The career of Lex Barker is an interesting one: In his native America,
he was quite well-known for a time as being Johnny Weissmuller's successor as Tarzan
at RKO, but this hardly caused an uproar or or granted him a place
in cinema history - nor did actually his marriages to actresses Arlene
Dahl and Lana Turner ... but when his popularity in the US had already begun
to vane, he, like so many of his colleagues at the time, moved to Europe
... and Lex Barker would eventually emerge as Germany's most popular foreign actor
(for a time) ...
But first things first: Lex Barker was born in
1919 in Rye, New York. After college, in the late 1930's, he soon became a
stage actor. In 1942, he was enlisted in the military, and served his
country, first in North Africa, then in Sicilly. During his service, he
fought on the frontline and was repeatedly injured, but he left the army
in 1945 as a major. In 1945, he also acted in his first film, Doll Face
(directed by Lewis Seiler).
However,
at first his career seemed to be less than promising, and while his
filmography includes some quite popular titles - e.g. Dick
Tracy meets Gruesome (1947, John Rawlins) with Ralph Byrd and Boris
Karloff [Boris Karloff bio -
click here], the Tim Holt-led Zane Grey adaptation Under
the Tonto Rim (1947, Lew Landers), Mr. Blandings
builds his Dream House (1948, H.C.Potter) with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy and the
classic film noir Crossfire (1947) directed by Edward Dmytryk,
starring Robert Young and Robert Mitchum -, his roles in these films were
all but stellar - mini parts as an ambulance driver in the first, a
builder in the second, a soldier in the third.
His breakthrough
as an actor however came in 1949, when he was made the successor of Johnny
Weissmuller [Johnny
Weissmuller-bio - click here] in the Sol Lesser-produced RKO-Tarzan-series.
Barker certainly had what it takes to be Tarzan, he was
tall, athletic without being musclebound, and handsome without being just
another posterboy. He stayed with the series for 5 films - Tarzan's
Magic Fountain (1949, Lee Sholem), Tarzan and the Slave Girl
(1950, Lee Sholem),
Tarzan's Peril (1951, Byron Haskin), Tarzan's Savage Fury
(1952, Cy Enfield) and Tarzan
and the She-Devil (1953, Kurt Neumann) - then he fell out with producer Lesser,
reportedly because Barker demanded more and better dialogue (but the truth
might be something much more profane like money). Barker's successor as Tarzan
by the way would be Gordon Scott [Gordon
Scott bio - click here], who, very much like Barker, later found
fame in Europe.
Barker's Tarzans
pretty much picked up
where Weissmuller's left off - a far cry from Weissmuller's first efforts
at MGM, they still had a certain quality to them as solid B-jungle
adventures, however, sometimes these films would be campy more than
anything else - and not always campy in a good way ...
Even while he was
still playing Tarzan, Barker tried to establish himself in other roles,
mainly Westerns. His first lead in a Western, The Battles of Chief
Pontiac (Felix E.Feist), came in 1952, where he played a white scout, with
horror-legend Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here], whose career has taken a nose-dive, playing the
titular Indian chief. More Westerns would soon follow,
including Thunder over the Plains (1953, André de
Toth), where he played second
fiddle to Randolph Scott, The Yellow Mountain (1954, Jesse Hibbs), The Man
from Bitter Ridge (1955, directed by sci-fi legend Jack Arnold) and The
Deerslayer
(1957, Kurt Neumann), where he would portray James Fenimore Cooper's character
Deerslayer a.k.a. Hawkeye.
In War Drums (1957, Reginald Le Borg) he even played an
Apache chieftain ... In all, Barker's Westerns were competently crafted
but unremarkable, as the (B-)Western genre as such had grown a bit stale
and idealess.
