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Acknowledgements
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(1928– ). American actor.
Archival footage from This Island Earth: The
Incredible Shrinking Woman (Joel SCHUMACHER 1981); E.T.: The
Extra-Terrestrial (Steven SPIELBERG
1982); Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie (Jim Mallon 1996).
By his own report, Rex Reason harbored no ambitions to
become an actor while growing up, but a good-looking guy living in Los Angeles will inevitably be advised to seek a career in show business, and after
returning home from World War II, that's exactly what he did. As was so often
the case, his roles onstage at the Pasadena Playhouse led to a contract to
appear in films—he looked like a star, his deep booming voice made him sound
like a star, and the fact that he couldn't act like a star, at the time, did
not seem a major liability. He resisted his studio's attempt to re-brand him as
Bart Roberts, and reverted to his real name just in time for the role that
forever defined his career—Dr. Cal Meacham in This Island Earth.
His contributions to making that film an unacknowledged
classic were unique and subtle: stunningly unpersuasive as the world's leading
nuclear physicist, utterly wooden in his speech and movements, Rex Reason was
perfectly suited to deliver the film's true message—that the film's
ostensible hero Meacham, purportedly representing the best and brightest of the
human race, was in fact completely helpless and ineffectual in having any
impact at all on the drama unfolding around him, indicating that humanity as a
whole was in fact helpless and ineffectual when considered against the backdrop
of a vast and mysterious universe. This is the reason for the title of Raymond
F. Jones's novel—wherein he likens humans to residents of a tiny Pacific
island during World War II, oblivious and unimportant to the larger conflict
going on around them—and an idea brilliantly amplified by its film
adaptation, with Rex Reason's unknowing assistance.
In the years that followed, Reason mostly appeared in
film and television westerns, although he did appear in a second science
fiction film, The Creature Walks Among Us, playing the nicest of the
scientists who implausibly transform the lithe, athletic Creature into a stiff,
uncomfortable-looking land animal—one might say that Reason and his cohort in
bad acting, Jeff MORROW, were remaking the Creature in their own image. But
films which are improved by incompetent performances are few and far between,
and after starring in the television series The Roaring 20's (1960-1962),
he wisely decided to follow the other piece of advice that people living in
Los Angeles invariably hear: "get into real estate!" By all accounts, he went on to enjoy
a long and successful career in that field, and although he occasionally
appears at autograph shows, he has expressed no desire to get back into show
business. Paradoxically, however, he has remained an enduring presence in
science fiction film because of his role in This Island Earth—with archival footage
glimpsed in The Incredible Shrinking Woman and E.T.: The
Extra-Terrestrial and viciously sneered at in Mystery Science Theatre
3000: The Movie. When much better actors are long forgotten, it seems, Rex
Reason will still be cherished for his one, memorably bad performance.
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