- published: 28 Dec 2007
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Lex Barker (May 8, 1919 – May 11, 1973) was an American actor best known for playing Tarzan of the Apes and leading characters from Karl May's novels.
Born Alexander Crichlow Barker, Jr. in Rye, New York, he was the second child of Alexander Crichlow Barker, Sr., a wealthy Canadian-born building contractor and his American wife, the former Marion Thornton Beals. His father later worked as a stockbroker. Barker had an elder sister, Frederica Amelia (1917–1980). Barker was also a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and of Sir William Henry Crichlow, historical Governor General of Barbados.
Raised in New York City and Port Chester, New York, Barker attended the Fessenden School and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He played football as well as the oboe. He attended Princeton University, but dropped out in order to join a theatrical stock company, much to the chagrin of his family.
Barker made it to Broadway once, in a small role in a short run of Shakepeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1938. He also had a small role in Orson Welles's disastrous Five Kings, which met with so many problems in Boston and Philadelphia that it never made it into New York. Barker reportedly was spotted by scouts from Twentieth Century Fox and offered a film contract in 1939, but could not convince his parents to sign it (he was underage). Disowned by his family for his choice of an acting career, he worked in a steel mill and studied engineering at night.