Guy Bates Post was born in Seattle, Washington, the first of two sons and a daughter (actress Madeline Post) raised by John Jay Post and Mary Annette Ostrander. His father, a Canadian of English descent, was a partner in the Seattle lumber firm, Stetson and Post. His mother was born in Wisconsin into a family that had originally come west from New New York
He was perhaps best remembered in the role of Omar Khayyám in stage and film productions of Richard Walton Tully’s, Omar the Tentmaker and for his over fifteen hundred performances in John Hunter Booth"s, The Masquerader. Post received his education at schools in Seattle and later San Francisco before dropping out of college to embark on a career in theatre. Post made his professional debut in November 1894 at Chicago’s Schiller Theatre playing a minor role opposite Cora Urquhart Brown-Potter and Kyrle Bellew in Charlotte Corday.
His big break came early in 1900 when he was chosen to play David Brandon in Liebler and Company’s Southern American tour of Israel Zangwill’s, The Children of the Ghetto.
Though the tour proved short lived, Post’s performance in The Children of the Ghetto led to such rôles as Rawdon Crowley, in Langdon Miller’s dramatization of the William Makepeace Thackeray novel Vanity Fair, Lieutenant Denton, in Augustus Thomas’ Arizona, Robert Racket in the Madeleine Lucette Ryley play, My Lady Dainty, and Abbe Tiberge, in Theodore Burt Sayre’s dramatization of the Abbé Prévost short novel, Manon Lescaut. and John Loder, in The Masquerader (1914) by John Hunter Booth.
Post remained active on Broadway until the mid-1930s achieving particular success as Captain Stuart in Soldiers of Fortune (1902) by Augustus Thomas, Steve in The Virginian (1904) by Owen Wister and Kirke Louisiana Shelle, Dean in Bird of Paradise (1910) by Richard Walton Tully, Omar Khayyám in Omar the Tent Maker (1914) by Richard Walton Tully and the dual rôles, John Chilcote, Member of Parliament
