This article is about John Barrymore, Sr. For his son John Barrymore, Jr., see
John Drew Barrymore.
John Sidney Blyth Barrymore (February 15 1882 in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – May 29
1942 in Los Angeles, California), was an
American actor.
He gained fame as a stage actor, lauded for his portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III, and is frequently called the greatest actor of his generation. He was the brother of
Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore, and the
grandfather of Drew Barrymore.
Background
Barrymore was born into an illustrious theatrical family. His parents were Maurice
Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. His maternal grandmother was Louisa Lane Drew (aka Mrs Drew), a prominent and well respected 19th century actress and theater
manager, who instilled into John, his sister Ethel & brother Lionel the ways of acting & theatre life. John's classic
nose and distinguished features won him the nickname "The Great Profile." John fondly remembered the summer of 1896 in his youth
spent on Maurice's rambling farm on Long Island. He , Lionel and a black cook named Edward lived a Robinson Crusoe existence in
which John said that Edward never made him or Lionel make their beds or wash the dishes and Edward was always able to cook up a
hearty meal from nothing. He was expelled from Georgetown Preparatory
School in 1898 after being caught attending a bordello. He was a hard-drinking adventurer
with a jaunty personality.
A notorious ladies' man, he courted showgirl Evelyn
Nesbit in 1901 and 1902. When Nesbit became pregnant -- she aged 17 and he 19 -- Barrymore proposed marriage. But her
"sponsor" Stanford White intervened, and arranged for the still-teenaged Evelyn to
undergo an operation for "appendicitis". White was later murdered by Nesbit's vengeful
husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K.
Thaw.
In 1906, he stayed at the St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, when the big
earthquake struck. He had starred a production of The Dictator and was booked to sail to Australia to tour with it.
Since he loathed this prospect, he decided to disappear, spending the next few days drinking at the home of a friend on Van Ness
Avenue. "During his drinking jag, he had worked out a plan to exploit the earthquake for his own ends. He decided to present
himself as an on-the-scene "reporter" of what had really happened in San Francisco. The one discrepancy between John Barrymore's
"report" and those written by others involved in the disaster was that the actor made up virtually all he claimed to have seen.
Twenty years later Barrymore finally confessed to his deception. But by then he was so famous that the world merely smiled
indulgently at his admission."[1] His account was written
as a "letter to my sister Ethel. He was sure the letter would be "worth at least a hundred dollars." In terms of publicity
it earned Barrymore a thousand times that amount.[2]
Barrymore delivered some of the most critically acclaimed performances in theatre and
cinema history and was regarded by many as the screen's greatest performer during a movie career
spanning 25 years as a leading man in more than 60 films.
He specialized in trivial comedies until creating a sensation in John Galsworthy's
Justice (1916). He followed this triumph up with
Broadway successes in Peter Ibbetson
(1917)(a role his father Maurice had wanted to play) and The
Jest (1919) (co-starring his brother Lionel), reaching what seemed to be the zenith of his career as Richard III in 1920. Barrymore had a conspicuous failure in his wife Michael Strange's strange play Clair de Lune
(1921), but followed it with the greatest success of his career with Hamlet in 1920 which he played on Broadway for 101 performances and
then took to London in 1925.
His silent-film roles included A.J. Raffles in Raffles the Amateur Cracksman
(1917), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Sherlock Holmes (1922), Beau Brummel
(1924), The Sea Beast (1926, as Captain Ahab), and
Don Juan (1926). When talking pictures arrived, Barrymore's theatrically trained voice
added a new dimension to his work. He made his talkie debut with a dramatic reading from Henry
VI in Warner Brothers' musical revue The Show of Shows, and reprised his
Captain Ahab role in Moby Dick (1930). His other leads included The Man from Blankley's (1930), Svengali (1931), Grand Hotel (1932),
Dinner at Eight (1933), Topaze (1933) and Twentieth Century (1934).
He worked opposite many of the screen's foremost leading ladies, including Greta Garbo,
Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and
Carole Lombard. In 1933, Barrymore appeared as a Jewish attorney in the title role of
Counsellor-at-Law. As critic Pauline Kael later wrote, he "seems an unlikely choice for
the ghetto-born lawyer...but this is one of the few screen roles that reveal his measure as an actor. His 'presence' is apparent
in every scene; so are his restraint, his humor, and his zest."
