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B Entries Barbara Bain Gene Barry Wesley E. Barry Paul Birch Whit Bissell Bill Bixby Jerome Bixby Chesley Bonestell Peter Boyle Ray Bradbury Adrien Brody Mel Brooks Raymond Burr Tim Burton David Butler   BARRY, GENE (Eugene Klass 1919–2009). American actor. SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND HORROR FILM CREDITS Acted in: The War of the Worlds (Byron HASKIN 1953); "Spider, Incorporated," "The World Below" (1955), episodes of Science Fiction Theater; "Triggers in Leash," "Salvage" (1955), episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; The 27th Day (William Asher 1957); "Dear Uncle George" (1963), episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; Amos Burke, Secret Agent (tv series) (1965-1966); "Los Angeles 2019 AD," episode of The Name of the Game (Steven SPIELBERG 1970); The Devil and Miss Sarah (tv movie) (Michael Caffey 1971); The Second Coming of Suzanne (tv movie) (Michael Barry 1974); "Beauty Contest" (1978), "My Late Lover," "Lillian Russell" (1981), episodes of Fantasy Island; The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite (tv movie) (Hy Averback 1981); "Time and Teresa Golowitz" (1987), episode of Twilight Zone; "You've Got a Friend" (1988), episode of My Secret Identity; Turn Back the Clock (tv movie) (Larry Elikann 1989); Hollywood Aliens and Monsters (tv documentary) (Kevin Burns 1997); "Unfunny Girl" (2000), episode of Hollywood Off-Ramp; War of the Worlds (Spielberg 2005); The Sky Is Falling: The Making of The War of the Worlds (video documentary) (2005); Steven Spielberg and the Original War of the Worlds (video documentary) (Laurent Bouzereau 2005).   It was good to see Gene Barry again at the end of Steven SPIELBERG's War of the Worlds, even if he strangely seemed not particularly excited to learn that his presumed-dead granddaughter and ex-son-in-law had in fact survived a devastating alien invasion. But the problem with Barry's performances was always one's suspicion that he didn't really care that much about what was going on. Thus, he was ideally cast in the series Burke's Law (1963-1965, 1994) as an implausible millionaire policeman who at times would graciously abandon his languid playboy lifestyle to investigate some murder which he manifestly regarded more as an intellectual game than as a passionate crusade; when the series was briefly refashioned to make him Amos Burke: Secret Agent, shifting him into an arena that demanded more energy and commitment, he was noticeably less successful. Given his naturally inclination toward nonchalance, it was perhaps appropriate that he had previously been cast in two 1950s science fiction movies which required him not so much to defeat an alien invasion as to endure it; while he tried his best to seem duly concerned about the attacking Martians in The War of the Worlds, he was more bemused in response to the peculiarly convoluted scheme of honor-bound alien invaders to get humanity to commit suicide in the unique The 27th Day, a story line that not even the desperate sincerity of a William SHATNER could have made credible. As film work became more difficult to garner, Barry shifted his attention to television, where he first distinguished himself as the elegant—and very detached—Bat Masterson (1958-1961), Barry went on two other series, the aforementioned Burke's Law and The Name of the Game (1968-1971), wherein his publisher Glenn Howard was conspicuously less passionate than Robert Stack's editor Dan Farrell and Anthony Franciosa's reporter Jeff Dillon. His disengaged presence did little to contribute to the impact of the latter series' sole venture into science fiction, "Los Angeles 2019 AD," although he deserves some credit for allowing such a format-defying episode to be filmed when he presumably could have deep-sixed the project by throwing a star tantrum or rejecting neophyte director Spielberg Hollywood is rarely kind to television stars after they pass the age of fifty, and Barry's last thirty years in Hollywood generally proved a typically dispiriting array of television shows and movies (including the inevitable humiliation of 1970s has-beens, no fewer than three trips to Fantasy Island), though he did surprisingly well as the Devil in "Time and Teresa Golowitz," a 1987 episode of Twilight Zone. When he died after reaching his ninetieth birthday, obituary writers dutifully noted milestones like The War of the Worlds and Burke's Law, but like Gene Barry himself, they struggled to project that they really cared about his career.

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