Hollywood, 1950s–1960s
Later in 1950 he travelled to the United States to appear in a film adaptation of Bonaventure for Universal Pictures, which was released in 1951 as Thunder on the Hill, starring Claudette Colbert and Ann Blyth. Pate spent most of the remainder of the 1950s in the United States, appearing in over 300 television shows and films. Most notable among those was a 1954 Climax! live production of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, in which Pate played the role of "Clarence Leiter", opposite Barry Nelson's "Jimmy Bond". On the big screen, he played the one-scene role of Flavius in Julius Caesar, the 1953 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play. In the same year he played for the first time the Apache chief Victorio, a role he would reprise several times in his career, in Australian director John Farrow's western Hondo playing opposite John Wayne. Pate later said that this was his favourite film role. He also went on to perform many Native American roles in movies and on television. In 1956 he appeared in the film The Court Jester, and three years later he played the lead role of a gunfighting vampire in the horror film Curse of the Undead. He played parts as well in episodes 27 and 28 of the 1957 television series Zorro along with Guy Williams. Pate in 1963 played the role of Puma, the Comanche chief in Andrew V. McLaglen's western McLintock!, again playing opposite John Wayne.
During his time in the United States, Pate became an acting instructor and lecturer, and wrote many screenplays and plays for American films and television series, including Rawhide ("Incident of the Power and the Plow" with Dick Van Patten) and Most Dangerous Man Alive ("The Steel Monster"). In 1959, he returned briefly to Australia, where he starred in a television presentation of Tragedy in a Temporary Town, shown as part of the Shell Presents anthology drama series. After that project he returned to the United States for another eight years, during which time he enjoyed a successful career as a television character actor, appearing repeatedly on programs such as Gunsmoke, Sugarfoot, The Texan, The Rifleman, Maverick (S4 Ep23),Branded ("Call to Glory"), Daniel Boone, The Virginian, Perry Mason ("The Case of the Skeleton's Closet" and "The Case of the Wednesday Woman"), Batman (episodes 45 "The Clock King's Crazy Crimes" and 46 "The Clock King Gets Crowned"), Mission: Impossible ("Trek"), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ("The Foreign Legion Affair"), Get Smart, Rawhide ("Incident of the Power and the Plow", "Incident at Superstition Prairie", "Incident of the Boomerang", and others), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ("The Traitor"), and Wagon Train. In the 1963 movie PT 109, he played the part of Arthur Reginald Evans, the Australian coast watcher who helped rescue John F. Kennedy and his crew. That role was of the few occasions when Pate played an Australian while working in the United States, others including Four Star Playhouse ("The Firing Squad"), 77 Sunset Strip ("The Down-Under Caper"), and Rawhide ("Incident of the Boomerang", for which he also wrote the story-line).
