an assassination attempt.