Dan Barton

Dan Barton, born Daniel George Berman on September 20, 1921, was an American actor whose career spanned radio, stage, film, television, and voice-over work. He died on December 13, 2009, in Sherman Oaks, California, at the age of 88, from heart failure and kidney disease. The son of Matthew and Sonia Berman, he was a cousin of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig. Barton attended Lake View High School before graduating from the school of speech at Northwestern University.

His involvement in performance began at age 12, when he started working in radio as a child actor, taking on an average of fifteen shows per week. During World War II, he served in the Army Special Services Entertainment Unit, where he performed alongside Alex Nicol and Mickey Rooney. While stationed in Paris, he also edited a humor magazine.

Following the war, Barton was cast as Stefanowski in the stage production of Mr. Roberts, where he formed a lifelong friendship with actor Cliff Robertson. In the late 1940s, he continued with that production on tour, appearing alongside Robertson as well as Lee Van Cleef, John Forsythe, and Brian Keith. His Broadway career included a 1948 appearance in Macbeth. It was during the Mr. Roberts tour that he met actress Anne Barton, née Henderson, whom he married between a matinee and evening performance. The couple had two children: musician Steve Barton of the band Translator and actress Susan Berman. In 2005, Barton married Gyl Roland, the daughter of actors Gilbert Roland and Constance Bennett.

His television career extended from the 1950s through the 1980s and encompassed a wide range of roles. He appeared in Playhouse 90 and was cast as Jim Ellis, a schoolmaster, in the Cheyenne episode "Incident at Indian Springs." From 1960 to 1961, he portrayed Sergeant Burke in the NBC crime drama Dan Raven. He also played Earl Carnes, described as a character audiences loved to hate, on NBC's Days of Our Lives. Among the many other series in which he appeared were The Lone Ranger, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, Colgate Theatre, Bonanza, Barnaby Jones, The F.B.I., Ironside, The Bionic Woman, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, Battlestar Galactica, and Quincy M.E.

His film work included roles in Up Front (1951), I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), Sailor Beware (1952), The Jazz Singer (1952), Dream Wife (1953), Conquest of Space (1955), Away All Boats (1956), No Time for Sergeants (1958), Onionhead (1958), The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus (1962), and Captain America (1979), among others.

In his later years, Barton became a sought-after voice-over talent. He narrated documentaries, appeared in commercials, and voiced characters in video games. He served as spokesman for Northrop Aviation for twelve years and provided voice-over work for companies including Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Microsoft, and Nike. He also lent his voice to political campaign commercials for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elizabeth Dole, despite identifying throughout his life as a Democrat. Additionally, he spent several years recording books for the blind for the Braille Institute.