Lynn Bari

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Lynn Bari born Margaret Schuyler Fisher December 18 1913 November 20 1989 was a film actress who specialized in playing sultry statuesque mankillers in roughly 150 20th Century Fox films from the early 1930s through the 1940s Bari was one of 14 young women launched on the trail of film stardom August 6 1935 when they each received a sixmonth contract with 20th Century Fox after spending 18 months in the companys training school The contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years In most of her early films Bari had uncredited parts usually playing receptionists or chorus girls She struggled to find starring roles in films but accepted any work she could get Rare leading roles included China Girl 1942 Hello Frisco Hello 1943 and The Spiritualist 1948 In B movies Lynn was usually cast as a villainess notably Shock and Nocturne both 1946 An exception was The Bridge of San Luis Rey 1944 During WWII according to a survey taken of GIs Bari was the secondmost popular pinup girl after the much betterknown Betty Grable Baris film career fizzled out in the early 1950s as she was approaching her 40th birthday although she continued to work at a more limited pace over the next two decades now playing matronly characters rather than temptresses She portrayed the mother of a suicidal teenager in a 1951 drama On the Loose plus a number of supporting parts Baris last film appearance was as the mother of rebellious teenager Patty McCormack in The Young Runaways 1968 and her final TV appearances were in episodes of The Girl From UNCLE and The FBI She quickly took up the rising medium of television during the 50s which began when she starred in the live television sitcom Detectives Wife which ran during the summer of 1950 and in Boss Lady In 1955 Bari appeared in the episode The Beautiful Miss X of Rod Camerons syndicated crime drama City Detective In 1960 she played female bandit Belle Starr in the debut episode Perilous Passage of the NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendix and Doug McClure and with fellow guest star Robert J Wilke as Cole Younger From JulySeptember 1952 Bari starred in her own situation comedy Boss Lady a summer replacement for NBCs Fireside Theater She portrayed Gwen F Allen the beautiful top executive of a construction firm Not the least of her troubles in the role was being able to hire a general manager who did not fall in love with her Commenting on her other woman roles Bari once said I seem to be a woman always with a gun in her purse Im terrified of guns I go from one set to the other shooting people and stealing husbands