Jun 14, 1919

New York City, New York, USA

Gene Barry was born Eugene Klass. Musical at
an early age, he was considered a violin virtuoso during adolescence (a gift
inherited from his father) and possessed a natural, attractive baritone voice.

After breaking his arm playing football, he concentrated on singing, finding work in
nightclubs, choirs, fairs, and even with dance bands while still in high school.
Following graduation, he appeared on the vaudeville stage and on radio, eventually
getting a break on Broadway in the Mae Wes... ... (read more...) t vehicle "Catherine Was Great" in 1944,
where he met and later married his wife Betty. For the rest of the decade, he
appeared in a random selection of plays and musicals, which did little to further
his career. Hollywood finally beckoned in the 1950s, and he co-starred in such
dramatic B films as Atomic City (1952), Those Redheads from Seattle (1953), and
Alaska Seas (1954), none of which capitalized on his singing skills. The one movie
in which he did sing, Red Garters (1954), did not fare well with the public. His
most outstanding role was as Dr. Clayton Forrester, a scientist who finds himself in
the midst of a Martian invasion in the cult sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds
(1953).
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Television became his preferred medium after being offered the title role in "Bat
Masterson" (1958), and he established a comfortable and very profitable niche as a
suave, dapper gentleman from the West in this and many other TV productions. Despite
the elegant, globe-trotting typecast that seemed inevitable, his other TV gents
proved just as successful: jet-setting detective Amos Burke in "Burke's Law" (1963),
for which he won a Golden Globe award, and well-groomed publishing tycoon Glenn
Howard in "The Name of the Game" (1968).
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He returned to the stage in the 1970s (often with his wife as co-star), and
triumphantly re-established his singing career in the 1980s in the Broadway musical
based on the film Cage aux folles, La (1978) in 1983, which earned him a Tony
nomination. Since then he has made only occasional TV and stage appearances
(bringing back his famous characters Bat Masterson and Amos Burke, much to the
enjoyment of his fans), preferring instead to indulge his hobby of painting and also
occasional political activism. Wife Betty died in 2003 after a nearly 60-year
marriage.