Born in
Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada, Barker's family moved to
Scotland when he was an infant and then to the United States. Living in
California, Barker wrote, produced, and acted in his first play known as
Granna Uile at the age of sixteen following which he acted and handled stage manager duties with a traveling
stock company. When he was eighteen he was the leading man and played in many stock companies. Then he worked with
Robert Hilliard in the production of the play named
A Fool There Was. At age nineteen, he went to
New York City where he worked as a stage manager for
Henry Miller. Barker made his
Broadway acting debut in 1910 in the
Shubert brothers production of "
Mary Magdalene" written by
Maurice Maeterlinck. Fascinated by the fledgling film business, Barker soon joined the
Bison Motion Pictures division of the
New York Motion Picture Company. At the company's studio/ranch in California, he worked under film producer and screenwriter
Thomas H. Ince. Acting was not Barker's forte and he trained as an assistant director until 1912 when he directed his first film, a twenty-minute
western titled "
On the Warpath" starring
Art Acord. Barker went on to direct more than eighty films, including the acclaimed 1915
American Civil War drama
The Coward. That same year he directed
The Italian but because Thomas H. Ince was notorious for credit-grabbing, Barker originally went uncredited on this film. "
The Italian" has been selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry. The following year, with the United States still not involved in
World War I, Barker co-directed the famous anti-war feature,
Civilization. During his career, Reginald Barker directed early stars such as
Geraldine Farrar,
William S. Hart,
Sessue Hayakawa,
Gladys Brockwell,
Hoot Gibson,
Willard Mack, and
Myrna Loy. In his first sound film (no talking sequences), "
The Toilers" (1928) he directed
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Barker made his last film in 1935. Titled "
The Healer," it starred
Ralph Bellamy,
Karen Morley and
Mickey Rooney. Reginald Barker retired to
Pasadena, California where he and his wife operated a gift shop until his death from a
heart attack in 1945. He is interred in the
Inglewood Park Cemetery in
Inglewood, California. ==Partial filmography==