Jeff Barlow

Biography

A dome of a head, circled by steel-rimmed spectacles, Jeff Barlow first drew breath in Lancashire, 1871. By the 1890s he was treading boards, slipping between melodrama and music-hall laughter with equal ease. In 1914 the camera discovered him: British & Colonial handed him the title part in Ernest G. Batley’s ‘Charles Peace, King of Criminals’, making Barlow one of Britain’s earliest screen villains. From then on he became the face audiences recognised but couldn’t quite name—character parts, second leads, a steady presence in London’s Jury and Minerva studios throughout the Great War decade. Ideal Film Co. gave him uniform and limelight as Lt. Waters opposite Langhorne Burton’s ‘Tom Jones’ (1917); Atlantic Films let him match wits with Douglas Payne’s Sexton Blake in ‘The Mystery of the S.S. Olympic’ (1920). The twenties kept him busy—kidnappers, colonels, conniving butlers—culminating in a slot in history’s first British feature shot in full colour, ‘The Glorious Adventure’ (1922). His final flicker came as Dorcas, a dry-witted servant in Leslie S. Hiscott’s ‘Ringing the Changes’ (1929), bowing out beside Henry Edwards and tipping his polished pate to the sound era he would never join.