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Dana Barron

American actress

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ458490
Source-derived summary

Dana Barron (born April 22, 1966) is an American actress who is best known for her role as the original Audrey Griswold in the 1983 film National Lampoon's Vacation, which she reprised in 2003's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure for NBC television.

Early life

Barron's father, Robert Weeks Barron, was a director of commercials and a Congregationalist church pastor; Robert founded The Weist-Barron School of Television, the first commercial and soap opera acting for television school in the world. Barron is a fifth generation entertainer. Her great-grandparents were musicians, and her grandmother was a singer. Her grandfather was an opera singer, and her mother moved from Alabama to become an actress. Barron has a sister.

Barron graduated from New York University with a degree in marketing.

Career

Barron's sister, Allison, had been doing TV commercials at a young age, and Barron told her father that she wished to do the same. She began acting at age 10, doing TV commercials as well. By age 11, she was appearing with Christine Baranski in Hide and Seek on Broadway.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dana Barron” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1966, 1983, 2003—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1966-04-22. The account is most persuasive where Dana, Barron and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q458490. VIAF identifies the subject as 307172941. The Library of Congress control number is no2014023637. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1983 and 2003.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dana Barron”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dana Barron primary sources, Dana Barron archive and Dana research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dana Barron”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Dana Barron” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.