But both The Deerslayer
and War Drums are of interest regarding
his later career in Germany, but we must not get ahead too far ... Besides
Westerns, Barker also made a few thrillers (The Price of Fear [1956,
Abner Biberman],
The Girl in the Kremlin [1957, Russell Birdwell], The Girl in
Black Stockings [1957, Howard W. Koch]) and adventure movies (Jungle
Heat [1957, Howard W. Koch]), but by and large, it seemed his career was essentially
fading out. Essentially, Lex Barker represented the type of actor
that had fallen out of fashion in Hollywood all of a sudden, the matinée
idol. Ten to fifteen years earlier, men of Barker's type - athletic,
good-looking and very disciplined - would have found more work in serials
and B-movies
(especially Westerns and adventure movies) than they could ever hope to
handle, however, in the 1950's, the B-movie genre as a whole had changed
and the he-man hero was no longer in demand, instead it was aliens from
space and giant insects who took over the screens, with the hero defeating
them being most often someone as unlikely as the village doctor or a
teacher at the local high school. And while Barker was good at handling
B's, he was never enough of a versatile actor to break into the A's,
neither did he, like John Wayne, have sufficient charisma to outbalance his
shortcomings. Barker did share the fate of being too late,
the hero with many of his colleagues, including his successor on the
Tarzan-throne Gordon Scott, and so he did what many other B-actors fallen
from grace or TV-actors unable to make their break in the
(Hollywood-)movies did: He went to Italy for career recovery. Others who
did the same included aforementioned Gordon Scott, Lee Van Cleef, Clint
Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, George Nader, ... (it wasn't Barker's first trip
to Italy, by the way, he had already made I Misteri della Giungla/Black
Devils of Kali [Gian Paolo Callegari, Ralph Murphy] there back in 1954.) Italy back then had a
booming film industry, that was specialized in genre movies including
sword and sandal films, swashbucklers, pirate films, historical dramas,
adventure films of any kind, and even some Westerns (though the Spaghetti
Western was still a few years away). And since in Italy, like in most of
Europe actually, American movies were not divided into A- and B-movies but
merely judged by their popularity with the audience, actors like Barker
were not only well-known but also in heavy demand to add some
international flair to local productions.
Soon Barker would
find himself filming like crazy, starring in films like Capitan Fuoco/Captain
Falcon (1958, Carlo Campogalliani), Il Figlio del corsaro rosso/The Son of the Red Pirate
(1959, Primoi Zeglio), La Scimitarra
del Saraceno/The Pirate and the Slave Girls (1959, Piero
Pierotti), Terrore della maschera rossa/Terror
of the Red Mask (1960, Luigi Capuano), Il Cavaliere dei cento volti/Knight
of 100 Faces (1960, Pino Mercanti), I Pirati della costa/Pirates of the Barbary Coast
(1960, Domenico Paolella), Il Segreto dello sparviero nero/The Secret of the Black Falcon
(1961, Domenico Paolella), El Secreto
de los Hombres Azules (1961, Edmond Agabra) and Il Boia di Venezia/The Executioner of Venice
(1963, Luigi Capuano).
These films, as you might be able to tell even from the titles, are
old-fashioned pirate/adventure vehicles with Barker as the main
attraction. Compared to the Michael Curtiz-directed Errol Flynn
pirate/adventure films, these Italian films of course fall flat, however
taken on their own, the films are colourful escapist tales that have a
certain naive charm, if one can forgive their shortcomings and doesn't
question the on-screen goings-on too closely. To stretch the Errol Flynn
analogy even further, Barker even played Robin
Hood, one of Flynn's
signature roles, in a film, Robin Hood e i pirati/Robin Hood and the Pirates
(1960, Giorgio Simonelli), that even manages to include pirates as well.
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However, as
charming as these films might be, they were far from being special, and
the only really important film Barker starred in during that time,
Federico Fellini's seminal La Dolce Vita (1960) only saw him in a small
role which he allegedly only got due to his friendship with lead actress
Anita Ekberg. Furthermore back in the days, American actors starring in
Italian adventure movies came a dime a dozen, plus by the early to
mid-1960's, the Italian adventure cycle was already coming to an end. But
by then, Lex Barker had already made the career decision that would
determine his later career - even if it at first did not sound all that
promising ... In 1961, Artur Brauner of CCC-Filmkunst
lured Lex Barker to Germany to star in two of his Mabuse-thrillers.
Brauner had just revived Fritz Lang's popular supervillain in the film Die
Tausend Augen des Doktor Mabuse/The
Thousand Eyes of Dr.Mabuse the previous year, directed by Fritz
Lang himself (it would be his last film). Brauner figured that the
character could be stretched into a series to compete with Rialto's
incredibly popular Edgar
Wallace-series. And with Barker, Brauner planned to add a
little international flair to the series that would facilitate world
sales.
