http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/arts/ ... .html?_r=1

Gene Barry, Actor of TV, Film and Stage, Dies at 90
By MICHAEL POLLAK
Published: December 11, 2009
Gene Barry, who portrayed debonair lawmen on television but whose career of more than 60 years ranged from song and dance on Broadway to science fiction, died Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 90 and lived in Beverly Hills until about a year ago.

Mr. Barry mixed musical comedy and show-business memories in a show at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in 1999.
His death, at an assisted-living facility, was confirmed by his daughter, Elizabeth.

As the dapper star of “Bat Masterson” from 1958 to 1961, Mr. Barry sported a derby hat, gilt-tipped cane and spangled vest in the days, as the theme song said, “when the West was very young.” (The real Bat, whose full name was William Barclay Masterson, was a gambler, gunslinger and marshal who spent his later years as a New York newspaperman and died in 1921.)

In “Burke’s Law” (1963-66), Mr. Barry played the equally insouciant Los Angeles police captain, Amos Burke, an independently wealthy crime fighter with a mansion, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and a stream of beautiful women. In its third and final season, Burke changed professions and the show was renamed “Amos Burke, Secret Agent.” A generation later, in the 1994-95 season, Mr. Barry reprised the role, this time as chief of detectives.

Mr. Barry starred as a magazine tycoon in “The Name of the Game” (1968-71), in which he rotated starring roles with Anthony Franciosa and Robert Stack. He also starred as a wealthy movie celebrity and secret government agent in “The Adventurer” in 1972-73.

He won a Tony nomination in 1984 for his performance as Georges, the less flamboyant half of a gay couple, in “La Cage Aux Folles,” the first Broadway musical in which the principal lovers were gay men. Mr. Barry “proves a most sensitive foil — far more sensitive than you’d ever guess from his starring roles on such television series as ‘Bat Masterson’ and ‘The Name of the Game,’ ” Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, adding that Mr. Barry sang his love songs “with tender directness.”

Mr. Barry said at the time, “I’m not playing a homosexual — I’m playing a person who cares deeply about another person.”

In 1999, the 78-year-old Mr. Barry combined musical comedy with show business reminiscences in the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, in a show that included among other things a Maurice Chevalier impersonation. He had made his nightclub debut in the Latin Quarter in 1962.

Gene Barry was born Eugene Klass on June 14, 1919, in New York to Martin Klass, a jeweler, and Eva Klass. He was attending New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn when he won a singing contest and a scholarship to the Chatham Square School of Music. While studying there, he began singing on the New York radio station WHN.

He soon went from the Catskills to Manhattan bistros to Broadway productions, making his debut in the labor musical “Pins and Needles.” He also performed in a series of operettas at Carnegie Hall and in Broadway productions of “Rosalinda,” “The Merry Widow” and “The Would-Be Gentleman.”

The impresario Mike Todd hired him to play opposite Mae West in “Catherine Was Great” (1944). Mr. Barry met his wife, Betty, who acted under the name Julie Carson, during rehearsals.

He left “Catherine” for the musical “Glad to See You” and then moved on to straight acting roles, winning a Critic’s Circle Award for his leading role in an Equity Library production of “Idiot’s Delight.”

Mr. Barry signed a Hollywood contract in 1951. Two years later he starred in perhaps his most famous movie role, the scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, in the George Pal production of “War of the Worlds,” based on the H. G. Wells novel. He also had a role in 2005 as Tom Cruise’s ex-father-in-law in the Steven Spielberg remake. His more than 20 movies also included “Soldier of Fortune” (1955), with Clark Gable and Susan Hayward, and “Thunder Road” (1958), with Robert Mitchum.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Mr. Barry appeared in scores of television specials and series, including “Playhouse 90,” “General Electric Theater,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

His wife of 58 years died in 2003. Besides his daughter, Elizabeth, of Los Angeles, he is survived by two sons, Michael L. and Frederick J., both of Topanga, Calif., three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In an interview with Nan Jarrett for an Internet fan site in 2000, Mr. Barry recalled that he was appearing in the final season of the television comedy “Our Miss Brooks” when a producer asked him to play Bat Masterson.

“The idea of playing a saddle-type cowboy was repulsive to me,” he said. “Then he told me about the derby hat and cane, and I went by the costume department and saw the outfit that Masterson would wear, and I couldn’t resist.”

He was handsome as hell and really exudes classiness and dignity on the screen. One of my favourites.

Ninety years old! Wow!


Jim

Barry is one of those guys like Victor Mature where you think, how come men don't look like that any more? Have you ever met anyone in your life who looked so square-jawed manly like that?

Mike Gebert wrote:Barry is one of those guys like Victor Mature where you think, how come men don't look like that any more? Have you ever met anyone in your life who looked so square-jawed manly like that?

Rod Taylor - especially in The Birds makes me think that too - moreso than Mature and Barry.

Good point, Mike.

And yet, women these days still look like Marlene Dietrich, Clara Bow, Lilian Gish, Louise Brooks... (and note please that I said "women", not "drag artistes"!)

I've been watching Leave It To Beaver DVDs (wasn't captioned when I was a kid) and keep thinking to myself, "You never see anyone looking like Eddie Haskell these days, at least not since Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey ... or Tony Dow, at least not since Friends went off the air ... or Beaver's fat apple-eating pal, at least not since Chris Farley died ..." And then I remember how long ago it was that Bill and Ted movies stopped being made, and Friends went off the air, and Chris Farley died. A whole decade ago!

Jim

Jim, the next time you spot someone in the street that looks like Louise Brooks or Clara Bow, get their email address for me.....Cheers!!

George Clooney


Bob

boblipton wrote:George Clooney


Bob

What about him?

Jim

And apropos my earlier comment about the Leave It to Beaver actors ... who nowadays gives their sons names like Ward, Wallace, and Theodore?

If they were making it today, the boys would be Jason and Zack, and the Dad would be Bob (as in Newhart).

Jim

I've got a 1-year-old nephew named Max.

Bob

Yeah, old Jewish guy names have been in for a while. My son was in a preschool thing with no fewer than three Sams (one a girl) and two Noahs.

My oldest son is named Emerson. That made him pretty unique, and timeless too.

My oldest daughter is named Genevieve, which would be highly unusual in Toronto where I grew up, but not in Ottawa where we live now. There are three Genevieve's in her smallish ballet school, despite the enrollment consisting half of Chinese immigrants with names that begin with either X or Z!

Max is a fairly timeless name. Nothing wrong with it.

I sure am sick of Jasons, though. I know at least five of them at work.


Jim

May you rest in peace.