Robert Barrat

Career

Born in New York City, Barrat made his theatrical debut in a stock company in Springfield, Massachusetts. He later acted on Broadway, where his credits include Lilly Turner (1932), Bulls, Bears and Asses (1931), This Is New York (1930), Judas (1928), The Lady Lies (1928), A Lady for a Night (1927), Marco Millions (1927), Chicago (1926), Kid Boots (1923), The Breaking Point (1923), The Unwritten Chapter (1920), The Crimson Alibi (1919), The Invisible Foe (1918), and Some One in the House (1918).

He appeared in more than 150 films in a Hollywood career that lasted four decades. He appeared in seven pictures with James Cagney during the 1930s. Two of his most noted roles were as the murder victim Archer Coe in Michael Curtiz's The Kennel Murder Case (1933) and as the treacherous Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy in the 1937 Academy Award winning film, The Life of Emile Zola. He also appeared with the Marx Brothers in Go West (1940). He played Ingrid Bergman's father in Joan of Arc (1948), though his role was so brief that when an edited version of the film was released in 1950, Barrat's role had actually been eliminated. (The film has since been restored to its full length.)

He played several other historical characters as well, among them Davy Crockett in Man of Conquest, Zachary Taylor in Distant Drums, Abraham Lincoln in Trailin' West, Cornelius Van Horne in Canadian Pacific and General Douglas MacArthur in American Guerrilla in the Philippines. He was also seen as the Native American Chief Chingachgook, in the 1936 film version of The Last of the Mohicans. By 1954, he had turned to television roles. His final acting appearance was in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964.

Death

He died of heart disease in Hollywood in 1970, aged 80, and was buried at Green Hill Cemetery, Martinsburg, West Virginia.