Barker starred in Doktor
Mabuse 2 and 3,
Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse/The
Return of Dr. Mabuse/FBI vs
Dr. Mabuse (1961) and Die Unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse/The
Invisible Dr. Mabuse/The
Invisible Claws of Dr. Mabuse (1962). Both films were competently directed by
Harald Reinl [Harald Reinl bio
- click
here] and were successful enough at the box-office to spawn more Mabuse-sequels
(without Barker),
but for Barker, the best was still to come ...
In 1962, he was
approached by Rialto Film
to star in a Western called Der Schatz im
Silbersee/Treasure
of Silver Lake (Harald Reinl), based on a popular book by
the German adventure novelist Karl May (1842 - 1912) chronicling the
adventures of the Apache chief Winnetou and his white, German friend Old
Shatterhand. Curiously enough Barker was chosen to play Old Shatterhand,
the only German in the book. Even more curiousloy, he was the only
American in the cast of a movie that's supposed to take place in America
... but was actually filmed in Yugoslavia. The Apache chief Winnetou was
played by Pierre Brice, a goodlooking French actor ... who looked nothing
like a Native American [Pierre
Brice bio - click here].
But if you now think this combination spells
doom, you are dead wrong. Der Schatz im
Silbersee/Treasure
of Silver Lake came at a time when the Americans seemed to have forgotten
how to make good old-fashioned Westerns while the audience (at least in
Europe) longed for them. Furthermore the film, with its simplified plot,
its pittoresque (if not very American) landscapes and its romantic music
gave the story a fairy-tale-like quality - and, even if there were
no native Americans in the cast, it took their agenda very seriously and
presented them as heroes, while Hollywood as a whole was still lightyears
away from doing so. And of course, the very competent direction of Harald
Reinl (who also did Barker's two Mabuse-films),
who seemed very much at ease with the genre, the plot, the impressive
landscapes and with handling a large cast in and outdoors film, didn't
hurt either, neither did villain Herbert Lom. The film would be a
phenomenal success, the most successful film in Germany of the year, so soon, the adventures of
Winnetou, both with and without his white friend Old Shatterhand, would be
prolonged into a series ...
In all, Der Schatz im
Silbersee and
subsequent films of the Winnetou films would bear
resemblance to (at least) two of Barker's American Westerns: War Drums
- with the difference that Barker played the Apache chief in this one with Ben
Johnson playing his white friend - and Deerslayer - the outfit that
Barker wears as Old Shatterhand even resembles that of his
Deerslayer-role, and furthermore, Karl May's Winnetou-books as such
bore a striking resemblance to James Fenimore Cooper's books about Deerslayer/Hawkeye. After
the success of Der Schatz im
Silbersee, Rialto Film
promptly sent most of the cast and crew back to Yugoslavia to film Winnetou
I/Apache Gold (1963) - and Winnetou II/Last of the
Renegades (1964) and Winnetou III/Desperado Trail
(1965)
were quick to follow, with the basic formula unchanged, and all of these
films also directed by Harald Reinl with music by Martin Böttcher.
Winnetou
I chronicles the story of how Winnetou and Old Shatterhand first met,
as enemies, and as they gradually became friends and blood-brothers, with
Mario Adorf handling the villainy and Marie Versini playing Old
Shatterhand's native American love interest.
Winnetou II
tells of
Winnetou's great love Ribanna (Karin Dor, not at all looking native
American either [Karin Dor bio -
click here]) and how he lost her to a young Mario Girotti (=
Terence Hill) for the sake of peace with the white man. Anthony Steel is
the villain here, and Klaus Kinski is in this one too.
In Winnetou III, Winnetou dies a tragic
death, with Rik Battaglia being the main baddie. Rather surprisingly,
between Der Schatz im
Silbersee and Winnetou III, there is no
drop in quality, all four films are done in the same adventurous yet
romantic mood, and impressive landscapes, competent direction and love for
the genre as such make them great if naive films. Even at the box office,
all four films did equally well.
