Biography

Another face in Hollywood's crowd, John Barton faced many challenges that your typical extra didn't. Barton only had one leg and he used a peg leg to get around from film set to film set. This constantly challenged Barton because it eliminated a lot of work that his aged appearance might otherwise have gotten him.

Starting in the 1930s, Barton typically appeared as workman but his handicap limited him to appearing in scenes were people were typically sitting down or where he could lean against a bar to prop himself up. He managed to appear in various movies in 1930s but it wasn't until the big budget westerns of the 1940s that Barton really started to work steadily.

With the rise in popularity of westerns in the 1940s, studios started investing heavily into westerns with bigger budgets. In the past, western sets were typically inhabited by old time cowboys who drifted to Hollywood but with the increase in popularity, Barton and other extras were able to capitalize by lending their rough looking appearances to countless bar scenes. This became a regular source of income to Barton because it enabled him to sit down in the bar or lean against it when needed.

With the advent of television, Barton's career really took off because he had a lot of television westerns he could appear in and there were new courtroom based series that he could appear in. By the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared in almost every American movie where there was a courtroom scene and could regularly be seen on shows like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Perry Mason.

By the 1960s, the tiresome days of the movie set started to affect Barton. Parry Mason had been canceled and westerns were starting to lose their popularity so Barton decided to retire leaving behind a long career that spanned a few generation.
- IMDb mini biography by: Phillip Arnold