Quentin Reynolds | |
|---|---|
 Reynolds in 1926 | |
| Born | Quentin James Reynolds April 11, 1902 Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 17, 1965 (aged 62) Fairfield, California, U.S. |
| Occupations | Journalist, WWII correspondent |
| Years active | 1933–1963 |
Quentin James Reynolds (April 11, 1902 – March 17, 1965) was an American journalist and World War II war correspondent. He also played American football for one season in the National Football League (NFL) with the Brooklyn Lions. [1]
Reynolds was born on April 11, 1902, in The Bronx. He attended Manual Training High School in Brooklyn and Brown University. At Brown, he played college football as a tackle and starred as a breaststroker on the swimming team. [2]
As an associate editor at Collier's Weekly from 1933 to 1945, Reynolds averaged 20 articles a year. He also published 25 books, including The Wounded Don't Cry, London Diary, Dress Rehearsal, and Courtroom, a biography of lawyer Samuel Leibowitz. His autobiography was titled By Quentin Reynolds.
During World War II, Reynolds was one of many Western correspondents noted for taking a pro-Soviet line. After visiting the USSR in the autumn of 1941, he argued that the victims of Stalin's purges in the 1930s had been guilty of treason to the Soviet Union, and attributed the country's survival in the face of Operation Barbarossa to the fact that before the war it had "eliminated Russia's Fifth Column." [3] Reynolds was also misled by Soviet propaganda lauding Stalin as a battlefield commander, writing in 1942 that "there is no doubt that there is only one military genius in Russia -- Joseph Stalin." [4]
After World War II, Reynolds was best known for his 1954 libel suit against right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, who in 1949 had accused him of habitually appearing naked in public, and called him "yellow" and an "absentee war correspondent". Reynolds, represented by noted attorney Louis Nizer, won $175,001 (approximately $1.9 million in 2022 dollars), at the time the largest libel judgment ever. [5] [6] The trial was later made into a Broadway play, A Case of Libel, which was twice adapted as TV movies.
In 1953, Reynolds was the victim of a major literary hoax when he published The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, the supposedly true story of a Canadian war hero, George Dupre, who claimed to have been captured and tortured by German soldiers. When the hoax was exposed, Bennett Cerf, of Random House, Reynolds's publisher, reclassified the book as fiction. [7]
On December 8, 1950, Reynolds debuted as a television actor in "The Ponzi Story", an episode of Pulitzer Prize Playhouse . [8] Reynolds was a personal friend of British media mogul Sidney Bernstein. In 1956, Reynolds paid a visit to England to co-host Meet the People, the launch night program for Manchester-based Granada Television (now ITV Granada) which Bernstein founded. [9]
Reynolds was a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. [10]
Reynolds died of cancer, on March 17, 1965, at Travis Air Force Base Hospital in Fairfield, California. [11]
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