photo:
http://www.nndb.com/people/744/000043615/john-barrymore.jpg
Biography
Barrymore was born in Philadelphia into an extremely illustrious theatrical family. He was expelled from Georgetown Preparatory School in 1898 after being caught attending a bordello. His classic nose and distinguished features won him the nickname "The Great Profile." He was a hard drinking adventurer with a jaunty personality but a troubled personal life that probably cut his life short. Barrymore delivered some of the most critically acclaimed performances in cinema history. He was regarded by many as the screen's greatest actor during a movie career spanning 25 years as a leading man in more than 60 films. His movie roles included Sherlock Holmes (1922), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Captain Ahab in both The Sea Beast (1926) and Moby Dick (1930), Don Juan (1926), Svengali (1931), Raffles the Amateur Cracksman (1917), Hamlet (1933) and the leading man in the great ensemble classics Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner At Eight (1933), among many others. He continuously worked opposite many of the foremost leading ladies, including Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard. Alcoholism or possibly Alzheimer's Disease encroached on his ability to remember his lines and by the late 1930s his career was winding down from its earlier heights, with supporting roles in Bulldog Drummond films--Drummond was the James Bond of his day.
Lionel, Ethel, and Drew Barrymore
Barrymore was the younger brother of actor Lionel ("Mr. Potter" in It's A Wonderful Life) and actress Ethel Barrymore and the grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore (the similarities in facial structure between the profiles of John Barrymore and Drew Barrymore remain eerily striking).
Philandering
A notorious ladies' man, he courted the actress Mary Astor and also the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (as her involvement with married architect Stanford White was waning). When she became pregnant, Barrymore proposed marriage. But 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.
Marriages
Barrymore married
1) Katherine Corri Harris (1891-1927), an actress who starred in the 1918 film The House of Mirth, on September 1, 1910 and divorced in 1916.
2) Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs (1890-1950), a New York mining heiress who wrote under the pseudonym "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 thirty-eight.
3) Dolores Costello (1903-1979), an actress and model best known for her role as Dearest in the movie Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936); they married on November 24, 1928 and divorced in 1935. They had two children:
Dolores Ethel Mae Barrymore
John Drew Barrymore (father of Drew Barrymore).
4) Elaine Barrie (née Elaine Jacobs), (1916-2003), an actress; they married on November 9, 1936 and divorced in 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, left his corpse propped in a chair for a drunken Flynn to discover when he returned home from The Cock and Bull Bar. Other accounts of this classic Hollywood tale substitute actor Peter Lorre in the place of Walsh.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, John Barrymore has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6667 Hollywood Boulevard.
Related article
Barrymore family
Sources
Biography: Good Night Sweet Prince by Gene Fowler
David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace: The New Book of Lists, p.9. Canongate, 2005.
