No Ifs or Butts : Tobacco Heir Hopes to Snuff Out Smoking Habit as Family Fumes
He hands out pictures of himself crushing packs of Camels, blaming smoking for the death of his father and millions of other people. He appears on television talk shows, writes the President, and testifies before a congressional committee, condemning cigarette advertising as immoral.
This tobacco town has seen it all before, except for one thing: This crusader is the grandson of R.J. Reynolds, the founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. of Winston-Salem.
“Some people say I’m biting the hand that feeds me,” said Patrick Reynolds, a 37-year-old actor who recently came home to Winston-Salem to explain his position to outraged family members. “I say the hand that fed me--the tobacco industry--has literally killed millions of people and may kill millions more unless smokers wake up.”
A reformed smoker himself, Reynold’s message is the same wherever he can find an audience: Cigarettes have killed 10 million Americans since 1950 and smoking is costing the U.S. economy $65 billion a year in medical care and lost productivity. He urges higher taxes on cigarettes and a ban on cigarette advertising, a $2.3-billion-a-year industry.
Writing a Book
The tobacco industry claims that no link between smoking and disease has ever been proved.
Some of his four brothers say Reynolds’ campaign is a publicity stunt for a book he is writing and a television miniseries they fear will make the Reynolds family look like characters from “Dallas.”
“Our father and grandfather are probably spinning in their graves,” said John D. Reynolds, a 50-year-old Winston-Salem aquaculturalist and Patrick’s half-brother. “He’s creating an unnecessary stir for his own sake.”
But Reynolds said the book and TV plans spring from a need to understand himself and the father he never knew--a father whose death seeded his anti-smoking zeal.
Patrick Reynolds was 9 years old the first time he remembers meeting his father, Richard Reynolds Jr., the son of patriarch R.J. Reynolds. He had sent a letter asking to meet his father, who divorced Patrick’s mother when the boy was 3.
“I was starved for love and affection and thrilled that I was finally going to get to meet this demigod my mother brought me up to believe he was,” Reynolds said. “The moment of meeting him was a wonderful thing, except for one thing--he had sandbags on his chest to exercise his lungs. They thought he had been taken by asthma, but it turned out to be emphysema--the result of heavy smoking.” His father died at age 58 in 1964, when Patrick was 15.
Ten years later, Patrick himself was smoking--an addiction that lasted another 10 years.
“I’m human,” he said. “I fought it. It was a battle to get off cigarettes. I struggled for five years and quit in 1984.”
Reynolds inherited $2.5 million from his grandfather when he turned 21 in 1969. After studying business and film production in college, he had movie roles in “Nashville” and “Airplane,” and he stars as a half-robot “Mandroid” in the new video production “Eliminators.” He is also involved in producing, publishing and real estate.
Reynolds said he tried from 1983 to 1985 to get a job with RJR Nabisco Inc. of Winston-Salem, the conglomerate that owns R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. He said company officials at one point mentioned the possibility of his joining the board of directors--where no Reynolds has served since the 1930s.
It was his secret intention, Reynolds said, to work from within the company to get it to divest its tobacco holdings. In any case, the company declined to hire him, and Reynolds began his anti-smoking campaign soon afterward.
Reynolds has sold his stock in the company, but he has no plans to give back the $2.5-million inheritance.
In May, Reynolds met in Washington with Sen. Robert Packwood (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Support for Special Interests
“I suggested it was shocking that a special interest like cigarettes could get enough support in Congress to keep taxes among the lowest in the world, and that this must arouse the cynicism of the U.S. public in the way this nation is governed,” Reynolds said.
In July, Reynolds testified before a House committee investigating cigarette advertising aimed at women and young people.
A Republican and an admirer of President Reagan, he recently wrote the President urging his support of a ban on cigarette ads, saying “advertising of these proven killers is plainly immoral.”
John D. Reynolds, and another half-brother, 46-year-old William N. Reynolds of Winston-Salem, say Patrick is seeking publicity for his acting career, his book and his TV production.
A third half-brother, 52-year-old Richard (Josh) Reynolds III of Southern Pines, said he is disturbed that Patrick is pushing for higher cigarette taxes because, “I don’t support higher taxes for anything.”
Michael Reynolds, 39, of Winston-Salem, Patrick’s only full brother, said RJR Nabisco stock has actually risen since Patrick spoke out.
Another half-brother, Zachary, died at 41 in a 1979 plane crash. A half-sister, Irene, was born shortly after their father died and lives in Switzerland.
“I don’t like the idea he’s going to try to do a ‘Dallas’-type program of very wealthy Reynoldses walking around in a made-for-TV movie, surrounded by beautiful women,” John Reynolds said. “Most Reynoldses don’t have much money relative to what people think.”
He disputed Patrick’s contention that their father died from cigarettes, saying he actually died from pneumonia he caught while racing yachts.
‘We Have No Animosity
Later, John said, “We’re all friendly to Patrick. We have no animosity toward him. I just wish the kid would straighten up and not take this stand himself. Let him pay someone else to do it.”
Although RJR Nabisco is the largest employer in Winston-Salem, with 14,000 workers, residents seem to be largely ignoring Patrick’s crusade. Suzanne Brownlow, letters editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, said only one or two people have written the paper so far.
“Regardless of his name, he is a private citizen,” she said. “Our readers are too busy worrying about the topless bar they’re building downtown.”
Title Not Revealed
Reynolds has a contract with publisher Little, Brown & Co. of Boston to write a book, whose title he declined to reveal, with Tom Shachtman, author of “Edith and Woodrow,” “The Phony War” and “The FBI-KGB War.”
Quoting from the introduction, Patrick said the book “chronicles the creation and dissolution of a great American family fortune” with “episodes of heroism, romance, entrepreneurial genius, business rivalries that shook the nation, political intrigue, multiple and difficult marriages, divorce settlements in the millions, international playboys and gold diggers, blood feuds, suicide-murder, alcoholism and a surfeit of human excess.”
The Reynolds brothers’ uncle, Z. Smith Reynolds, died of a gunshot wound in 1932 at the age of 20. His wife, Broadway star Libby Holman, was charged with murder, but the charges were dropped at the request of the family.
Book Tells of Loans
The book also said Richard Reynolds Jr., who married four times, made loans that helped Franklin D. Roosevelt win the election of 1940.
Rich Jachetti, a New York public relations consultant for the American Lung Assn., last year invited Reynolds to become the first member of the association’s “Celebrity Advisory Board.”
“We’ll be doing public service announcements with Patrick--probably TV, definitely radio,” Jachetti said. “We may also do a poster campaign with him. We’re also talking about having Patrick function as a spokesman for the association in schools around the country and on media programs.”
Reynolds said he has a great idea for a public service spot: “I’d be looking in the camera, and rather than saying who I am, there’d be a byline saying ‘Patrick Reynolds: member of the R.J. Reynolds family.’ I’d say: ‘When we began manufacturing cigarettes, we didn’t realize they could cause heart disease, emphysema and lung cancer. Stop smoking now.’ It’d be very brief.”
