Patricia Barry–That Scheming Woman

Her name is Patricia Barry and she may have been one of the hardest working actresses of all time.

To date she has performed in more than 138 movie and television roles.  During the late 1950s through the mid-1970s she was the go-to-actress when producers had a role that required “the scheming woman. ”

She was one of the reigning Queens of daytime soap opera TV.  She had recurring roles on the TV shows: The Guiding Light,  All My Children and Days of Our Lives.

I think the first time I saw her and recognized her for the talent that she was was in a Perry Mason episode entitled, The Case of the Velvet Claw.  One of the reasons this particular episode stood out to me was because this episode was based upon the very first Perry Mason novel.  She would also appear in the Rawhide episode, Incident of the Married Widow.  In both of these episodes she was at the top of her game as the scheming woman – the woman who would do anything necessary to get what she wanted regardless of who got hurt in the process.

But she also demonstrated that she could play the victim as well as the victimizer in the Gunsmoke episode, The Cabin.  In this particular episode, Ms. Barry plays a woman named Belle who has been trapped in her cabin for 35 days with two murderers and rapists who have already killed her father, beat her and sexually assaulted her.   She gives an epic performance of perseverance and courage.  This is a powerful story because it doesn’t have the “feel good” ending that you’d expect from 1950s television.  Its ending is shocking, its script is brilliant and it benefits from a powerful performance by Ms. Barry. It is so good, it inspired me to write this post.

Ms. Barry is now 91 years old as I write this and hasn’t acted in the last decade.  But she leaves a legacy of strong performances in the body of work that remains as powerful today as it was when she first performed.  She is and was among the best at her craft.