My boyfriend in Chicago in the early ’90s was best friends & occasional roommates with a talented actress named Rhonda Reynolds. Rhonda and I weren’t incredibly close…horror films made her physically squirm in discomfort…but she once acted in a short play that I wrote, and we had many of the same musical likes. In fact, I still have the L7 shirt that she got for me when she saw them open for The Beastie Boys in Chicago. Her future husband Robb was also a talented bassist. Robb and I spent one Saturday evening, in the Wicker Park apartment that I shared with Kelly – the afore mentioned boyfriend, pouring through my CDs and cassette tapes, listening to the latest Fugazi and other alt-rock/punk gems.
In 1994, Wreck, Robb’s band, released an LP on C/Z Records and they went on tour. I went to the kick off show with Kelly and Rhonda – procuring another band shirt that I had for decades. Rhonda, herself, soon took off for Los Angeles, landing a prominent gig opposite Lloyd Bridges in a sexy TV film about a small-town scandal called Secret Sins of the Father.
Going the way of many first relationships, Kelly and I broke up that fall. We did keep in touch for a handful of years after that, though, and I learned through him that Rhonda was landing other nighttime gigs, here and there. But my ears really perked up when I found out that she secured a job playing a ghost on an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, a syndicated anthology series that was many a young genre fan’s entree into the macabre. I never could figure out when her episode was airing, though, and as the years passed, it became just one of the many interesting factoids that decorated the background of my existence.
Of course, as I age, nostalgia is ever nipping at my heels and, in a flush of newfound determination, I recently found her segment online. As you can see from the photos alone, she played her character, an apparition warning a family against impending dangers, with an ethereal potence. Of course, my viewing was amplified by my experience with her in my theater salad days and my sincere gratitude for having lived a life surrounded by so many uniquely creative individuals. But you can judge for yourself at….
A Spirited Update:
All these years later, Robb and Rhonda are still continuing their artistic journeys — this time through the culinary arts. Their restaurant Masa, a celebration of Chicago style Deep Dish pizza, in East-Central Los Angeles is a smashing success with both locals and the city’s many visitors.
https://www.masaofechopark.com/
Big Gay Horror Fan 