By 1964
however, producer Artur Brauner of CCC-Filmkunst,
the man who has brought Barker to Germany in the first place, has smelled
success, and since he was one to always jump any bandwagon, he made an
even for him bold move: He hired Lex Barker, Pierre Brice and Ralf Wolter
- the perennial sidekick of the series - and put them into a Winnetou-film
of his own - which he could, since Winnetou was in public domain and the
actors had no exclusive contracts with Rialto Film
... Thus Old Shatterhand was born, directed by Hollywood
veteran Hugo Fregonese, with music by Riz Ortolani, and Rik Battaglia -
who would later be the main heavy in Winnetou III - playing one of
the villains. Daliah Lavi was the female lead, with nothing really to do
though besides from a very brief nude scene. Old Shatterhand
was not on par with Rialto's
Winnetous, it was more of a traditional, somewhat hastily
made B-Western with a muddled screenplay, but it did well enough at the
German box office to make Rialto Film
realize there is competition out there and make their main actors
(Barker, Brice, Wolter) sign contracts that would bar them from playing
their charracters for any other studio.
Once he smelled success
though, Brauner wasn't one to give up, and soon he came up with some Karl
May-novels not dealing with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand: First up were
Karl May's Oriental adventures about Kara Ben Nemsi, a German adventurer
who rights wrongs in the Middle East ... and who better to play him than
Lex Barker - which made kind of sense, since author Karl May had claimed
that Kara Ben Nemsi and Old Shatterhand were one and the same person (and
in one of his outrageous lies he even claimed that both were him and he is
just chronicling his own adventures). For Barker's Oriental sidekick
Hadschi Halef Omar, Artur Brauner did not look that far either, Ralf
Wolter, perennial Winnetou sidekick, was just transposed to the Orient
(which in fact was not very far, since the first Kara Ben Nemsi
was shot in Yugoslavia, just like the Winnetous).
The
first of the three Kara Ben Nemsi-films, Der Schut/The
Shoot (1964) is probably also the best, a colourful Oriental adventure
competently (but not outstandingly) handled by Hollywood legend Robert
Siodmak, with music by Winnetou's Martin Böttcher, Rik
Battaglia once again as main villain and Marie Versini of Winnetou
I as female lead.
The film was successful enough to spawn 2 sequels,
Durchs Wilde Kurdistan/The
Wild Men of Kurdistan and Im Reiche des
Silbernen Löwen/Attack of the Kurds in 1965. Both of these
films were directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb [Franz
Josef Gottlieb bio - click here], whose talents were more with
light comedy than adventure yarns. Furthermore budgets were low, the
Spanish locations (at least those chosen for the film) were somewhat
missing the romantic aura of those in Yugoslavia, and the scripts were
rather muddled and boring, not at all helped by the fact that the two
films were interlinked ... The films were rather moderate
successes.
But even if the Kara Ben Nemsis, as a
whole, did not perform as well as expected, Brauner and CCC-Filmkunst
seemed to be hell-bent to milk the cow dry, and next they threw 2 films
about Karl May's character Karl Sternau - again played by Lex Barker - at
the audience, in the films Der Schatz der Atzteken/The Treasure
of the Aztecs and Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes/Pyramid
of the Sun God (both 1965). Once again, Robert Siodmak helmed these movies, but
while they are competently crafted, at the end of the day they seem to be
little more than underbudgeted Western/adventure films. Consequently, they
were not very successful.
Away from Karl May-adaptations, Artur
Brauner found yet another (!) way to try and cash in on the Winnetou-series.
He teamed up Lex Barker and Pierre Brice in the Western Die Hölle von
Manitoba/A Place Called Glory (1965), directed by Sheldon
Reynolds, where both of them play gunmen coming to a city to take part in
a big duel, and, not knowing that they will be opponents in this duel,
become friends and right a few wrongs. The film is actually surprisingly
good, an interesting yet entertaining psychological Western. However,
since the film was not the success Brauner would have expected it to be,
it's today largely forgotten but ripe for rediscovery. Meanwhile,
the Winnetou-series at Rialto Film
was steadily going on, despite the death of Winnetou (the films were just
explained away as prequels), but Barker wasn't in them, he was replaced by
Stewart Granger as Old Surehand in 3 films. The series though was steadily
deteriorating ... and not just because Lex Barker was missing. In 1966
Barker returned to the series for one film, Winnetou und das Halbblut
Apanatschi/Half Breed, directed by Harald Philipp, but this
film, starring the very Bavarian young Uschi Glas as a Native American
halfbreed is nothing short of revolting. Both the love for the genre and
fairy tale-like atmosphere is gone, replaced by the story about a cute
half-Indian girl and her brother who constantly gets into trouble.
