Roy Barcroft
| Roy Barcroft | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Howard Harold Ravenscroft September 7, 1902 Crab Orchard, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Died | November 28, 1969 (aged 67) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Kidney cancer |
| Other names | Big Roy, Roy Bancroft, Howard Clifford Ravenscroft |
| Occupation | Film, stage, television actor |
| Years active | 1937–1969 |
| Spouse(s) | Hortense Flanagan (1930) Vera Thompson (1932-1969) (his death) |
Roy Barcroft (September 7, 1902 – November 28, 1969) was an American character actor famous for playing villains in B-Westerns and other genres. Noted film critic Leonard Maltin acclaimed Barcroft as "Republic Pictures' number one bad guy".
Barcroft was born Howard Harold Ravenscroft to a farming family in Johnson County in southeastern Nebraska in 1902. In 1917, at the age of fifteen, he joined the United States Army during World War I to fight in France, where he was wounded in action. After leaving the military, he drifted through several jobs (including ranch hand, roughneck, railroad worker and seaman) before reenlisting and being stationed in Hawaii.
In 1929, he moved to California and worked as an extra and as a salesman. He was discovered while acting in an amateur theatre production (a hobby which he took up to improve his speaking voice as a salesman) and cast in the serial S.O.S. Coast Guard. He worked for many studios in the years that followed until 1943, when he signed an exclusive 10-year contract with Republic. Under this contract, he starred in almost 150 films and serials, becoming instantly recognized as the villain to the audiences of the day.
His career slowed with the decline of B-Westerns, but he found work in television and B-Movies during the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1955 and 1957, he became familiar to a new generation of youthful audiences, not as a villain but as "Col. Jim Logan", the kindly owner of the Triple-R Boys' Ranch in the hit television serials Spin and Marty, seen on Walt Disney's celebrated Mickey Mouse Club. A DVD version of the 1955 season, The Adventures of Spin & Marty, was released in 2005 as part of the Walt Disney Treasures series.
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