The future movie bad man was born in Drummoyne, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, and got his career start as an interviewer on the government's radio station. Pate also worked on the Australian stage and in Down Under movies before relocating to th e U.S. in the early 1950s to appear in Universal's "Thunder on the Hill, " the film version of a ...
[reflecting on his career in a 1992 magazine interview] I didn't set any specific goals when I first got into acting. I thought, how nice would it be if I could simply continue to act, whether in the theater, films or whatever. I had to make a career for myself, and I was very fortunate to have had enough talent to do so -- to become a professional actor. I wasn't dead set on being a "big star;" I saw too many unhappy people being "big stars." I just wanted to be well thought of in the same profession. I wanted to be successful in the sense that I was in demand. But otherwise I was very happy just being in the profession. Enjoy is the key word. If you don't, you shouldn't get into the business in the first place. So my advice to any aspiring actor is enjoy, and try to keep working!
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[on portraying villains] Everyone enjoys playing that kind of role; it's always fun to do a really good villain, a chance to show another side of your "actor's personality." And it's challenging to think up ways of being loved at the same time!
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[on his villain roles] I remember one critic, who used to write for a magazine in New York, who said I played the most likable villains that he'd ever seen in the movies. Well, what may have accounted for it was the fact that I always played my villains as if I was the hero and all the others were the villains!
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Fact
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There is a third incidence where he plays an Indian who rescues the hero of a TV western, not from a painful punishment, but from death. It is the Gunsmoke episode, "The Violators" where he plays the Comanche Chief, Buffalo Calf, who saves Marshall Matthew Dillon (James Arness) from being shot with a rifle at close range by Caleb Nash (Denver Pile). (Season 10, Episode 4 (airdate Oct. 17, 1964)).
He was awarded the O.A.M. (Order of Australia Medal) in the 1997 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to the performing arts as an actor, producer, and writer for the Australian Film, Radio, and Television Industries.
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Was the first actor to play James Bond's CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter, in the television adaptation of Casino Royale. In this version, however, he is renamed Clarence Leither and, since Bond and Leiter's nationalities were reversed, he was an MI6 agent instead.
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Invited to join AMPAS in 1961.
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Interviewed in "It Came from Horrorwood: Interviews with Moviemakers in the SF and Horror Tradition" by Tom Weaver (McFarland, 1996).
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Fought in the Australian army during World War II.
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Though he often played Indians in movie and TV westerns, he was in fact a Caucasian born and raised in Australia.
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Twice played Indians who rescued heroes of TV westerns from painful punishments. In a 2-13-59 episode of Rawhide (1959), he intervened to keep Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood from being flogged while tied to tree trunks. In a 9-15-67 episode of Hondo (1967), he saved Ralph Taeger from having hot coals poured on his bare chest while lying staked out on the ground.
$100,000
