Gene Reynolds, a former child actor who went on to be a TV director and producer who worked on M*A*S*H, Lou Grant, Room 222 and others and was a two-term DGA president, died Monday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Centerin Burbank. He was 96.
Reynolds won six Emmys — from more than two dozen nominations — three DGA Awards and a WGA Award during a six-decade showbiz career that began as a preteen actor. He would continue with onscreen roles through the 1950s before segueing to producing and directing.
He got his start behind the camera writing the 1958-61 NBC Western Tales of Wells Fargo and soon began directing episodes of such enduring TV series as Leave It to Beaver, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Andy Griffith Show, The Munsters and My Three Sons.
“In directing, I’m always looking for the little humane touch — something that is real,” Reynolds said in a 2000 interview with the TV Academy Foundation. “It could be very, very small. It could be a hand on the shoulder. It could be just an extra lingering look on somebody you care about and so forth, for just a fraction. It could be a reaction from somebody. … I’m looking for humanity, really. And that goes with comedy or drama.”
DGA president Thomas Schlamme said today: “Gene’s influence on the modern Directors Guild of America was significant and lasting, … He was passionate about this Guild, spirited in his beliefs and dedicated until the end.”
Reynolds would continue to direct for TV throughout the 1960s, helming for such shows as Hogan’s Heroes, F Troop, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Room 222 before he and Larry Gelbart co-created one of the most honored, popular and enduring series in television history.
Reynolds hired Gelbart to write the pilot for M*A*S*H, which was based on the 1970 Robert Altman movie — sans asterisks — and debuted on CBS in September 1972. Starring Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, Loretta Swit and McLean Stevenson, the Korean War-set dramedy was not an immediate hit, failing to make the top 25 among primetime programs that season. But its fortunes soon changed, and M*A*S*H would go on to be a top 10 program for each of its final 10 seasons. Reynolds also wrote about two dozens episodes during its first five years but left the show in 1977.
[Reynolds] was a staff producer at 20th Century Fox Television when M*A*S*H started, so Gene’s contributions didn’t always get the credit he deserves,” Dan Harrison, EVP Program Planning & Content Strategy at Fox, told Deadaline. “He believed that if an episode of TV worked well, it left an ‘after-taste’ that stayed with the viewer long after. He was a talented broadcaster, a great director and producer, and a wonderful storyteller.”
The 2.5-hour M*A*S*H series finale in February 1983 remains the most-watched episode of series television in history, with more than 105 million viewers and a still-stunning 77 share.
That was the year he co-created the Mary Tyler Moore spinoff Lou Grant, starring Ed Asner as the crusty, irascible but for-the-people newspaper editor in Los Angeles, reprising his character from the earlier Minneapolis set series. The show won back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series in 1979-80 and was nominated the following two seasons.
Born Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal on April 4, 1923, in Cleveland, Reynolds began acting in movies by age 11. He worked fairly steadily in front of the camera before quitting acting at the dawn of the 1960s, having racked up scores of credits.