Reginald Harry Barlow (1866-1943) led a busy life. Stage actor and director, including twenty or so plays on Broadway. Distinguished military service in three different wars. Active in the leadership of the actors’ union Equity. Post Commander in the American Legion. Married six times. And he still found time to appear in over seventy feature films and a a number of shorts, even directing a short himself. Barlow was the son of a minstrel show performer and claimed descent from the Tudor Bishop Barlow.
Reginald Barlow’s early involvement with films was in New York in 1915, and this was where he directed The Toy-Maker of Leyden (1915). His first Hollywood picture was Love’s Flame (1920). His film career only got properly underway in 1932, when he appeared in fourteen releases, including If I Had a Million and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.
Barlow was a character actor, sometimes in credited roles, more often without credit. He was the College President in the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers (1932) and stood with the eponymous hero in John Ford’s Doctor Bull (1933). He had a featured role in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and in James Whale’s The Man in the Iron Mask (1939).
Barlow acted, without credit, in two MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle and (almost certainly) Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry.
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