Gene Reynolds
1923 - 2020Gene Reynolds (born Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal, April 4, 1923 - February 3, 2020) was an American actor, television writer, director, and producer. He was one of the producers of the TV series M*A*S*H.
Reynolds made his screen debut in the 1934 Our Gang short Washee Ironee, and for the next three decades made numerous appearances in films such as In Old Chicago (1937), Captains Courageous (1937), Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), Boys Town (1938), They Shall Have Music (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), Adventure in Washington (1941), Eagle Squadron (1942) and The Country Girl (1954), and on television series like I Love Lucy, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Whirlybirds, and Hallmark Hall of Fame. He was contracted to MGM between 1937 and 1940. He was in the U.S. Army during World War II.
In 1957, Reynolds joined forces with Frank Gruber and James Brooks to create Tales of Wells Fargo for NBC. During the program's five-year run he wrote and directed numerous episodes. Additional directing credits include multiple episodes of Leave It to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, The Farmer's Daughter, My Three Sons, F Troop, Hogan's Heroes, Room 222, and Many Happy Returns.
As a writer, director, and producer, Reynolds was involved with two highly successful CBS series in the 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1972 and 1983, he produced 120 episodes of M*A*S*H, which he co-created with Larry Gelbart, and for which he also wrote 11 episodes and directed 24. During that same period, he produced 22 episodes of Lou Grant, for which he wrote (or co-wrote) five episodes and directed 11.
Reynolds has been nominated for twenty-four Emmy Awards and won six times, including Outstanding Comedy Series for M*A*S*H and Outstanding Drama Series twice for Lou Grant, which also earned him a Humanitas Prize. He won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Direction of a Comedy Series twice for his work on M*A*S*H and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Direction of a Drama Series once for his work on Lou Grant.
Reynolds was elected President of the Directors Guild of America in 1993, a post he held for four years until 1997.
He died on February 3, 2020 at age 96.
M*A*S*H: 30th Anniversary Reunion
Alan Alda, Harry Morgan
The M*A*S*H 30th Anniversary Reunion Special is a retrospective documentary on the CBS-TV series M*A*S*H that aired on the FOX TV network on May 17, 2002. The progam features interviews with past cast members, producers, and writers who contributed to the series, which originally aired on CBS-TV from September 17, 1972 to February 28, 1983.
M*A*S*H: 30th Anniversary Reunion
Memories Of M*A*S*H
Michael Hirsch
Shelley Long, Alan Alda
Hosted by one-time M*A*S*H guest star Shelley Long, “Memories of M*A*S*H” included brand-new interviews with the cast as well as producers, creators and guest-stars. The 90-minute retrospective aired on November 25th, 1991 on CBS as part of its “Classic Weekend II,” which also included “The Bob Newhart 19th Anniversary Special” and “The Best of Ed Sullivan II.” Dozens of clips from over over sixty different episodes were shown. It was the brain-child of Michael Hirsh (also responsible for “Making M*A*S*H”) and coincided with the 20th anniversary of M*A*S*H.
Memories of M*A*S*H
The Calling of Dan Matthews
Phil Rosen
Richard Arlen, Charlotte Wynters
Dan Matthews (Richard Arlen), a young parson, is in love with Hope Strong (Charlotte Wynters), the daughter of James B. Strong ('FRederick Burton'), a man who controls the town with his real estate and business interests. Strong is an upstanding citizen who has fallen into the hands of a clever racketeer, Jeff Hardy (Douglass Dumbrille), who acts as Strong's manager of some innocent-appearing amusement places that are really secret dens of vice.
The Calling of Dan Matthews
Captains Courageous
Victor Fleming
Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy
Harvey, the arrogant and spoiled son of an indulgent absentee-father, falls overboard from a transatlantic steamship and is rescued by a fishing vessel on the Grand Banks. Harvey fails to persuade them to take him ashore, nor convince the crew of his wealth. The captain offers him a low-paid job, until they return to port, as part of the crew that turns him into a mature, considerate young man.
Captains Courageous
The Real M*A*S*H
Min Sook Lee
Jamie Farr, Loretta Swit
The Real MASH traces the original stories and people that inspired the fictional feature film and TV series about Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals in the Korean War. Both pushed buttons on cultural and social frontiers but real life MASH units were actually more like renegade units onto themselves and early indicators of the social turmoil and tensions that were to unfold later in the USA. Interviews with MASH actors, including Jamie Farr, Loretta Swit and Gary Burghoff, co-creator Gene Reynolds, surgeons, doctors, nurses, pilots and enlisted men who served in the war blend with dramatic recreations, archival film and rare photographs to tell the true stories behind the MASH entertainment franchise.
The Real M*A*S*H
The Mortal Storm
Frank Borzage
Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart
The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. When the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Brietner, a family friend is caught up in the turmoil.
The Mortal Storm
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust
Daniel Anker
Gene Hackman, Norma Barzman
Daniel Anker’s 90-minute documentary takes on over 60 years of a very complex subject: Hollywood’s complicated, often contradictory relationship with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The questions it raises go right the very nature of how film functions in our culture, and while hardly exhaustive, Anker’s film makes for a good, thought provoking starting point.
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust
Boys Town
Norman Taurog
Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney
Devout but iron-willed Father Flanagan leads a community called Boys Town, a different sort of juvenile detention facility where, instead of being treated as underage criminals, the boys are shepherded into making themselves better people. But hard-nosed petty thief and pool shark Whitey Marsh, the impulsive and violent younger brother of an imprisoned murderer, might be too much for the good father's tough-love system.
Boys Town
Edison, the Man
Clarence Brown
Spencer Tracy, Charles Coburn
In flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. He's on his way with the invention of an early form of the stock market ticker.
Edison, the Man
