[ Vedette ] Lex Barker

[Rex Lee]

Acteur américain. 1919 - 1973

Les 7 films de la série WINNETOU où il incarne OLD SHATTERHAND sont :


LE TRESOR DU LAC D'ARGENT
LA REVOLTE DES APACHES ( WINNETOU 1. )
LE TRESOR DES MONTAGNES BLEUES ( WINNETOU 2.)
LES CAVALIERS ROUGES
SUR LA PISTE DES DESPERADOS ( WINNETOU 3.)
LE JOUR LE PLUS LONG DE KANSAS CITY
WINNETOU UND SHATTERHAND IM TAL DER TOTEN






La révolte des Apaches




Ses autres westerns européens :

UN LUGAR LLAMADO GLORY / L'ENFER DU MANITOBA
LA BALADA DE JOHNNY RINGO
LES MERCENAIRES DU RIO GRANDE



Un lugar llamado Glory





Les mercenaires du Rio Grande



Mais la notoriété, il l'a acquise dès la fin des années 40 en interprétant Tarzan dans six films:







Tarzan et la diablesse (1953)



Hors western, en Europe, il est notamment dans:




(1959)





La dolce vita (1960)





Kali Yug, déesse de la vengeance (1963)






Au pays des Skipetars (1964)






Le carnaval des barbouzes (1966)

[Tom Betts]

The New York Times
May 12, 1973

Lex Barker, the 10th actor to play the role of Tarzan in Hollywood films, collapsed and died yesterday.

Mr. Barker, who was 53 years old, was found unconscious on Lexington Avenue near 61st Street about midday. He was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The body was taken to the city morgue for an autopsy.

The police said that two women with whom he apparently had had a luncheon date came to the East 67th Street station, concerned that he had not appeared.

Meanwhile, the actor's body was found and identification was established through a wristwatch inscribed “Alexander C. Barker, 205 South Beverley Drive, Beverly Hills, Cal.”

The actor was a member of Social Register family of this city and Rye, N. Y.

His full name was Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr., and he succeeded Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimming star, in the Tarzan role in 1949 after Mr. Weissmuller had played it for some 17 years.

He was born in New York and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Princeton University, and had had considerable training as an actor before Sol Lesser, the Hollywood producer, signed him for the Tarzan role.

He appeared in summer stock and briefly on Broadway before he tried the Hollywood film factories in 1945. He had small roles in “The Farmer's Daughter,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” and “Velvet Touch,” and then made his first Tarzan film, “Tarzan's Magic Fountain.”

A reviewer in The New York Times called him “a younger, more streamlined apeman with a personable grin and a torso guaranteed to make any lion cringe,” but termed the picture itself “a matter of stale peanuts at the same old jungle stand.” Later pictures—“Tarzan and the Slave Girl” and “Tarzan's Peril” among them—drew no better critical acclaim.

Switched to Westerns

Eventually, Mr. Barker dropped the Tarzan role, made a few westerns in which his Tarzan fame was exploited and then left the country to make a film in England. This led to a series of Westerns in Italy, France and especially in Germany, where he became a top boxoffice star.

Mr. Barker married five times. His wives were Constance Thurlow, a graduate of the Todhunter School and the Mount Vernon Junior College in Washington; Arlene Dahl and Lana Turner, the actresses; Irene Labhart, a Swiss drama student, and Maria del Carmen Cervera, a former Spanish beauty queen.

He served five years in the Army in World War II, and was discharged as a major.