Leslie Barrett

Leslie Barrett, born Leslie Klein on October 30, 1919, on Staten Island, New York City, was an American actor whose work encompassed Broadway, television, and film across more than six decades. The son of Cecil and Theresa (née Leonhardt) Klein, he attended George Washington High School before adopting the stage name Leslie Barrett in 1937. He died on June 8, 2010.

Barrett's professional acting debut came on January 12, 1937, when he performed under his birth name at the Guild Theatre. He subsequently took on the stage name Leslie Barrett upon replacing Billy Halop in a production of Dead End at the Belasco Theatre. His Broadway career extended from 1938 to 1981 and included appearances in All in Favor, Good Neighbor, Counsellor-at-Law, The Primrose Path in 1939, Rhinoceros in 1961, and The Dresser in 1981.

Beyond Broadway, Barrett pursued a sustained interest in classical theater. He joined Joseph Papp's Shakespeare Theatre Workshop in April 1955 and that same year appeared in Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It at the Westport Country Playhouse. In 1974, he performed in The Taming of the Shrew at the Walnut Street Theatre. In 1952, Barrett and Paul Curtis co-founded the American Mime Theatre.

His television work began as early as 1949, when he appeared on The Philco Television Playhouse, a series on which he would perform in four episodes through 1953. In 1960, he appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone and in Incident at a Corner, an NBC Startime production directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Later television credits included East Side/West Side in 1964, a 1962 episode of Dennis the Menace in which he played a school principal named Mr. Spivey, and a recurring role as Judge Hanley on the soap opera Dark Shadows. He also appeared as George, Harvey's best friend, in the Honeymooners episode known as The Bensonhurst Bomber.

Barrett's film work included an uncredited role in Career in 1959, Dean Flossmore in Preppies in 1984, and Albert Dalton in Death Mask that same year. He was married twice, first to Diana Newman Barth and later to actress Ruth Livingston. Materials related to his career, including correspondence, ephemera, and scrapbooks dating from 1942 to 1996, are held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.