Robert Barrat

Robert Harriot Barrat (July 10, 1891 – January 7, 1970) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, and television over the course of a career spanning several decades. Born and raised in New York City, where he attended public schools, Barrat left college during his sophomore year and traveled abroad on a tramp steamer, visiting Central America, England, France, and South America. Upon returning to the United States, he spent two years working on his brother's farm near Springfield, Massachusetts, before learning of a chorus opening in a musical comedy that drew him toward the stage.

In his early professional years, Barrat toured the United States performing with stock theater companies and appearing in vaudeville on the Keith and Orpheum circuits. He eventually returned to New York City, where he took a role in The Weavers at the Garden Theatre. His Broadway career ran from 1918 to 1932 and encompassed a wide range of productions. His credits include Some One in the House (1918), The Invisible Foe (1918), The Crimson Alibi (1919), The Unwritten Chapter (1920), Kid Boots (1923), The Breaking Point (1923), Chicago (1926), A Lady for a Night (1927), The Lady Lies (1928), Marco Millions (1928), Judas (1929), This Is New York (1930), Bulls, Bears and Asses (1931), and Lilly Turner (1932).

Barrat subsequently built an extensive Hollywood career that lasted four decades and encompassed approximately 150 films, some of which he appeared in without screen credit. During the 1930s he worked alongside James Cagney in seven pictures. He portrayed Nick, the sexually abusive father of Barbara Stanwyck's character Lily, in the Pre-Code film Baby Face. Among his most recognized film roles were Archer Coe, the murder victim at the center of Michael Curtiz's The Kennel Murder Case (1933); Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy in the Academy Award-winning The Life of Emile Zola (1937); and the crooked saloon owner Red Baxter in the Marx Brothers western comedy Go West (1940).

Barrat portrayed a number of historical figures throughout his film career, including Davy Crockett in Man of Conquest, Abraham Lincoln in Trailin' West, Zachary Taylor in Distant Drums, Cornelius Van Horne in Canadian Pacific, and General Douglas MacArthur in both They Were Expendable and American Guerrilla in the Philippines. In the mid-1950s he moved into television work, and his final acting appearance came in a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Barrat died of a heart ailment in Hollywood on January 7, 1970, at the age of 78, survived by his wife, Mary Dean. He was buried at Green Hill Cemetery in Martinsburg, West Virginia.