Furthermore, most of the heroics are not handled by Pierre Brice or Lex
Barker but by Götz George, a capable actor in his own right but out of
place in this silly Western.
After Winnetou und das Halbblut
Apanatschi, Rialto Film
would only do one more Winnetou, Winnetou und sein Freund
Old Firehand (1966, Alfred Vohrer [Alfred
Vohrer bio - click here]), which was almost as bad, but Barker was not in this one
(Rod Cameron took over as Old Firehand).
Away from the Winnetou-series,
Lex Barker's films were a so-so bunch, comprising of films of the typical
B-genres like adventure (Das Todesauge von Ceylon/Scarlet Eye
[1963, Gerd Oswald, Giovanni Roccardi]), crime thriller (Code 7, Victim 5
[1964, Robert Lynn]), Western (Wer kennt
Johnny R.?/Who Killed Johnny Ringo ?
[1966, José Luis Madrid]) and espionage thriller (Mister Dynamit - Morgen küsst Euch der
Tod/Spy Today, Die Tomorrow [1967, Franz Josef Gottlieb - Franz
Josef Gottlieb bio - click here]). In one film, Gern hab'
ich die Frau'n gekillt/Killer's Carnival (1966,
Alberto Cardone, Robert Lynn, Sheldon Reynolds), he even shared
top billing with Pierre Brice and Stewart Granger, which sounds
interesting as it would be a modern day thriller starring the three main
stars of the Winnetou
series. Furthermore the film also stars Karin Dor,
Klaus Kinski and Herbert Fux. If however this sounds interesting, the film
is anything but - Barker, Brice and Granger star in three seperate
segments that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, and the
script for the film as a whole totally lacks excitement.
Lex
Barker's most interesting film of this period might be Die
Schlangengrube und das Pendel/Castle of the Walking Dead
(1967). Somehow based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, this
is Barker's only excursion into straight horror, and quite an
effective piece of work too, wonderfully and atmospherically crafted by Harald
Reinl (once again), and starring - besides Barker - Karin Dor and
Christopher Lee... this is one film ripe for rediscovery.
The
following year, 1968, Lex Barker would do another film with Harald Reinl,
and would once again to Atze Brauner's CCC-Filmkunst,
the company that got him to Germany in the first place, for Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der
Toten/In the Valley of the Death. By 1968, when this film was
made, all the actors' exclusive contracts with Rialto Film,
that would bar them from starring in Winnetou-films for
other companies had expired, so Artur Brauner decided to try his hands on
the series yet once more, but this time make everything right.
Consequently he hired Lex Barker and Pierre Brice as the leads, Ralf
Wolter as their trusted sidekick, once more Karin Dor took the female
lead, Rik Battaglia would do the villainy, and Eddi Arent, who did the
comic relief in some of the earlier films, was again hired to do just
that. Directorial duties once again went to Harald Reinl, and Martin
Böttcher wrote the romantic score. Still, neither in quality nor at the
box office, Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der
Toten could compete
with Der Schatz im
Silbersee and Winnetou I, II
and III, it seemed too
much of a rehash of these four movies and reminiscence of a time that no
longer was - because even though Der Schatz im
Silbersee, the first of
the bunch, was a mere 6 years away, since then the Spaghetti Western has
hit big time and changed the genre forever, for better or worse.
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With
his star in Germany beginning to vane, Lex Barker moved back to America.
True he made 2 more movies in Europe in 1970, the sci-fi-thriller Aoom
(Gonzalo Suárez) and the romance Wenn Du bei mir bist (Franz Josef
Gottlieb [Franz Josef
Gottlieb bio - click here]) - in which he only had a small
part, - but by and large he tried to rekindle his long-neglected American
movie career. His efforts however did not lead to more than a
handful TV-appearances in series like It Takes a Thief, The Name
of the Game, The F.B.I. and Night Gallery, before death
took him away ... In 1973, Lex Barker died all of a sudden from
a heart attack in New York, and with him went an average screen-Tarzan for
some, but the most popular foreign actor of Germany and the white brother
of Winnetou for others ...
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