Lex Barker

Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. was born on May 8, 1919, in Rye, New York, the second child of Alexander Crichlow Barker Sr., a Canadian-born building contractor and stockbroker, and his American wife, Marion Thornton Beals. Barker had an elder sister, Frederica Amelia Barker, born in 1917. Of English and Spanish ancestry, he was a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and of Sir William Henry Crichlow, a historical governor-general of Barbados. He grew up in New York City and Port Chester, New York, attending the Fessenden School before graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, where he played both football and the oboe. He subsequently enrolled at Princeton University but left to join a theatrical stock company.

Barker's Broadway career consisted of a single appearance in 1938, when he took a small role in a short-run production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. He also appeared in a small role in Orson Welles's Five Kings, a production that encountered significant difficulties during tryouts in Boston and Philadelphia and never reached New York City.

In February 1941, ten months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Barker enlisted in the U.S. Army, setting aside his early acting career. He rose to the rank of major and was wounded in the head and leg while fighting in Sicily, for which he was awarded the Purple Heart twice. After the war he recuperated at a military hospital in Arkansas before traveling to Los Angeles, where he secured a small role in Doll Face in 1945. A series of supporting parts followed in films including Two Guys from Milwaukee and Cloak and Dagger, both from 1946. He then signed with RKO, appearing in The Farmer's Daughter, Crossfire, and Under the Tonto Rim, all in 1947, as well as Unconquered at Paramount that same year. His RKO work continued with Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome, Berlin Express, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Velvet Touch, and Return of the Bad Men, in which he played Emmett Dalton, all released between 1947 and 1948.

In 1949, Barker became the tenth official screen Tarzan when he starred in Tarzan's Magic Fountain for RKO. Standing 6'4" with a blond and athletic appearance, he brought his own presence to a role that Johnny Weissmuller had held for sixteen years. His Jane in that first film was Brenda Joyce, who had appeared in Weissmuller's final three Tarzan pictures. Barker went on to make four more films in the series: Tarzan and the Slave Girl in 1950, with Vanessa Brown as Jane; Tarzan's Peril in 1951, with Virginia Huston; Tarzan's Savage Fury in 1952, directed by Cy Endfield and featuring Dorothy Hart; and Tarzan and the She-Devil in 1953, opposite Joyce MacKenzie. Producer Sol Lesser subsequently cast Gordon Scott as Tarzan, resuming the series in 1955.

Following his Tarzan tenure, Barker continued working in action and outdoor pictures. He supported Randolph Scott in Thunder Over the Plains in 1953 and starred in The Yellow Mountain and The Man from Bitter Ridge at Universal. By the mid-1950s his credits spanned multiple genres, including Duel on the Mississippi, the film noir The Price of Fear with Merle Oberon, the war film Away All Boats, and the thriller The Girl in the Kremlin. He made two films for Howard W. Koch, War Drums and Jungle Heat, both in 1957, and appeared in The Deerslayer for 20th Century-Fox that same year.

In 1957, as Hollywood studios reduced their output, Barker relocated to Europe, where he was fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish and had some command of German. He began his European career with the British thriller The Strange Awakening in 1958, then moved to Italy for a series of swashbuckling adventures including Captain Falcon, Son of the Red Corsair, The Pirate and the Slave Girl, and Terror of the Red Mask. In 1960 he appeared in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in a small role as Anita Ekberg's fiancé, before returning to adventure films with Knight of 100 Faces, Pirates of the Coast, Robin Hood and the Pirates, and The Secret of the Black Falcon.

Barker achieved his greatest popular success in West Germany, where he starred in films based on the Doctor Mabuse stories, beginning with The Return of Doctor Mabuse in 1961. He then took on the role of Old Shatterhand in Treasure of Silver Lake in 1962, an adaptation of a novel by Karl May. The film was a major hit, and eleven further Karl May adaptations followed through 1968, including Apache Gold, Old Shatterhand, Last of the Renegades, The Treasure of the Aztecs, and The Pyramid of the Sun God. Although Barker did speak German, he was almost always dubbed in his West German films by actor Gert Günther Hoffmann, whose voice became closely associated with Barker's on-screen persona. In 1966, Barker received the Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor in West Germany. He also recorded two songs in German during this period: "Ich bin morgen auf dem Weg zu dir," composed by Martin Böttcher, and "Mädchen in Samt und Seide," composed by Werner Scharfenberger. He also received Bravo Otto nominations during the height of his fame in German-speaking cinema.

His later European films included Killer's Carnival, Winnetou and the Crossbreed, the Eurospy film Spy Today, Die Tomorrow, the horror film The Blood Demon, and an appearance in the anthology film Woman Times Seven, all from 1966 and 1967. He made occasional guest appearances on American television but remained based in Europe, particularly West Germany, for the rest of his life. Barker died on May 11, 1973, three days after his fifty-fourth birthday.