Lynn Bari

Lynn Bari (born Marjorie Schuyler Fisher, December 18, 1919 – November 20, 1989) was a film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 films for 20th Century Fox, from the early 1930s through the 1940s. Early years Bari was born on December 18, 1919, in Roanoke, Virginia, to John Manard Fisher (December 12, 1873 – June 4, 1927), of Lynchburg, Virginia, and his wife Marjorie Babcock Halpen (November 27, 1893 - May 11, 1960) a native of Albany, New York. Her father was a successful auto sales manager who for many years worked for a Roanoke car dealership, Harper Motor. In 1925, he left his job and moved the family to his hometown, Lynchburg, where he opened a car dealership of his own. Two years later, heavily in debt and struggling to make a sizeable profit, he, while away on a business trip, took his own life by jumping out of a hotel window. After selling everything to settle debts his widow was left with little money to support herself and her two children: John, her eldest and Marjorie. To make ends meet, she arranged for her sister, Ellen, who with her husband lived in Melrose, MA to take in her and her children. Failing to find work in Melrose, she moved to Boston, where she met and soon, in March 1929, married the Reverend Robert Bitzer, a Religious Science minister. Bari later recalled other children at school in Boston made life miserable for her brother and her, making constant fun of their obvious Southern accents. Determined to eliminate hers, she became involved with amateur theatrics and took elocution lessons. She was enthusiastic when at the age of 13 she was told her stepfather had been reassigned to Los Angeles, where he later became the head of the Institute of Religious Science. When she was 14 and attending drama school, Bari adopted the stage name Lynn Barrie, a composite of the names of theater actress Lynn Fontanne and author J.M. Barrie. After reading a story about the Italian city of Bari, she decided to change the spelling.