Gene Reynolds

Actor, writer, director, producer Born: April 4, 1923;

Died: February 3, 2020

GENE Reynolds, who has died aged 96, began acting before he was 10, appearing in Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang and Andy Hardy films in the 1930s. But after a solid if unspectacular acting career spanning quarter of a century, he went on to enjoy greater success as a writer, director and producer, and was one of the two co-creators of the television version of M*A*S*H, one of the most popular shows in American TV history.

As a director and producer he won six Emmy awards between 1970 and 1980: one for Room 222, two for Lou Grant and three for M*A*S*H, a series that could be both funny and poignant, and proved so popular that it lasted longer than the Korean War, during which it was set.

The son of an estate agent, Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1923. The family moved to Detroit and then Los

Angeles. He had early hopes of becoming a baseball player, but his mother, a former model, directed him towards acting. “I was a very energetic child and my mother mistook that for talent,” he said.

He began with tiny uncredited roles, but by the second half of the 1930s he was being cast in films where the storyline called for the main character to be played by both an adult and in earlier scenes by a child; he served as the younger version of James Stewart and Tyrone Power. He had a featured role as the handicapped boy elected mayor in the Boys Town (1938), with Spencer Tracey and Mickey Rooney. Over the next 20 years he appeared in dozens of films and TV series, with a break during the war for naval service, and just after the war when he took a degree in history at UCLA.

In the late 1950s he determined to develop his career behind the cameras, too. In 1957, along with Frank Gruber and James Brooks, he created Tales of Wells Fargo, an NBC series about a Wells Fargo “special agent” in the Old West. It ran for five years and he wrote and directed many episodes. He also got the chance to direct on other shows, including Hogan’s Heroes, a POW sitcom .

He was producer, director and occasional writer on Room 222 (1969-74), a comedy-drama about a black teacher that tackled some serious issues.

M*A*S*H started off as a novel in 1968 and was made into a hit film in 1970, a black comedy about doctors and nurses doing their bit in Korea. It was subsequently developed by Reynolds and Gruber as a possible TV series, once again allowing Reynolds to mix comedy and tragedy. Characters not only laughed; they also died. He was credited with encouraging the cast to chip in their own ideas on M*A*S*H, helping build an esprit de corps that mirrors the esprit de corps shared by the characters themselves.

Although set in the 1950s, M*A*S*H began broadcasting in 1972 during the Vietnam War and tapped into the prevailing mood of confusion and rebelliousness. A record 125 million viewers watched the final episode in 1983. Reynolds also helped create Lou Grant, a serious, newspaper-office-set spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

He married twice. Both wives, Bonnie Jones and Ann Sweeny, acted in M*A*S*H. His first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife and a son.