Bernard A. Reinold papers

1893-1924

Bernard Adolph Reinold (1860-1940) was an actor and a soldier, a member of several theatrical social organizations, and an administrator of the Actors' Fund of America. The career of Bernard A. Reinhold, whose stage name was Adolph Bernard, alternated between the stage and the military. On stage, Reinold played opposite such luminaries as Lawrence Barrett, Rose Coghlan, James O'Neill, Lionel Atwill, and Helen Hayes. Reinold also acted in a few silent movies, including THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (1922) starring Will Rogers. Reinold was an adventurer from an early age, having run off to sea as a teenager. In the 1880s he fought as a mercenary in the Belgian Congo, then, back in the United States, against Indians. During the Spanish-American War in 1898 Reinold signed up as a Rough Rider under the command of Theodore Roosevelt. When America entered the World War in 1917, Reinold, now in his late 50s, sought and was granted special permission to serve as a Captain of the Quartermaster Corps in France. Bernard Reinold died on March 19, 1940, at the age of 80. At the time of his death he was chairman of the board of the Actors' Fund of America. Consists of letters and cards written to Bernard A. Reinold by colleagues and family members, with several notes from the writer/director Rupert Hughes. Most of the family correspondence was written to Captain (later Major) Reinold during the First World War, including a Valentine greeting written by one of Reinold's children, which, according to an inscription, was "picked up off the coast of Ireland, August 1918, in mail bag from torpedoed ship." The other correspondence includes two notes from California Rep. Julius Kahn, a former actor, and two notes from actor/manager Joseph Jefferson.