Rex Lease


Rex Lloyd Lease was an American actor. He appeared in over 300 films, mainly in Poverty Row westerns.

Biography

Lease arrived in Hollywood in 1924. He found bit and supporting parts at Film Booking Office, Rayart, more, and was given the opportunity to play a few leads. His first film was A Woman Who Sinned.
Lease's earliest westerns were a pair of Tim McCoy silents at MGM, one of which was The Law of the Range which had a young Joan Crawford as the heroine and Lease as the Solitaire Kid. McCoy and Lease became friends, and over the next dozen or so years, he appeared in seven more McCoy westerns.
He had a featured role in director Frank Capra's The Younger Generation, a tale of a Jewish family that moves to a more up-scale neighborhood.
He successfully made the transition to talkies, and starred in melodramas, action flicks, old dark house mysteries, and comedies as well as a couple of western serials and about a dozen low-budget sagebrush yarns and outdoor adventures. His work in the 1930s included six Western films for Superior Talking Pictures Corporation. Some featured cowboy music, and some had him paired with young actor Bobby Nelson.
In between lead roles, Lease did featured parts in some B westerns. He was Hoot Gibson's brother in Cavalcade of the West ; Lease played the "Pecos Kid" in McCoy's Lightnin' Bill Carson ; played Col. William B. Travis in Heroes of the Alamo and he worked in a couple of Tom Tyler's, Ridin' On and Fast Bullets. Lease had the lead in the 1936 film serial Custer's Last Stand.
Lease's finale as a star had him teaming up with Rin-Tin-Tin Jr. in The Silver Trail.
Though no longer afforded star billing, he continued in smaller roles into the 1950s in films and on TV.

Death

On January 3, 1966, Rex Lease was found dead by his son Richard on the kitchen floor at his Van Nuys, California, home. He had died sometime between New Year's Eve and January 3. Richard was later shot and killed in a traffic altercation with two teenagers.
Lease was married at least five times.

Selected filmography