Obituaries

One of my favorite actors of the 1960s, Gene Barry, who is best known for playing the Cary Grant-type detective in the show Burke's Law, has died.

I have the DVDs of the show, and it is STILL good after all these years. Barry, like Grant, was the master of the double-take.

Barry was 90 years old and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for the past five years. He died of congestive heart failure. His wife died several years ago:

"He was a very loving and generous father," he said, "and he was handsome, charming and funny until the end."

A New York veteran of plays and musicals who became a Paramount contract player in 1951, Barry had more than a dozen movies and numerous TV appearances behind him, including starring in the science-fiction classic "The War of the Worlds," when he was offered the title role in "Bat Masterson."

Barry, however, wasn't interested in joining the era's crowded ranks of TV cowboys. Then someone told him that Masterson wore a derby and carried a gold-headed cane.

"That appealed to the actor in me," Barry recalled in a 1989 Associated Press interview. "If it hadn't been for that, I would have turned it down. I didn't want to be tied down doing a western. I went to wardrobe and found that hat and cane and an elegant swallowtail coat and shiny black boots.