Variety reported on 26th April that Gene Dynarski has died at the age of 86 on February 27 2020. Although perhaps most closely associated with various non genre TV series from the 1960's/1970's, Gene was also active in Science Fiction in both movies and TV.
Gene worked on two Steven Spielberg films, “Duel” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” among several television projects, including “Star Trek,” “Batman” and “The X-Files.”
In Spielberg's “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, Gene played the supervisor of Richard Dreyfuss' character and starts the investigation into the blackouts. However, Gene annoyed Spielberg, who had recognised his talent from "Duel", and had asked Gene to be in the movie and so Gene's scene was cut from the release and only restored in the 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition.
From Gene's friend Earnest Kearney on Variety:
“He pissed off Spielberg. Pissed him off to the point where, after its 1977 debut, Spielberg cut Dynarski out of all the film’s subsequent releases. It wasn’t until the release of the 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition that included the 1977 edition that Dynarski’s performance could be seen again,” Kearney wrote.
In addition to episodes of ST-TOS ("Mudd's Women" and "The Mark of Gideon"), Gene also appeared in ST-TNG "11001001", Batman (Egghead henceman named Benedict) in "The Yegg Foes in Gotham" and "An Egg grows Gotham", and The X-Files ("Patience"), Gene also provided the voice of "Josef Stalin" in Command and Conquer: Red Alert.
Other series that Gene appeared in are "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "The Invisible Man" and "Land of the Giants".
