I’m a bit chagrined at being a week late with this item, but then I still haven’t written anything for Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, or Patrick Swayze, so what’s a mere seven days for an actor few of my readers will probably recognize? Even so, I’ve gotten very tired of feeling like I’m constantly trying to catch up on things. This blog isn’t really intended to deal in up-to-the-minute news, but I would like to get back to some sense of being current, for my own sanity if nothing else. Maybe in 2010.
In any event, I learned from Evanier last Friday that the actor Gene Barry had died a couple days earlier. My initial reaction was surprise; I hadn’t realized he was even still with us, it’d been so long since I’d seen him in anything. This was followed by a wave of profound sadness, as Barry’s was one of those familiar faces it seems I’ve known my entire life. I don’t recall my exact age the first time I saw the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds, in which Barry starred, but I know I was very, very young. It was on the old Big Money Movie show that used to run weekday afternoons on one of my local TV stations, and I think that show was finished by the mid-70s, so I’m going to guess I was around five or six, tops. The movie made a huge, indelible impression on me, and Gene Barry’s performance as Dr. Clayton Forrester was one of the many reasons why.
In a time when most movies depicted scientists as older men who are out of touch with the practical, everyday concerns of the “real” world — think of Morbius in Forbidden Planet or the misguided Dr. Carrington in The Thing from Another World — Forrester stood out for his youthful virility, his humanity, and his warm likability. Oh, sure, he was as brilliant as any of the others — he’s introduced as a world-renowned physicist who’s currently working on the “new atomic engines” — but he’s also a regular guy. A couple lines of dialog suggest he served in World War II, and when we first see him, he’s camping in the woods, unshaven, and clad in jeans (see the photo above). He doesn’t even have to wear his glasses all the time, like the classic egghead; as he explains in a smooth line to co-star Ann Robinson, they’re only for long-distance vision and he takes them off when he wants to see something up close. (He follows this by removing his specs and taking a good long look at her.)
In the early part of the movie, Forrester fulfills the scientist’s usual expository duties, explaining to everyone around him what’s going on. (Conveniently, he and his colleagues are fishing near the place where the first Martian landing craft comes down.) But once the shooting starts, he shows another side and becomes a heroic man of action who sees to the safety of Robinson’s Sylvia; he flies the two of them away from the combat zone in a small plane, comforts her for the loss of her beloved uncle, and brings down a Martian probe with nothing more than an ax, all the sorts of derring-do that, in a different film, would have been done by a soldier-of-fortune type, not a scientist. Barry sells the transition between these seemingly disparate character traits without any apparent effort. We simply accept that Forrester is multi-faceted and capable of all these things: the child-like enthusiasm for a new scientific mystery, the confident expertise, and the manly pragmatism and clarity to do what must be done. Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to claim Clayton Forrester as a forerunner of Indiana Jones. Indy is a bit more action-oriented, but not by much. Like Forrester, Indy is both an academic who gets “giddy as a schoolboy” over a new discovery, and a fighter who stays clear-headed when the bad guys appear invincible. And they both get the girl in the end while the whole world crumbles around them.
In case you haven’t guessed, I really admire Forrester. I find him an immensely appealing character, a good role-model for any kid who wonders if he or she has to sacrifice being smart in order to be athletic, or simply to be cool. Forrester is the sort of character I wanted to be like when I was a kid, an example of what it means to be “well-rounded,” both intellectual and effectual. Hell, he’s still a pretty good target to aim for, even at my advancing age.
Oddly enough, the LA Times obituary, the most comprehensive one I’ve seen, mentions Barry’s work in The War of the Worlds only in passing, focusing instead on a television Western he did a few years later called Bat Masterson. I’ve only recently seen that series for the first time; it’s airing early in the morning on a new channel called THIStv. From the couple of episodes I’ve caught while eating breakfast, Barry was good as Masterson, but no where near as likable as in War. I guess it makes sense that he’d be better remembered for a role he did over several years than a single film appearance, but to me, he was Forrester.
Sadly, Barry had been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease for several years. He died in an assisted living center at the age of 90.
Update: I’ve just remembered this, but I did see Gene Barry in a movie recently. Well, within the last few years, anyhow. He and Ann Robinson had very small cameos in Steven Spielberg’s remake version of War of the Worlds. They’re the kindly grandparents right at the very end of the movie, in that atrociously fake happy ending. They have no dialogue, and I find myself wondering if Barry’s condition was already manifesting at that time. The dates would seem to overlap. As far as I know, that was his final on-screen appearance.