In the late 1930s alcoholism and possibly Alzheimer's Disease encroached on his ability to remember his lines, and his diminished abilities
were plainly apparent in an existing screen test that he made for an aborted film of Hamlet in 1934. From then on he insisted on reading his dialogue from cue cards. In the late 1930s he
continued to give creditable performances in lesser pictures (he played Inspector Nielson in some of Paramount Pictures' Bulldog Drummond mysteries) and offered
one last bravura dramatic turn in RKO's 1939 feature The Great Man Votes. After
that, his last screen roles were broad and distasteful caricatures of himself, as in The Great Profile (with a demeaning
choice of theme music: "Oh, Johnny, How You Can Love") and World Premiere. In the otherwise embarrassing Playmates
with bandleader Kay Kyser, the failing Barrymore recited the Hamlet soliloquy with care and conviction, seeming to know that he would never do it again. In 1937,
Barrymore visited the country of India, the land where his father had been born. In his private life during his last years he was
married to his fourth and last wife Elaine Barrie which for better or worse turned out to be disastrous. His brother Lionel tried
to help John find a small place near himself and to convince John to stay away from impetuous marriages which usually ended in
divorce and put a strain on his once great income.
Barrymore had been a friend and contemporary (and drinking buddy) of his fellow Philadelphian W. C. Fields. In the 1976 film W. C. Fields and Me,
Barrymore was played by Jack Cassidy. He was also portrayed by Christopher Plummer in the 1996 one-man show Barrymore.
Marriages
- Katherine Corri Harris (1891-1927), an actress who starred in the 1918 film The House of
Mirth, on September 1, 1910 and divorced in 1917
.
- Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs (1890-1950), aka "Michael Strange," on August 5, 1920 and
divorced her in 1925 . They had one child:
- Dolores Costello (1903-1979), actress and model best known for Little Lord
Fauntleroy (1936) & The
Magnificent Ambersons(1941); they married on November 24, 1928 and divorced in 1935 . They had two children:
- Elaine Barrie (née Elaine Jacobs), (1916-2003), an actress; married November 9,
1936 and divorced 1940
Dying words
His dying words were "Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to
him." According to Errol Flynn's memoirs, film director Raoul
Walsh "borrowed" Barrymore's body after the funeral, and left his corpse propped in a chair for a drunken Flynn to
discover when he returned home from The Cock and Bull Bar. This was re-created in the movie W. C. Fields and Me. Other
accounts of this classic Hollywood tale substitute actor Peter Lorre in the place of Walsh,
but Raoul Walsh himself tells the story in Richard Schickel's 1973 documentary "The Men Who Made the Movies."
Gene Fowler attributes different dying words to Barrymore in his biography Good Night,
Sweet Prince. According to Fowler, John Barrymore roused as if to say something to his brother Lionel; Lionel asked John to
repeat himself, and John simply replied, "You heard me, Mike".
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, John Barrymore has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6667 Hollywood
Boulevard.
Trivia
- He was known for calling people by nicknames of his own creation. Dolores Costello
was known in his writing alternately as "Small Cat," "Catkiwee," "Winkie", and "Egg." He called Lionel "Mike". And Ethel called
John "Jake".
- He was fond of sailing, and owned his own yacht, "The Mariner", on which he could escape unhappy wives, mistresses, lawyers,
and creditors.
- Both his first and second wives were delivered by the same doctor.
- He owned a pet monkey named Clementine, which he adored, and which appeared with her master in the films The Sea Beast (1926), Don Juan (1926), and When A Man Loves (1927). Clementine was a
gift from English actress Gladys Cooper.
- He named his favourite accommodation in a boarding house "The Alchemist's Corner."
- The Barrymore Estate is believed to be haunted by his spirit, referenced in Paul Rudnick play
I Hate Hamlet.
- He is mentioned in the lyrics of the song I May Be Wrong (But I Think You're Wonderful) by Harry Sullivan and Harry
Ruskin, written in 1929, which became the theme song of the Apollo Theater in New York,
and which was recorded by many artists including Doris Day in 1950. The line is "You might be
John Barrymore", meaning that you might be someone wonderful (it is a love song).
Quotations
- "Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?"
- "A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."
- On the subject of theatre reviews: "Actors should never read them. If you don't believe the bad ones, why should you pay
attention to the good ones?" said to John Carradine, who was performing in If I Were King at the Philharmonic Theatre in
Los Angeles.[3]
Notes
- ^ Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witts: The San Francisco Earthquake
(Stein and Day, New York and Souvenir Press, London, 1971; reprinted Dell, 1972, SBN 440-07631, page 212)
- ^ Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witts: The San Francisco Earthquake
(Stein and Day, New York and Souvenir Press, London, 1971; reprinted Dell, 1972, SBN 440-07631, page 212)
- ^ Fowler, Gene: Good Night, Sweet Prince (Viking Press, 1944; page
463)
See also
References
- Good Night, Sweet Prince (1944) by Gene Fowler
- The New Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace
- The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era by David W. Menefee.
External links
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See also
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