Radio: Ambassador from Brooklyn

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When Reynolds broadcast his "Open Letter" to Dr. Goebbels on June 29, 1941, telling him that Britain would stand and that the U.S. would someday stand with her, the correspondent won British hearts as few U.S. citizens ever have. Winston Churchill wrote a letter of thanks. So did thousands of other Englishmen. One admirer gave Reynolds a precious memento—a reproduction of the lantern of Lord Nelson's flagship, Victory, lying in the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Reynolds, thinking it was the original, carried it home by hand, showed it to all and sundry. He had reached Canada before someone pointed out that it was inscribed: "Made in Birmingham, 1917."

The Three Bs. A Bronx-born, Brooklyn-raised, Brown-universitied Irish-American, the nighthawking Reynolds makes himself work by staying home with his clothes off. His persistent itch to go out somewhere has, in its time, cost Collier's plenty. Mused one of the magazine's editors, coming out from under a Reynolds' expense account: "When [it] gets as big as my salary, I'll fire him."

Now 41, and married to Cinemactress Virginia Peine, Reynolds hopes to settle down after the war to a lush Manhattan life of fiction writing. Meanwhile, when his Goodyear contract expires, he intends to go back to Europe. His best contacts and his only consuming hate, Adolf Hitler, are there. The Pacific theater can wait. He has no use for the Japanese, but, being a friendly man, he finds it hard to hate them intimately. "You see," he says, "I've never known a Jap personally."