TV star Gene Barry dies at 90

Published 10:21 pm Thursday, December 10, 2009

Gene Barry, a debonair leading man who was best known as the sharply dressed lawmen of the television series “Bat Masterson” and “Burke’s Law,” and then earned a Tony Award nomination as a gay nightclub owner raising a son in “La Cage aux Folles,” died Dec. 9 in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 90.

After an early stage career that included acting opposite Mae West in a Broadway comedy, Barry went to Hollywood and starred in a series of films that included the 1953 alien-invasion movie “The War of the Worlds.” But it was on television that he thrived over the next 20 years, usually specializing in affable and urbane characters.

He had a recurring role as a physical education teacher who romances Eve Arden on CBS’s “Our Miss Brooks” before earning top billing on “Bat Masterson” for NBC in 1958.

Born Eugene Klass on June 14, 1919, in New York, Barry changed his surname as a nod to eminent stage actor John Barrymore.