AW/OLTL: George Reinholt

[AMCHistory]

I saw this clip at We Love Soaps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGTKVQZs4_k&hl=en&fs=1

What a fall from grace. Was he ever really that good? I cannot tell from the clips I found of him. I mean if he was so talented, his demands may be warranted. Also, he really let himself go. To loose all the money you made when Daytime was paying pretty well, Wow! Just wow! I never knew it got so bad.

I know Marlena delaCroix mentioned him as having dies in one of her blogs. May he rest in peace.

[SteveFrame]

Oh by the way he is not dead as far as I know. Unless it has happened in the last half a year. I got a letter from him a little over 6 months ago.

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I will comment on this more but when Reinholt was acting on daytime they did not pay that good. Daytime actors even the top notch of them did not make that much at all. Actors names were hardly ever known to fans at all and there were not many of them at all that even came to be known as household names. The producers and TPTB stressed at that time the importance of Character - soap operas were truly a character business.

Irna Phillips even only referred to her actors by character name and insisted they do so on set. I have read that many times.

And it really worked well for the most part as fans often blurred the facts. For instance Eileen Fulton had to hire a body guard to follow her around after a woman came up to her on the street and started beating her with her purse because of some of the things she did as Lisa on ATWT.

I have somewhere if I can find it what the pay was like for most soap stars at the time. The majority of them got exactly what SAG said they should get which was scale. SAG has a Scale pay for even veterans as well as newbies and daytime hardly ever paid above that for any actor or actress in the 70's. It was only after the 80's rage when stars broke out of the mold and became stars did actors start commanding big salaries.

The biggest salary ever paid in the first 20 years of daytime soaps went to Rosemary Prinz and I forget what it was, but it wasn't anything compared to the salaries of say Deidre Hall and others today.

I will comment more on George later, but I will just say he was that good. Most daytime soap opera critics and histories list him in at least the top 20 actors ever in daytime.

[Cat]

I've only seen a few clips of AW and OLTL from that period but, based on those, I co-sign what SteveFrame said. Reinholt's command of the material and talent jumped off the screen. He was magnetic. In some ways, he was the Marlon Brando of daytime of that period (though Daytime was a much more formal, theatre-based medium back then).

I'd say he was one of Daytime's best actors back in the 70s -- and that was an era of some great acting talents (Susan Flannery, Tudi Wiggins, Julianna McCarthy, Douglas Watson, Beverlee McKinsey come to mind).

As for "really let(ting) himself go," it has been 35 years. LOL, not every actor can afford twice-yearly visits to Dr. Botox and Mr. Liposuction.

[SteveFrame]

One more comment that I will make is not only did he have talent but he was very popular. The Daytime TV magazine had a reader's poll that was well known to be followed by the producers and the writers and used as a guide to who was popular at the time. In the first 6 years of the magazine's poll he was only out of the Top 10 actors 4 or 5 times - no other actor that was on in that same time period did that. The closest one to it was Don Stewart from The Guiding Light.

Twice he was voted as the Favorite Actor of the Year. (1971 and 1974)

And Cat I have also heard some critics compare him to the Jimmy Dean of daytime. He came to daytime in 1966 but esp. really big in 1967. He took it by storm. No other time had there been a hero like him in daytime. Agnes Nixon created a really unique leading male character - sort of the stereotype for a new bachelor archetype in soaps. He was able to even to the censors of the time to instill some sexiness into the role.

It was a big combination of Reinholt's talent and Agnes Nixon's writing but it was a wonderful combination. Of course Agnes left very soon into his run and thank goodness that George and later writers were able to hold on to what Agnes had created.

And the things that got Reinholt into trouble were not bad demands.

These are his basic demands that he fought for and got into trouble with producers and writers at both AW and OLTL.

1) Better pay for actors.

2) Better conditions for actors (i.e. a little more recognition of their name and their face to help them break out of the genre easier or at least be respected more)

3) He wanted better scripts. He really got into fights about how Alice Matthews' mental breakdown story was handled and felt it didn't do the public any justice in the way it was written and the misinformation that it sent.

4) He wanted the history of the Steve Frame character to be preserved. It had been stated many times on screen that Steve was an only child. That is the way he played the role. Harding Lemay suddenly comes on and invents siblings for Steve. And not just one sibling but many.

The problem was not his demands, but really the way he went about them. He was well known to get into fights over it and very vocal fights that often disrupted the set. It finally got to the point no one wanted to work with him.

[EricMontreal22]

I'm with Cat. I dunno how his style would compare now--it's definetly old school soap. But he was also obviously extremely magnetic with very powerful screen presence--I can totally get why people were so drawn to him in the 70s (though I don't get the James Dean comparison unless it's just cuz he's a male actor who drew people in...)

As for his demands--it was more than that. He just didn't get on with Rauch OR Lemay. LaGuardia's Soap Book the 1976 edition ahs a whole 10 pages about it.

And I'm with Cat about really letting himself go or wahetver. I knwo he's had probs with booze, his sexuality, I think drugs, homelessness... All things considered he seems to be doing pretty well for himself. I know that interview is old, but he's 70 now (which would put him aroudn the same age as David Canary who played Steve after him) I sometimes think soap fans are ridiculous though expecting every actor they know to age as if they were embalmed...

[marlenadlc]

I was sadly misinformed that George had died and I hope he is well and happy wherever he is.

As Steve on AW, George was just sensational and sexsational. He had this very chisled look, yet he had great sensitivity as an actor. Alice was so....flutteringly female and Steve was so aggressively masculine they made quite a couple. When I was in junior high, it was Geroge and Jacquie (and Robin Strasser, who was totally sensational as Rachel, the villainess in their triangle) who drew me into soaps for life.

I saw Reinholt twice here in Manhattan--once in the very West Village and once at a jazz concert. In person he was just ELECTRIC looking. Amazing blue eyes! Definitely, back then, he was The Sexiest Man Alive, not a wuss like Hugh Jackman, whom People has just given that title.

I was thrilled out of my mind in later years when Geroge wrote a poem for Marlena De Lacroix of SOW and sent it to me. I wish him all the best and thank him for giving me some very happy teenage years watching AW and OLTL!

Connie P.

a.k.a. Marlena De Lacroix

[SteveFrame]

I used to think that was all there was to it too Eric. But after talking to him and learning that the same problems he had at AW plagued him at OLTL too - it was more than a clash of personalities.

He argued about some of those things even before Rauch and Lemay got there. The only difference is that before that it was not 3 stubborn men fighting each other. All 3 of those men had explosive personalities and none of them was willing to compromise. They just constantly butted heads with each other.

But at OLTL it is hardly ever mentioned but he constantly fought with Doris Quinlan as well and finally just gave up.

I am not saying he was innocent because he wasn't. He really was stubborn. He had good ideas about what he wanted but he just didn't go about it the right way.

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The comparison to James Dean was that both James Dean and Marlon Brando came on as a new breed of motion picture actor - very different from anything the movies had seen before them. That is the way Reinholt was in daytime.

[Quent]

Alice/Steve/Rachel was the first soap story I can remember. It was must-see-TV for my Mom and sister. All were good, but it is Robin Strasser as Rachel who stood out the most for me. She just flew off the screen! I never watched AW when Strasser left. BTW, anybody know what Jacqueline Courtney is doing these days?