بیوگرافی
Barney Phillips was an American actor of German heritage, born Bernard Philip Ofner in 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Harry Nathan Ofner, worked as a salesman in the leather industry, and his mother, Leona "Lonnie" Frank, was a German immigrant who became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
In 1935, Phillips relocated to Los Angeles, California, aspiring to enter the film industry. He made his film debut in the 1937 Universal Pictures B-Western "Black Aces." For several years after, he had no credited film roles but accumulated several stage credits.
Phillips enlisted in the United States Army in 1941 and served in the signal corps during World War II. After the war, he returned to the film industry, primarily taking on extra roles.
His first significant role was Sergeant Ed Jacob, a recurring character on the police procedural TV series "Dragnet" (1951-1959). He also voiced police sergeant Hamilton J. Finger in the radio show "Rocky Fortune" (1953-1954), which starred Frank Sinatra as amateur detective Rocco "Rocky Fortune" Fortunato.
Phillips became a prolific character actor in film and television over the following decades, frequently cast as a police officer. In the early 1960s, he appeared in multiple episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including "The Purple Testament" (1960), "A Thing About Machines" (1960), "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" (1961), and "Miniature" (1963). He is best remembered for playing cook Haley in the "Real Martian" episode, where his character aids in stopping a Martian invasion but reveals himself as a Venusian agent preparing Earth for colonization by his home planet.
From 1964 to 1967, Phillips portrayed Doc Kaiser, a main character in the war drama series "Twelve O'Clock High," which chronicled missions of the fictional 918th Bombardment Group (Heavy) of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Phillips frequently worked as a voice actor for animated series. He voiced the genie Shazzan in "Shazzan" (1967-1969), the strongman Porthos in "The Three Musketeers" (1968-1969), and contributed additional voices to "The Funky Phantom" (1971-1972).
During the late 1970s, Phillips was part of the principal cast of the short-lived sitcom "The Betty White Show" (1978-1979), playing Fletcher Huff, a struggling actor co-starring in a police procedural show-within-a-show. He also played Judge Buford Potts, a recurring character on the action-comedy series "The Dukes of Hazzard" (1979-1985).
Phillips passed away from cancer in 1982 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Posthumously, he received his final film credit as Dr. Batt in the psychological drama "Beyond Reason," which was produced in 1977 but not released until 1985. The film is notable for being one of the rare directing efforts by actor Telly Savalas (1922–1994).
