Barry Brown

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This article is about the actor Barry Brown. For the Jamaican reggae singer, see Barry Brown (singer).

Barry Brown (April 19, 1951 – June 25, 1978), also known as Donald Barry Brown, was an American actor, and brother of the late actress Marilyn Brown and the writer James Brown.

Born in San Jose, California, Brown began his acting career as a child of five and took part in many television and live performances. He was a gifted young man born with a genius I.Q. and exerted himself in the manner of a child prodigy, early on appearing with Van Johnson in a stage production of "The Music Man" at the age of ten. He was 18 when he made his first major screen debut in "Halls Of Anger" (1969). Brown's breakthrough role was as the American Civil War draft dodger Drew Dixon in the 1972 critically acclaimed sleeper Bad Company, in which he co-starred with Jeff Bridges. The 70's rock and roll group would take their name and be inspired for their first album and pen their hit single "Bad Company", directly from this film.

After playing Frederick Winterbourne in Peter Bogdanovich's 1974 film Daisy Miller, Brown slowly drifted away from show business. He kept up his correspondence and his unanimously recognized expertise on film history throughout his life and was a leading authority on acting and its players. Fortune took an ever decreasing turn for the very sensitive young man, and in June of 1978, Brown committed suicide, by means of a gun, in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California.

Barry Brown was also the author of a critical, unpublished book called "Unsung Heroes of the Horrors" - a compendious work dedicated to memorializing the lives of certain well-known (although not famous) B-movie actors and actresses.