#barrypearl

BARRY PEARL

1950

Barry Pearl is an American actor. Pearl was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, US and was raised by his mother, his aunts and maternal grandmother. His family is Jewish and he enjoyed eating his grandmothers cooking. When he was aged nine his mother enrolled him in tap-dancing classes and his desire turned to acting. He started performing in plays and at the age of twelve he was in a production of Oliver! To pursue an acting career, he and his mother moved to New York and stayed in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, she slept on the sofa and he had the bedroom. He started his acting career in 1961 on Broadway.

            He has been married three times and is still happily married to his third wife. Today he teaches film across America to those who have special needs.

            Pearl is best known for playing Doody who is one of the T-Birds in the film Grease (1978). Doody is remembered for being Frenchy’s boyfriend, criticising Kenickie’s car, his plastic squirt gun, and mooning the TV cameras. Even though his real name is never revealed, in the theatre production it is Ronald Dell and in the novel it is Donald. Pearl said that before production the actors were taken to a prop trunk and told to pick out anything they wanted for their character and he picked the squirt gun. He said he picked it because he loved squirt guns when he was a child during the 1950s. He stated that working with Olivia Newton John was a delight and they remained in contact, he sent her an email a week before she died in 2022.

            Pearl has appeared in Grease (1978), The Munsters’ Revenge (1981), Heartbeat (1985), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985), Growing Pains (1986), Murder, She Wrote (1987), They Came From Outer Space (1991), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1991), Baywatch Nights (1996), My Favorite Martian (1999), and Baywatch (1999).