Roy Barcroft

Biography

Roy Barcroft (Crab Orchard, Nebraska, 1902 - 1969) was an American character actor best known for playing villains in B-Westerns and other genres. Born into a farming family, he was a steady presence in the cinema of his era, though his name often did not appear among the top billing.

Before acting, he served in the United States Army during the First World War, worked a string of jobs and played in dance bands around Chicago. After settling in California, he was discovered in an amateur theatre production. Between 1937 and 1957 he appeared in more than three hundred films for Republic Pictures, and in 1943 he signed a ten-year exclusive contract with the studio. His face quickly became the audience's shorthand for the bad guy, and critic Leonard Maltin called him Republic's number one bad guy. As the B-Western declined, he turned to television, appearing in series such as Gunsmoke and Laramie, and he also worked as a narrator and voice actor. Off screen he had a reputation as one of the nicest men in Hollywood. He died of kidney cancer in 1969.

Key films

• Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940): a serial in which he played soldiers serving Ming, one of his most remembered genre roles.
• Santa Fe Trail (1940): a Republic western in which he played one of the antagonists typical of his work.
• Oklahoma! (1955): the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, in which he had a brief role as a marshal.
• Man Without a Star (1955): a Universal western starring Kirk Douglas, with Barcroft in a supporting role.
• Rosemary's Baby (1968): Roman Polanski's thriller, one of the best-known titles in his late filmography.