Ernestine Barrier

Ernestine Barrier (March 19, 1908 – February 13, 1989) was an American actress of stage, film and television. Her birth name was Ernestine Spratt, but she used the stage name of Ernestine De Becker (after her mother's maiden name). She is noted for playing a female president in the film Project Moonbase (1953). Descended from an acting family, Barrier made her first stage appearance at the age of roughly six months when she was carried onstage by her mother Ernestine ("Nesta") De Becker (sister of Marie De Becker), also an actress.

Barrier acted into her eighties appearing on such television shows as Charlie's Angels, CHiPs, and The Waltons and the television film A Family Upside Down (1978) with Helen Hayes and Fred Astaire. Her feature film appearances include Lust for Life (1956) with Kirk Douglas, and The Bottom of the Bottle (also 1956) with Van Johnson and Joseph Cotten.

She is also remembered for her work in the 1930s on Broadway where she appeared under the name Ernestine De Becker in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38, Robert E. Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and Late One Evening by Audrey Carten and Waveney Carten. In 1946, she returned to Broadway (using her married name of Ernestine Barrier) appearing with her husband Edgar Barrier in On Whitman Avenue.

In 1959 she appeared in the season two opener of Bat Masterson where Masterson (Gene Barry) acknowledges her as the Lady who “taught me how to appreciate and drink wine, and made me the gentleman that I became”.

She was survived by her son, the former actor Michael Barrier, and her granddaughter Maerian Morris.