Gene Reynolds

Gene Reynolds might have fulfilled a youthful ambition and become a baseball player. However, his father's business failed and the family relocated from their erstwhile home in Detroit to Los Angeles in 1934. Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Maude Evelyn (Schwab), a model, and Frank Eugene Blumenthal. After his childhood move to Hollywood, he started in the film industry as an extra in Our Gang comedies while studying drama at the Pasadena Playhouse. At the age of fourteen he was contracted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to play juvenile roles in classic features like Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). He often played the main star of the picture at a younger age in flashback. In 1940, Gene began a four year stint in the navy. Upon his discharge, he moved to New York to find work in the new medium of television. Another sojourn in Hollywood resulted in being featured in Paramount's The Country Girl (1954) and then cast in a mere bit part in The