The son of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Berman, Barton was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Lake View High School and the school of speech at Northwestern University. At age 12, he began his lifelong acting career starting out in radio, averaging 15 shows a week as a child actor. He served in the Army Special Services Entertainment Unit during World War II acting with Alex Nicol and Mickey Rooney. While stationed in Paris he edited a humor magazine. After returning to the States he was cast as Stefanowski in the stage play Mr. Roberts where he met actor Cliff Robertson who became his lifelong friend. While on tour, Barton met actress Anne Henderson, whom he later wed. They married between a matinee and evening performance. Anne, who died in 2000, was best known as Eddie Haskell’s mother in Leave it to Beaver. They had two children, musician Steve Barton from the band Translator and Susan Berman. In 2005, he married Gyl Roland, daughter of Gilbert Roland and Constance Bennett.
Career
In the late 1940s, Barton appeared on stage in a production of Mister Roberts alongside Cliff Robertson, Lee Van Cleef, John Forsythe and Brian Keith. He had a long career in television from the 1950s through the 1980s, playing in a variety of different shows including Playhouse 90. He was cast as Jim Ellis, a schoolmaster with a mysterious past who claims to have killed a bank robber, in the 1957 season premiere, "Incident at Indian Springs", of the ABC/Warner Brothers westerntelevision series, Cheyenne, with Clint Walker in the title role. Barton portrayed Sergeant Burke in the NBCcrime dramaDan Raven. Among other series in which he appeared were The Lone RangerDick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, Bonanza, Barnaby Jones, The F.B.I., Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, Battlestar Galactica and Quincy M.E. Barton also portrayed Earl Carnes, the character you loved to hate on NBC's Days of Our Lives''. In his later years, Barton was highly in demand as a voice-over talent. He narrated documentaries, worked in commercials and provided the voices for many characters in video games. He also spent several years recording books for the blind for The Braille Institute. He was the spokesman for Northrup Aviation for twelve years and did voice-over work for companies such as Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, Microsoft and Nike. Barton also was the voice in many political campaign commercials, including prominent Republicans Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elizabeth Dole, despite his own position as a lifelong Democrat.
