Sneak Previews of Forthcoming Books : Not Like Father

‘Patrick was depressed when he returned to Hollywood. In a journal, he poured out what he knew of his father. He tried to stop loathing Dick and struggled to understand him.’

From “The Gilded Leaf--Triumph, Tragedy, and Tobacco: Three Generations of the R.J. Reynolds Family and Fortune,” to be published this month by Little, Brown and Co. This excerpt describes the period before tobacco heir Patrick Reynolds, grandson of R.J. Reynolds, became an anti-smoking advocate.

BY THE TIME of the Reynolds family reunion, Patrick was a young film maker. He bore the family name but only a small fraction of the money; he was Dick’s son but had been disinherited, and so, along with his brothers, was somewhat ostracized at this gathering. Patrick lifted his movie camera and recorded the reunion; it was a wonderful way to be present and distanced at the same time.

Back in Hollywood, without the discipline of being forced to earn his own living, Reynolds went after his career goal inefficiently. He didn’t seek the sort of jobs other aspiring film makers wanted, such as working as assistants in production companies. Instead, he attended film festivals around the world and took courses at UCLA and then at USC. He spent endless hours in an editing room perfecting his own short films.

As did many heirs, he tried to surpass his father by attempting to make a lot of money all at once. He plunged $400,000 into silver bullion and had the satisfaction of seeing the price rise. But he lost money on a prototype electric car, a mobile phone in a briefcase, a bank in the Bahamas, an executive-search company. Often he agreed to deals with a handshake, wrote checks to business partners without consulting attorneys and in other ways fell victim to associates whose enthusiasm far outweighed their credentials.

He was delighted when his old mentor, Albert Johnson, invited him to join other San Francisco Film Festival people in a tour of the Soviet Union. They met Soviet film stars and directors. To Reynolds, it was a revelation that in a communist country, where all were supposed to be equal, a few lived more comfortably than most. Perhaps it was the natural order of things that some were more fortunate than others.

Believing that, he concluded that he wasn’t a bad (or a good) person for having a lot when others had very little; it was just the luck of the draw. He began to be more relaxed about his inherited wealth and decided there was nothing wrong with spending some of his money on himself. He rented a hilltop castle-estate in the Hollywood Hills. Wolf’s Lair was grand and fake at the same time--many rooms, a hideaway pool, a panoramic view of the Los Angeles Basin, and another over the Lake Hollywood reservoir.

Actress Shelley Duvall was researching a role in Robert Altman’s “Nashville” when Reynolds met her at the Starwood on Santa Monica Boulevard. Soon she moved into Wolf’s Lair.

While visiting Duvall on the set of “Nashville,” Reynolds was cast by Altman in a walk-on. Being a film director now seemed to be an unattainable goal; acting was more approachable.

The bit in Altman’s movie led to a speaking role in a television production of “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in which Duvall starred. After that production had concluded, Reynolds was scheduled to act in Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” when a letter from his aunt arrived. The missive announced that the Sapelo Island Research Foundation was offering to sell the South End mansion’s furnishings to the brothers before holding a general auction. Reynolds was insulted by being asked to bid on what he believed should have been part of his inheritance. He decided that attending might be his last opportunity to see Sapelo.

The magnificence and emptiness of Sapelo, conjuring up both the wonderful and the terrible scenes that had occurred there, produced in Reynolds a profound sadness. He was quite depressed when he returned to Hollywood. In a journal, he poured out all that he knew of his father’s and family’s life. The writing was therapy. In the course of it, Patrick tried to stop loathing Dick and struggled to understand him: “Ignoring his children was only part of (Dick’s) larger pattern. To successfully cope with the magnitude of his endowments in wealth, genius and physical stamina, he would have needed an equally extreme self-discipline, which he was never inspired or did not choose to cultivate.” Patrick wrote that he himself hoped to have that discipline.

He decided to put the past behind him forever, to bury and forget it. He had his own future in films on which to concentrate. He was cast in a new musical by the authors of “Hair” and went to rehearse with it in New York; meanwhile, Duvall was on location making another film. At the end of one long-distance call, the relationship was over. The musical closed, too, after three performances. Reynolds returned to Wolf’s Lair; without Duvall, the mansion seemed empty. He found an even more majestic estate, in Holmby Hills. This was Brooklawn, built in the 1920s by one of the founders of 20th Century Fox, Winifred Sheehan. It had enormous public rooms with 14-foot ceilings; there was a ballroom with a balcony. Its dimensions and amenities seemed perfect for the life Reynolds believed he had been cheated out of--the style of his father, which he wanted desperately to understand.

He gave two large parties a year, held private acting workshops in the ballroom, dated actresses and models. With a partner, he optioned some screenplays and properties but was not able to persuade the studios to put any of them into production. At what seemed to him to be the last moment, he lost many potential starring roles in films. The beauty of Brooklawn was a constant source of pleasure, but at times its enormous, empty rooms only amplified Reynolds’ growing feelings of failure and despair.

Copyright 1989 by Patrick Reynolds.