Talk:Joan Barry (American actress)

Death Date
Can someone please put some form of reference for this 1996 death date that has been listed on wikipedia for months now? I have conducted extensive research on to what happened to her post-1953 and nothing leads me to believe that this date is valid unless it has some form of credible reference. Pinkfloyd2500 (talk) 07:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I have removed the date as all efforts by her family to trace Miss Barry after the mid-1960s failed to disclosed any information on her whereabouts. See reference at end of article. Plutonium27 (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have discovered her date of death according to Find a Grave - it is the 1st of October 2007. 60.240.8.249 (talk) 02:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems the Find-a-grave death date and some other info (but not everything mentioned on the Find-a-grave entry!) is available now from public government records, specifically: the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007. The most direct reference to this info that I know of, is exactly here at the paid site [Ancestry.com].  I'm brand new here so I don't want to go whacking pages that have gone back and forth, but I'm more than willing to help for this small issue however possible.  I'd attach the text here of the actual SSA record showing all the data but as a total newbie, I think that's also probably not best.  In the SSA record, the maiden name, birth date, birthplace, and parents are exactly as the article states.  There is a SocSec claim date of 15 Nov 1968, and a death date of 1 Oct 2007.  The SSN listed (publically available data for those deceased, used by banking and others to prevent criminal forgery) is 526-02-0304.  The final name (also mentioned in the wiki but nowhere sourced) is Mary L Baker.  This info fits statements by her son Stephen.  It's somewhat troubling that surname Seck is not mentioned in the record, but that is not unheard of.  So we can safely say, either this death date is correct or else some of the other info already in the current wiki page is incorrect.  There is also the possibility that the US record was forged by someone - which would also not be unheard of and would be quite challenging to prove.  There was a note that the FBI had the SSN - it might be possible to corroborate.  Thanks to all who are making the info here sourced well and made as valid as possible.  Psychesy (talk) 18:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry, this is all WP:OR. We don't use primary sources like government documents. Someday someone will put this in an RS, if it's really the right person and the data is correct. EEng 06:56, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Correct Name?
The Wiki cites her name as Joan Barry, but the Textbook mentions the case as Berry v chaplin. The Textbook is Fundamentals of Forensic Antrhopology by Linda L. Klepinger (Published by Wiley.) on pages 143 to 146

Could easily be a misprint, but I'm seen her name as berry in other books that mention it. -Amelia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.63.235.248 (talk) 18:53, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * She went under many different aliases. In regards to the Barry/Berry confusions, she did actually go by both names.  Her step father's name was indeed "Berry," as was her mother's assumed name from him.  Even if you look at her voter's registration from the mid-1940s she went under "Mary Louise Berry".  However, her "stage name" was spelled "Barry" and many articles from the era used both versions of the spelling depending on the writer. Pinkfloyd2500 (talk) 17:53, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Deleted paragraph
Since the article ref for this has vanished, I'm deleting this para from the article and moving it here until it can be sourced again: "Joan Barry's last contact with her sons was a telephone call in the mid-1960s, after which her whereabouts and fate are unknown. Her eldest son believed she probably remarried, changed her name and later died. A valid social security number was found in FBI documents having to do with Chaplin but nothing meaningful has ever been traced."
 * Wjhonson (talk) 02:27, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * You could try the Wayback Machine internet archive to find the information that is referenced. Sf46 (talk) 21:01, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Excerpt from http://notesonafilm.com/joan-barry-article/ -- According to her son, Stephen, the family lived together in Los Angeles and moved to Acapulco, Mexico, for a short time when the U.S. government was again trying to get Barry to testify against Chaplin in an undeveloped case. She refused to incriminate him. He remembers his mother as a kind, caring woman who always tried to do the best she could for her family and remembers her having a wonderful singing voice. In 1953, at the age of five, he moved with his father and brother to Ohio where he would graduate high school. He has not seen his mother since, having last talked with her on the phone in the mid 1960s. He and his family hired private investigators to try and track her down over time, but she seems to have disappeared. He assumes she may have remarried and is more than likely deceased.

I added a couple sentences at the end of the article to indicate her "unknown" status.

74.87.116.4 (talk) 16:40, 18 September 2015 (UTC)