My name is Fiona and I live near Edinburgh
Why am I so
interested in Barry Brown? About 20 years ago I watched the movie Bad Company
on television. I wanted to watch the movie as I am a huge fan of the actor John
Savage. When the opening credits came up I was instantly intrigued as to
this name "Barry Brown" (whom I’d never heard of) being second billed to Jeff
Bridges. As I watched the movie I was impressed by this young actor's performance and I became curious and wished to find
out more about this seemingly little known actor.
I visited the library
to look up film reference books and discovered sadly that he had taken his own life in 1978. For years all I ever found out was “American actor of the 70s,
who was a noted film historian”. I searched in vain for information about
Barry. I didn’t even know what field of film history he had written about,
aside from the article on Jeff Bridges in “Close-ups”. Ten years later I
watched Daisy Miller and I was impressed at how well he was able to convincingly
play the part of an American living in
The advent of the
internet opened new avenues for movie trivia, facts and figures. But there
seemed to be very little information on Barry. The Internet Movie Database http://us.imdb.com/
was the only real source of information and I was intrigued to discover that
Barry had done TV work as well as learning about his other film roles.
Through the IMDB I discovered the Yahoo group
dedicated to Barry . I joined the group in August
2005, contributed a few messages and soon became a regular poster and enjoyed
getting in touch with other people also interested in Barry’s work.
I had always felt
that Barry was a very underrated actor and deserved a
little more recognition. I also believe that, had he been born later than he
was, he would have had more success and been more fitting in todays leading male roles than those of the early
seventies. My husband, Will, suggested that I start a website dedicated to
Barry but I was concerned whether it would be possible to collate enough
information to make such a site worthwhile. However, with Will's help I launched
the site on
My ambition with the
website is to eventually record all of Barry’s work in film, TV and his
writings.
Special thanks must
go to the following people:-
Will. (Husband and
technical assistant) Not only for suggesting the site in the first place but
for building and helping maintain it as well!
Jim Brown. Barry’s
younger brother. For answering my questions and for his
approval of the site.
The Brown Family for allowing permission to use photographs and memorabilia from their collection.
John
From the Yahoo Group and all the members.
Many thanks to Jo who provided me with articles to get the site started.
Fiona Gell
