Gene Barry - Career

Career

Barry chose his professional name in honor of John Barrymore and made his Broadway debut as Captain Paul Duval in the 1942 revival of Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon. He later portrayed Falke in Rosalinda (1942), Nova Kovich in The Merry Widow (1943), Lieutenant Bunin in Catherine Was Great (1944), Dorante and Comte De Chateau-Gaillard in The Would-Be Gentleman (1946), The Doctor in Happy as Larry (1950), and played a variety of roles in the musical revue Bless You All (1950).

In 1950, Barry began appearing on TV with the NBC Television Opera Theatre. In 1955, he appeared on the CBS Television anthology series Appointment with Adventure.

In 1951, Barry was hired for his first movie, in the role of "Dr. Frank Addison" in The Atomic City (1952), and then in 1952, Barry was cast as "Dr. Clayton Forrester" in the science fiction film The War of the Worlds (1953). Much later, Barry also made a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds (2005), along with his co-star Ann Robinson from the film of 1952.

When the situation comedy Our Miss Brooks was given a change in format in 1955, Barry was cast in a recurring role as the physical-education teacher "Gene Talbot", the new romantic interest of series star Eve Arden. While the show was cancelled in 1956, Barry's character—a ladies' man with expensive tastes—served as the model for three shows in which he starred.

Bat Masterson, a fictionalized recounting of the life of the real-life U.S. Marshal / gambler, and gunman was telecast by NBC-TV from 1958 to 1961. In 1990, Barry recreated the role of Bat Masterson for two episodes of Guns of Paradise alongside Hugh O'Brian as Wyatt Earp and the following year in The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, also with O'Brian as Earp.

In his next TV series, Burke's Law, Barry played a millionaire homicide captain who was chauffeured in his limousine as he solved crimes; in the final season, he became a secret agent. This series was telecast on ABC-TV from 1963 to 1965. For his performance in it, Barry won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 1965. (This series returned to TV in 1993-94 with Barry once again in the title role.)

Barry's third TV series was called The Name of the Game, in which he played the sophisticated publisher of a family of magazines, and he was one of three lead characters on the series. The other two lead actors were Robert Stack and Tony Franciosa who rotated with Barry week by week as the primary character in each week's program. This series was shown by NBC from 1968 to 1971. One of the magazines that Barry's character published was called People magazine, several years before the actual People magazine was first published.

Shortly before the filming of The Name of the Game series began, Barry played the villain—a wealthy psychiatrist— in Prescription: Murder, the two-hour pilot episode of the TV series Columbo.)

In 1972, Barry starred in the ITV television series The Adventurer, along with Barry Morse and Catherine Schell. He played Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means, who poses as a glamorous American movie star.

Barry returned to Broadway on two occasions - in 1962 in The Perfect Setup, and in 1983 in the Broadway premiere of the musical La Cage aux Folles. For his portrayal of Georges, Barry was nominated for a Tony Award.

For his contribution to live theatre, Gene Barry received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame which is located at 6555 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1994, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.