Reginald Tate
|
|
Quatexp02.JPG
He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire and attended various private schools, including St Martin's School in York, before following in his father's footsteps by working for the North Eastern Railways company. He later left the railways to join the army and served in the First World War.
After leaving the army at the end of the war, he turned to acting as a profession, appearing mostly in the theatre until the early 1930s when he began to win parts in feature films. Probably the best-remembered films in which he appeared were both made during the Second World War as patriotic morale-boosters: The Way Ahead (1944 - called The Immortal Batallion in the USA) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).
Tate was a regular actor on BBC Television almost from its very beginning, appearing in several 1930s productions, perhaps most notably starring as Stanhope in a 1937 version of the play Journey's End. He continued appearing on television following the service's resumption in 1946 after its wartime hiatus, and this led to his appearance in the role for which is he most remembered today, that of the original Professor Bernard Quatermass in The Quatermass Experiment (1953). This intelligent, original science-fiction serial was a big success and Quatermass quickly became a household name in the UK.
He was due to reprise this role for the sequel serial, Quatermass II, in 1955, but sadly became ill and died (in Putney, London) only a short while before production was due to begin. Shortly before his death he had also begun working behind the camera, taking the BBC's television production course and producing one play, Night Was Our Friend, broadcast only sixteen days before his death.