JOHN 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.

Contents

Background

Marriages

Dying words

Trivia

Quotations

Notes

See also

References

External links

See also

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) 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.''^[1]
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 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:
#
★ Diana Blanche Barrymore (1921-1960), whose tragic life ended at age 38. A semi-autobiographical story of her life was depicted in ''Too Much, Too Soon'', starring Errol Flynn as her father
# 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:
#
★ Dolores Ethel Mae Barrymore (living)
#
★ John Drew Barrymore (1932-2004) (father of Drew Barrymore)
# 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 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

1. 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)
2. 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)
3. Fowler, Gene: ''Good Night, Sweet Prince'' (Viking Press, 1944; page 463)

See also

★ Barrymore family

★ Drew Barrymore

★ Lionel Barrymore

★ Ethel Barrymore

★ John Drew Barrymore

References

★ ''Good Night, Sweet Prince'' (1944) by Gene Fowler

★ ''The New Book of Lists'' by David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace

★ '' by David W. Menefee.

External links

★

★ John Barrymore Quotes ISearchQuotations

★ Photographs of John Barrymore

★ young John Barrymore aged 15 in 1897 and other Broadway related material from the Billy Rose collection of the New York Public Library

See also

★ Alumni of Jesuit schools