Wavy-haired, articulate, quietly-spoken Bardette was one of Hollywood's
archetypal villains of westerns and cliffhanger serials. He initially
aspired to become a mechanical engineer after graduating from Oregon
State University in June 1925. However, by the late 1920s, he had
changed his name from Terva Gaston Hubbard to Trevor Bardette and
embarked on a brief, unremarkable acting career on the East Coast
stage, before moving to Hollywood in 1937. Though he went on to essay
the occasional sheriff, rustic, frontiersman or hero's sidekick, his
stoney features and deep-set, cold eyes ensured that he would
invariably be cast as a ruthless heavy, sneaky spy, swindler, gangster
or double-crosser. In the course of a thirty year career, the majority
of his characters rarely survived until the final scene.
A hard-working character player, Bardette took on just about any role
offered him. Between 1938 and 1940 alone, he appeared in some 33 films,
including bits in prestige pictures like
Jezebel - die boshafte Lady (1938),
Marie-Antoinette (1938),
Vom Winde verweht (1939),
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
and
Früchte des Zorns (1940).
At the smaller studios and later for television, he fared rather better
in terms of screen time. Serials, especially, gave him the opportunity
to chew the scenery at his most menacing: as the scar-faced Pegleg (aka
Mitchell) of
Overland with Kit Carson (1939),
the icily controlled, preening killer Raven of
Winners of the West (1940);
and the deceptively meek Jensen, head of a Nazi spy ring, in
The Secret Code (1942). On TV, he
was Old Man Clanton, cattle rustler and perpetual nemesis of law and
order in
Wyatt Earp greift ein (1955)
(though, in actual fact, N.H. Clanton never faced the Earps, having met
his fate earlier at the hands of Mexican cowboys in Guadalupe Canyon).
Then there were recurring roles in series like
Lassie (1954),
Cheyenne (1955) and
Rauchende Colts (1955), to name but a few.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Bardette bought his own ranch in Green
Valley, Arizona, where he spent his remaining years after retiring from
acting in 1970. In interesting footnote is his authorship (under his
original name) of a short story entitled "The Phantom Photoplay",
published in the August 1927 issue of Weird Tales magazine. His first
name Terva, evidently sounded sufficiently feminine to be included
among the publication's list of lady writers.
