Gene Barry Movies
The son of a New York jeweler, American actor Gene Barry emerged from his pinchpenny Depression-era childhood with an instatiable desire for the finer things in life. The acting profession seemed to hold out promise for fame and (especially) fortune. Making the rounds of theatrical agents in the 1940s, Barry, no matter his true financial situation, showed up dressed to the nines; grim reality soon set in, however, and the actor found himself clearing little more than $2000 a year -- on good years. When stage work seemed to yield nothing but bits, Barry turned to early television, then signed a movie contract in 1951. The only truly worthwhile film to star Barry was 1953's War of the Worlds, but even with top billing he had to play second banana to George Pal's marvelous special effects. Finally in 1956, Herb Gordon of Ziv Productions asked Barry if he'd like to star in a western. The actor resisted -- after all, everyone was doing westerns -- until Gordon pointed out that role would include a derby hat, a cane, and an erudite Eastern personality. Barry was enchanted by this, and from 1957 through 1961 he starred on the popular series Bat Masterson. The strain of filming a weekly western compelled Barry to declare that he'd never star on a series again - until he was offered the plum role of millionaire police detective Amos Burke on Burke's Law. This series ran from 1963 through 1965, and might have gone on longer had the producers not tried and failed to turn it into a Man From UNCLE type spy show. Barry's next series, Name of the Game, was another success (it ran from 1969 through 1971), and wasn't quite as grueling in that the actor only had to appear in one out of every three episodes. Always the epitome of diamond-in-the-rough masculinity, Barry astounded his fans in the mid 1980s by accepting the role of an aging homosexual in the stage musical version of the French film comedy La Cage Aux Follies. Yet another successful run followed, after which Barry went into semi-retirement, working only when he felt like it. In 1993, Gene Barry was back for an unfortunately brief revival of Burke's Law, which was adjusted for the actor's age by having him avoid the action and concentrate on the detecting; even so, viewers had a great deal of difficulty believing that Burke (or Barry) was as old as he claimed to be. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds had been on Paramount Pictures' docket since the silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal. Like Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio adaptation, the film eschews Wells' original Victorian England setting for a contemporary American locale, in this case Southern California. A meteorlike object crash-lands near the small town of Linda Rosa. Among the crowd of curious onlookers is Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry, who strikes up a friendship with Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis Martin. Because the meteor is too hot to approach at present, Barry decides to wait a few days to investigate, leaving three townsmen to guard the strange, glowing object. Left alone, the three men decide to approach the meterorite, and are evaporated for their trouble. It turns out that this is no meteorite, but an invading spaceship from the planet Mars. The hideous-looking Martians utilize huge, mushroomlike flying ships, equipped with heat rays, to pursue the helpless earthlings. When the military is called in, the Martians demonstrated their ruthlessness by "zapping" Ann's minister uncle, who'd hoped to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the standoff. As Barry and Ann seek shelter, the Martians go on a destructive rampage. Nothing-not even an atom-bomb blast-can halt the Martian death machines. The film's climax occurs in a besieged Los Angeles, where Barry fights through a crowd of refugees and looters so that he may be reunited with Ann in Earth's last moments of existence. In the end, the Martians are defeated not by science or the military, but by bacteria germs-or, to quote H.G. Wells, "the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon the earth." Forty years' worth of progressively improving special effects have not dimmed the brilliance of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Even on television, Pal's Oscar-winning camera trickery is awesome to behold. So indelible an impression has this film made on modern-day sci-fi mavens that, when a 1988 TV version of War of the Worlds was put together, it was conceived as a direct sequel to the 1953 film, rather than a derivation of the Wells novel or the Welles radio production. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, (more)
- 1953
Paramount's Pine-Thomas production unit takes the plunge into the 3-D craze in Those Redheads from Seattle. The titular carrot-tops are played by Rhonda Fleming, Teresa Brewer and Cynthia and Kay Bell, as members of a singing-sister act. Arriving in the Yukon during the Gold Rush days in the company of their mother (Agnes Moorehead), the four heroines get work at the saloon owned by Johnny Kisco (Gene Barry). What plot there is concerns Kathy Edmond's (Fleming) search for her father's murderer, who may or may not be Kisco. Despite all the heady competition, the film is stolen by the diminutive Teresa Brewer, who sings practically everything except "Music Music Music." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rhonda Fleming, Gene Barry, (more)
- 1953
Because of its misleadingly sensual title and the participation of screenwriter/director F. Hugh Herbert (author of the once-notorious "The Moon is Blue"), Girls of Pleasure Island was ballyhooed in 1953 as the ultimate in sex and sin. In truth, the film is an innocent, inconsequential WW II comedy, designed to showcase Paramount's crop of "new faces." Leo Genn plays Roger Halyard, a stiff-upper-lip British gentleman who lives on a South Pacific Island with his three nubile, naïve daughters, Violet (Joan Elan), Hester (Audrey Dalton) and Gloria (Dorothy Bromiley). Hoping to shelter the girls from the lascivious advances of the opposite sex, Halyard is thwarted when 1500 Marines arrive to transform the island into an aircraft landing base. Despite the best efforts of Halyard, his housekeeper Thelma (Elsa Lanchester),and marine colonel Reade (Phil Ober), romance blossoms between the three girls and a trio of handsome leathernecks (one of whom is a young Gene Barry). Top billing in Girls of Pleasure of Island is bestowed upon Don Taylor as Lieutenant Gilmartin, whose warm relationship with Hester Halyard (Dalton) carries most of the plotline. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Taylor, Leo Genn, (more)
- 1952
The city of the title is Los Alamos, where nuclear physicist Gene Barry lives and works. Terrorists kidnap Barry's son and demand that the physicist turn over the H-bomb formula. It's cat-and-mouse for a while, but when the FBI gets on the case, the criminals haven't got a chance. Outdated almost before its release, The Atomic City is still effective on a purely melodramatic level. There's a particularly tense climax played out along the mountain mesas surrounding Los Alamos. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Barry, Lydia Clarke, (more)
