Robert Rice Reynolds was a DemocraticUS senator from North Carolina from 1932 and 1945. Almost from the outset of his Senate career, "Our Bob," as he was known among his local supporters, acquired distinction as a passionate isolationist and increasingly as an apologist for Nazi aggression in Europe. Even after America's entry into World War II, according to a contemporary study of subversive elements in America, he "publicly endorsed the propaganda efforts of Gerald L. K. Smith," whose scurrilous publication The Cross and the Flag "violently assailed the United States war effort and America's allies." One of the nation's most influential fascists, Smith likewise collaborated with Reynolds on The Defender, an antisemitic newspaper that was partly owned by Reynolds. Reynolds occasionally turned over his Senate office facilities to subversive propagandists and allowed them to use his franking to mail their literature postage-free.
After passing the bar exam, Reynolds began practicing in Asheville with his brother. He was elected prosecuting attorney, serving from 1910 to 1914, and during World War I, registered for military service. He was never drafted but briefly served in the National Guard. In 1924, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, losing to J. Elmer Long in the Democratic primary. In 1926, Reynolds first ran for the US Senate, but was unsuccessful. He ran again in 1932 and defeated former Governor and interim Senator Cameron Morrison in the Democratic primary runoff by nearly two-to-one after running a particularly nasty, populist campaign in which he accused Morrison of being a Communist sympathizer. During one campaign speech, he proclaimed, "Cam likes fish eggs, and Red Russian fish eggs at that. Don't you want a Senator who likes North Carolina hen eggs?"
US Senate
In his first term, Reynolds was in favor of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and believed that it provided much-needed jobs for his North Carolinans. That allowed the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to be built. Reynolds favored taxing the wealthy and imposing regulations on the economy. In addition, he supported Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which raised tobacco prices. Reynolds initially supported Roosevelt's Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 to pack the Supreme Court but later joined other Democrats in sending it back to the Judiciary Committee, effectively killing the bill. Reynolds was an advocate of "Fortress America" and supported a strong national defense, the expansion of the Navy, and an increase in the size of the Army and Air Force. He vociferously opposed Roosevelt's efforts to revise the Neutrality Acts. Reynolds and Senator John Overton of Louisiana, were the only senators from the South to vote against repeal of the arms embargo. Therefore, during his 1938 re-election campaign, Roosevelt recruited Franklin W. Hancock, Jr. to oppose Reynolds in the Democratic primary, but Reynolds won handily. In 1941, Reynolds became chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. A confidential 1943 analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Isaiah Berlin for the British Foreign Office stated that Reynolds By 1944, the Democratic Party had had enough of Reynolds and chose former Governor Clyde R. Hoey to seek Reynolds's seat in the primary. As a result, Reynolds did not seek reelection. Hoey won the primary and went on to win the general election in a landslide victory over a Republican opponent. Reynolds did seek to return to the Senate in 1950, but he was by then hopelessly discredited and won only 10% in the Democratic primary, behind Frank Porter Graham and Willis Smith.
Later life
After leaving public life, Reynolds practiced law and real estate until his death, in Asheville. He wrote the book Gypsy Trails, Around the World in an Automobile; Asheville, NC: Advocate Publishing Company.
Personal life
Reynolds married five times throughout his life and had four children. His first marriage was in 1910 to Frances Jackson. Before her death from Typhoid fever in 1913, they had two children together:
Frances Jackson Reynolds
Robert Rice Reynolds, Jr.
In 1914, he married 17-year-old Mary Bland. Less than a year after their marriage, he left his new wife and their child. Before their divorce in 1917 and her three subsequent marriages, they had one daughter together:
In 1921, he married, for the third time, Denise D'Arcy, a French woman he met in New York. Reynolds met D'Arcy while he was traveling around the country in his truck and accidentally struck her as she crossed the street. Within five days, he had announced that they had fallen in love and were going to get married. The marriage dissolved after one year, and D'Arcy obtained a legal separation from Reynolds in 1922 and moved back to France. The divorce was ultimately finalized in 1929. On February 27, 1931, he married for the fourth time to Eva Brady, a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer from Chicago, who came to Asheville looking for a cure for tuberculosis. Eva died on December 13, 1934. On October 9, 1941, 57-year-old Reynolds married for the fifth and final time to 19-year-old Evalyn Washington McLean, daughter of Edward B. McLean, the former publisher and owner of the Washington Post, and Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond. Together, they had one daughter:
Mamie Spears Reynolds, an owner and driver for the Reynolds Racing Team of Asheville, the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500, and co-owner of the ABA Kentucky Colonels professional basketball team. In 1963, she married Luigi "Coco" Chinetti Jr., son of Italian racecar driver and Ferrari agent Luigi Chinetti, and divorced two years later.
On September 20, 1946, his wife, Evalyn, died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, which some believe is a result of the Hope Diamond curse.
Death
Reynolds died of cancer on February 13, 1963 at Reynolds House in Asheville.
