Rex Reason was born in Germany, while his family was in Europe on a business trip. Although he grew up in Los Angeles, his acting aspirations were nil; his mother, however, hoped that both Rex and his lookalike brother Rhodes Reason would get into the acting profession. He played the lead in "Seventh Heaven" at Glendale's Hoover High School, then ...
Deep, resonant voice and tall, dark and handsome presence
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Quote
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The mutant in This Island Earth (1955) I didn't much care for. I felt it looked too much like it had a human body. It should have been changed, because if you look at its head it was wonderful, and it had claws and such, but then it had human feet. It didn't jibe, but I thought it would be accepted, which it was...I thought the lagoon creature in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) was handled very well, particularly in the underwater sequences. I think the guys in those costumes did a great job. That is a heck of a thing to be inside of something like that and have to exert some kind of an expression on the outside.
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I was married. And I was strict with my marriage. There was no playing around. But there certainly was temptation; that was always there...There was a freedom there and opportunity for a lot of fiddling around, and that did go on. There were times I would go back to my wardrobe to change into my civilian clothes and I would find a note in one of my shoes from one of the gals. I would leave that dressing room and literally run to my car and home to my wife and children!
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One morning while we were in Moab shooting Taza, Son of Cochise (1954), Rock Hudson came in and he had a newspaper in hand. He says to me, "Hi Bart!" I said, "What?" Rock told me that I was now Bart Roberts. The studio had just changed my name. He handed me the paper which had a publicity story in it, using my new name. Later, I went to the studio's head of production...and told him that I had read about my name change but that I would prefer to keep my name as Rex Reason. Well, it stayed Bart Roberts for the Taza movie and for my next film Yankee Pasha (1954) but I got my name back when I made my third film there This Island Earth (1955).
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Back when we were in our 20s I would sometimes get fan mail saying that they saw me in such and such play some years back and that my name then was Rhodes Reason and why did I change it to Rex. Or people would think we were twins. -- RR, on his resemblance to younger brother Rhodes Reason
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My father's name was Rex Reason. I am a junior, and he and his new wife and family were over in Europe. They came across a theater marquee that listed my name, which of course was also his name. Not having kept in touch with what I had been doing, and to all of a sudden see "Rex Reason" on the marquee, well, it must have been an interesting moment.
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Fact
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Born in Berlin, Germany, while his family accompanied his father on a business trip. He and his mother and brother settled in Glendale, Calfironia at the home of his maternal grandparents after their divorce. Both of his parents had brushes with show business.
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The elder of two brothers. Younger brother Rhodes Reason also had a movie and TV career. Both also got their early starts on stage in different productions of "Seventh Heaven".
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Played Scott Norris, a reporter, in the two-season series The Roaring 20's (1960) but left after the first season when he decided to drop out of the acting business. With nothing to fall back on, he attended real estate school, got his license and became a successful agent. Met third wife Shirley Anne, a divorcée with three young daughters, a few months later at his office and married her after a three-year courtship.
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Studied for a year and a half at the Pasadena Playhouse and was discovered for films while performing in a Los Angeles stage production of "Monterrsat". MGM gave him the lead in Storm Over Tibet (1952), a movie that had been shelved for decades after the original lead died during filming. They kept the background footage that was done in Europe and decided to complete the film with Rex, who physically resembled the original actor. The film, completed in nine days, was released by Columbia, not MGM, but MGM signed Rex to a contract.
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He and his sci-fi co-star Jeff Morrow from This Island Earth (1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) reunited on a 1962 episode of Perry Mason (1957) entitled "The Case of the Ancient Romeo", playing Shakespearean actors on stage. Rex's character is defended by the famed attorney (Raymond Burr)) for Morrow's murder by a sword that was used between them in a "Romeo and Juliet" fencing scene.
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Was signed by MGM, Columbia and Universal Pictures . . . in that order. When his Universal contract was up in 1957, he freelanced.
Attended both Hoover High and Hollhywood High Schools in the Los Angeles area. He quit high school in his senior year and enlisted in the Army from 1946 to 1948.
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Had a pronounced fear of speaking in public and at school while young, so his mother had him work with a dramatic coach in order to get him more comfortable. It worked.
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Came down with a life-threatening case of encephalitis while starring in his western TV series Man Without a Gun (1957), but recovered. He illness eventually forced him to take ten months off of work. Fortunately his residuals from the TV series kept him financially secure while he was recuperating.
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Has two children from his first marriage -- Andrea and Brent.
$1.2 Million
