Bob Gentry From Teenage Hood to Heartwinning Hero

Ed, Rick, and Abby Late 1990s

The Afternoon TV issue from August 1981. It did a small feature on Bob Gentry and then a longer feature later on. According to Soap Central Gentry was the second actor to play Ed Bauer. He was an adult Ed. He played him from April 4, 1966 to April 25, 1969; September 26, 1997 to July 7, 1998. His second run he returned as the older looking doctor who played Ed to Rebecca Budig‘s Michelle that first returned from Switzerland.

Here’s his Ed is in the late 1960s (with Leslie):

Here he is during his stint in the late 1990s at Michelle’s bedside after she’s blinded:

“Bob Gentry, Phillip on Another World, remembers when daytime serials used to be live and only 15 minutes long. He should recall those, as he was part of that serial world when he played the original Ed Bauer on The Guiding Light. [Ed. Note: I think maybe they meant the first adult Ed since he was the second actor.] ‘I was discovered by Dorothy Purcer, now the head writer of Texas, when she was an associate producer for Guiding Light. The P&G executive at the time was Paul Rauch, who is now my executive producer on Another World. Nowadays we rehearse and rehearse. And worry about making it perfect. Back then we worried about making it through.'” – August 1981 Afternoon TV p. 8

“Bob Gentry – From Teenage Hood to Heartwinning Hero!” Afternoon TV, August 1981. pp. 20-23.

Bob Gentry leads a double life. When he’s not wearing his actor’s hat as Philip Lyons on Another World, he’s wearing his writer’s dress while working on screenplays. One of his screenplays, called Lotto, has been optioned and will be produced sometime this year.

Bob started writing about four or five years ago. Like a sponge, he absorbs interesting events and places in his life, then translates them into inspirational fiction for his work.

“I was in automat watching some poor people having a meal and they were all huddled together, confiding to each other while they were eating,” he recalls. “That’s the sort of thing I pick up on and then incorporate into my fiction.”

Can Bob himself identify with that kind of life? “I grew up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan,” he says. “It was definitely lower middle class. I like stories about people who rose out of humble or shabby beginnings to create a better life for themselves. People who have climbed out of the garbage pails they lived in to become Horatio Algers.

“I was the middle of nine children – it was a large Catholic family. My parents – actually it’s my mother and stepfather – were wonderful people. They always encouraged me and everyone else in the family. No, there wasn’t any kind of vicious rivalry between the kids, just a nice kind of healthy competition. What do other members of my family do? Some are in the service, others drive trucks, one is a musician. That odd lot of jobs, I guess.”

“I do like people, who, when all the odds are against them socially, insist on doing something with their talent and rising up and doing something about it.”

Bob remembers that he was a “tough kid,” what people used to call the “toughs” or the “hoods.”

“I was in a group where we sang in the hall, stole bottles off the backs of trucks, we were a typical band of smart alecks who played stick ball. It was fun and it was something I’ve tried to include in my screenplays, that sense of life from the streets.

I went to college at New York University. That was an incredible experience, too. Then I decided to become an actor and I led the typical starving existence. I lived in a cold water flat back then on the East Side of Manhattan, at 67th and 3rd. There were a whole band of actors there, the East 50s and 60s, who were eking out an existence. Now it’s all luxury apartments – I wonder where the starving actors live now, with all these high rents? But back then that was an enclave for actors like me, with lots of dreams.”

It was only recently that Bob entered the world of daytime serials. He played on A World Apart [Ed. Note: a daytime soap that ran from March 1970 to June 1971 on ABC], in the early 70s before that show went off the air, and then he did a stint on The Guiding Light. He recalls that Irene Dailey was one of his first teachers, she now appears on Another World along with Bob.

“I love acting,” he enthuses. “And I love the discipline and the demands that soap opera extracts from an actor. Of course, too, the soap opera allows me to write. It gives me a structure that is good for me as far as my writing goes.”

“I’m fascinated by all the underground, unconventional kinds of life and people. For example, I love the subways – that is a kind of culture in itself. And I’m intrigued by bag ladies – funny people like that. I’ll see something interesting out of the corner of my eye, and that will start me thinking about a new character.”

Recently, Bob suffered one of the archetypal New York experiences. He was mugged at gunpoint. He remembers thinking, “I was shocked thinking that it all could be over in a second. “The gun was in my mouth and I thought, ‘This is it.’ Of course, I got over it, but that kind of experience does affect you. When John Lennon was killed, it made me think of the mugging. So much could be done about gun control, and it really isn’t.”

Personally, it’s a whole new life for Bob, too. He’s recently separated after seven years of marriage. His former wife lives in California, in the place where Bob and she lived for the past few years. Now he’s back in a cozy, book-lined apartment in a Tudor-styled building on Manhattan’s East Side. He’s seeing a woman who also writes, and Bob says proudly that he encourages her to pursue her writing.

“I liked my life very much right now,” he says. “Things are really coming together. I’m very content. For the first time in m life, I’m making a substantial amount of money that lets me have the freedom to write and do all kinds of things. I feel that my work is expanding and improving all the time – both creatively and physically. I believe that my writing has gotten better, as has my acting.”

You might get the impression that Bob is an extremely active person and he’d be the first to agree. He says that it’s difficult for him to sit still and relax and do nothing. He has a kind of kinetic energy that makes him eager to be up and about.

“I went to Mexico recently,” he says, “and I was with a bunch of friends. In time, it soon became a joke, because they were all ready to sit down and rest, and I was still moving. I always want to be doing things, to be experiencing things and achieving things. I’d like to do as much as I can before I do. And I’m always trying to make that happen. It’s the way I am.”