Gene Reynolds, an Emmy-winning producer and director who was a force behind two of the most acclaimed television series of the 1970s and early ’80s, “M*A*S*H” and “Lou Grant,” died on Monday in Burbank, Calif. He was 96.

He wife, Ann Sweeny Reynolds, said the cause was heart failure.

Mr. Reynolds started his prolific career on the performing side of the camera, appearing in some 80 films and television shows, beginning when he was a child. He developed an unusual sort of specialty: playing the younger versions of characters played by top film stars of the 1930s.

He was the adolescent version of Don Ameche’s character in “Sins of Man” (1936), and of Ricardo Cortez’s character in “The Californian” (1937), and of Tyrone Powers’s character in “In Old Chicago” (1938), among others. A breakthrough was when he played the young version of James Stewart’s character in “Of Human Hearts” (1938), an MGM movie that earned him a contract with that studio.

Mr. Reynolds racked up dozens more TV and film acting credits, including more than 40 in the 1950s, but by the end of that decade he had shifted his focus to directing and, soon after that, to producing.