Rex Reason, American actor, Died at 86

  Actor

Rex Reason was born on November 30, 1928, and died on November 19, 2015, he was an American actor.

Rex was the brother of the late actor, Rhodes Reason, who was two years younger.

The two bore a strong resemblance and many may have mistakenly assumed they were twins.

Rex was reared in Los Angeles and attended Hoover High School in Glendale, California.

He enlisted in the United States Army at the age of seventeen.

Rex began his stage career in 1948 at the Pasadena Playhouse, performing there for three years before coming to the notice of Hollywood.

In 1951, Rex was given a screen test at Columbia Pictures and was cast as the lead in a starring role in his first picture, a low-budget adventure drama Storm Over Tibet (1952).

Rex was under contract for two more years at Columbia until moving to Universal in mid-1953, after making a promising appearance in the sword-and-sandal epic Salome (1953) with Rita Hayworth.

A tall (6’2″), handsome, leading man with a distinctive baritone speaking voice, Rex appeared in several films and television shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Rex made two pictures at Universal Studios under the name “Bart Roberts” before demanding to be able to use his own name, which actually sounds like a Hollywood screen name.

Rex is perhaps best known for his role as stalwart, heroic scientist Dr. Cal Meacham in the science fiction This Island Earth (1955).

He co-starred as sympathetic scientist Dr. Tom Morgan in the third-and final-instalment of Universal International Pictures’ Creature from the Black Lagoon horror film series in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).

Rex also appeared opposite Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier in Band of Angels (WB, 1957).

He appeared in Badlands of Montana (1957) as an opponent of a corrupt Mayor played by John M. Pickard.

In the story line, Pickard administers ten lashes with a whip to Reason’s back.

Rex Reason passed at age 86 in November 2015.