John Barrymore

Biography

John Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth on Febraury 14, 1892 in Philadelphia, Pennslyvania. John was a member of the most famous theatrical family in America. His father was Maurice Blyth, a stage success under the name 'Maurice Barrymore'. His mother, Georgie Drew, was the daughter of actor John Drew. John was handsome and roguish. He made his stage debut at 18 in one of his father's productions, but was much more interested in becoming an artist. He briefly studied at King's College, Wimbledon, and at New York's Art Students League, Barrymore worked as a freelance artist and for a while sketched for the New York Evening Journal. Gradually he became interested in his parents craft and by 1905 he had given up professional drawing and was touring the country in plays. Barrymore, like his siblings, became a distinguished thespian; his interpretations of Shakespeare's Richard III and Hamlet were spoken of with great admiration decades after his appearances in the roles.

Barrymore made his screen debut in An American Citizen (1914). His most successful silent films include Raffles (1917), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920, Sherlock Holmes (1922, in the title role), Beau Brummel(1924), The Sea Beast,Don Juan and The Beloved Rogue (1927). While a lot of silent film stars failed to make a success in "talkies", Barrymore triumphed. He delivered a Shakespearean soliloquy in Warner Bros.' all-star revue, The Show of Shows (1929), then starred in General Crack, The Man From Blankley's, Moby Dick (all 1930), Svengali and The Mad Genius (both 1931).

Arsene Lupin and with an all-star cast headed by Greta Garbo in the Oscarwinning Grand Hotel, playing a jewel theif. That same year he also starred in State's Attorney and A Bill of Divorcement, playing a mentally ill man who comes home from the mental hospital only to discover that his wife is getting remarried. Both films were well-recieved. He shared top billing with Lionel and Ethel in Rasputin and the Empress and distinguished the all-star casts of Dinner at Eight(1933) and Night Flight (1933). He was magnificant as the driven, betrayed Jewish lawyer of Counsellor-at-Law William Wyler's adaptation of an Elmer Rice play.

But Barrymore's reckless lifestyle was catching up with him. He began relying on cue cards because he was forgetting his lines. His years of drinking was also affecting his health which was evident in how his face and figure looked.

Barrymore recieved an Oscar nomination for his performance in Romeo and Juliet (1936), but then his career began to go downhill forcing him into"B" movies. He got top billing for a supporting role in Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937), played an ingenious wife-killer in Night Club Scandal(1937) , and costarred with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Maytime that same year. His comic performances in True Confessions (1937), Hold That Co-Ed (1938), The Great Man Votes(1939) and Midnight (1939), were fun to watch, but by 1940 he was parodying himself, on Rudy Vallee's radio show and in such second-rate films as The Great Profile (1940), World Premiere and Playmates(1941). Barrymore wrote an autobiography, "Confessions of an Actor," in 1926, and was the subject of a favorable biography, "Good Night, Sweet Prince," written by cohort Gene Fowler in 1944. His daughter Diana, painted a very different picture of him in her 1957 autobiography, "Too Much, Too Soon."He died on May 29, 1942 in Los Angeles, California from pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver.