Rex Reason(1928-2015)

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 enlisted in the army at 17. After his discharge, he enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse and then became involved in little theater. Reason was top-billed in his very first movie, Storm Over Tibet (1952), then played smaller parts in pictures at Columbia and MGM. A contract player at Universal-International, he allowed the studio to bill him as "Bart Roberts" in two features before he balked and insisted on going back to his own name. When his TV series The Roaring 20's (1960) wrapped up, Reason--who once told an interviewer, "If I couldn't act, I wouldn't know what to do with my life"--turned his back on Hollywood. In recent years he has begun appearing at autograph shows.