Friday Minute
No. 16 | January 22, 2010

It Runs in the Family

Our theme this week
Families with three (or more) generations of film actors

Featured this week
Monday         —   The Fondas
Tuesday         —   The Hustons
Wednesday    —   The Carradines
Thursday        —   The Redgraves

The Barrymores

The essentials
Before they were the Barrymores:
The Drew Generations:  John Drew, married to Louisa Lane Drew (both were stage actors and theater owners; Louisa appeared in plays with John Wilkes Booth and his father); John and Louisa were parents of stage actors Louisa Drew, John Drew Jr. (leading matinee idol of his day), Georgiana Drew (married to Maurice Barrymore), and Sidney Drew (of stage and film comedy team Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew)

The early Barrymores:
Pre-film Generation:  Maurice Barrymore (born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth, he studied law at Oxford before becoming a middleweight boxing champion, then a major Broadway star), married to Georgiana Drew

First Generation (film):  Lionel, Ethel, John
Second Generation:  Diana, John Drew (John)
Third Generation:  John Blyth, Drew (John Drew)

This week I have so far resisted using the word dynasty.  Though it’s a label that could apply to the other families, it’s a word that’s hard not to use when talking about the Barrymores.  The acting bloodlines go back to the first half the 19th century, more than we have time to cover here.  We’ll pick up their story with film stars Lionel, Ethel, and John, which still leaves plenty to discuss.

Lionel Barrymore was first an actor in the theater, and he was the first of the Barrymores to move into film.  He made dozens of silents with D.W. Griffith in the early 1910s.  Barrymore made 17 films released in 1912 (according to IMDb), and he was just warming up for the next year, when he made 45.  The film biz was a different place in those days, but that’s still an astonishing amount of work.  After a couple of decades of silents, as an actor and director, Barrymore made the transition to sound films.  He was nominated for an Oscar for directing Madame X (1929).  He won Best Actor in 1931 for playing an alcoholic defense attorney in A Free Soul.  It was a record-setting performance, earning a citation in the Guinness Book for Barrymore’s 14-minute uninterrupted monologue.  He appeared with his brother, John, in Grand Hotel (1932), but was the only Barrymore in (a usefully titled) A Family Affair (1937), where he played Andy’s dad, the first Judge Hardy.  He was the grandfather on crutches in 1938’s Best Picture, You Can’t Take It With You.  In fifteen films he played Dr. Leonard Gillespie, a role he began in Young Dr. Kildare (1938).  In his later years, a broken hip and arthritis kept him wheelchair-bound, though not out of movies.  He had played Ebenezer Scrooge annually on radio and was the perfect choice for the unforgettable Mr. Potter in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  He was memorable as well in Key Largo (1948), as the hotel owner who’d lost a son in the war.

Ethel Barrymore was a big star on the New York stage.  Her name still adorns the Broadway theater on 47th Street that has featured legitimate productions since the 1920s.  She traveled west to make silent films beginning in 1914.  She performed with brothers Lionel and John in Rasputin and the Empress (1932), the only film with all three Barrymores in starring roles.  Not a big fan of Hollywood (“the whole place is a glaring, gaudy nightmarish set, built up in the desert”), she stayed away for a decade but returned with an Oscar-winning performance opposite Cary Grant in None But the Lonely Heart (1944).  Her other notable films include Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (1947) and Portrait of Jennie (1948).

The youngest of three, John Barrymore followed his family onto the stage.  He was hailed as one of the great talents of his generation, famous for his Shakespearean leads (Richard III, Hamlet) and other roles.  He started making films in 1913 and some of his noteworthy silent movies include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Sherlock Holmes (1922), and Don Juan (1926).  He played Captain Ahab in The Sea Beast (1926), then reprised the role for the sound remake Moby Dick (1930).  Grand Hotel (1932), with Greta Garbo and his brother, was a huge success.  He played a washed-up silent actor in Dinner at Eight (1933), with Jean Harlow.  He starred with Myrna Loy in Topaze (1933) and with Carole Lombard in Howard Hawks’s screwball classic Twentieth Century (1934).   His last great performance of Shakespeare was as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1936), directed by George Cukor.  He collapsed on a radio show in 1942 and died a few days later.  He had this to say about his ways:  “There are lots of methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice.”

Diana Barrymore was John’s daughter by his second wife.  Her parents divorced when she was young, and she was estranged from her father for most of her life. She made her Broadway debut at 19, and a few years later began making films.  She costarred with Brian Donlevy in Nightmare (1942).  Her Hollywood career did not last, shortened by problems with alcohol. Her autobiography, Too Much, Too Soon, was made into a 1958 film with Dorothy Malone as Diana and Errol Flynn as her father.

John Drew Barrymore was John’s son by his third wife, and also was young when his parents divorced.  He broke into pictures in 1950 with The Sundowners, and starred in Joseph Losey’s film noir The Big Night (1951).  His Hollywood career never took off, however.  He acted on television later in the ’50s, then moved to Italy where he made films during the ’60s.  He married four times, and with his third wife had daughter Drew.

John Blyth Barrymore is the son of John Drew Barrymore and half-brother of Drew.  He appeared on the Kung Fu TV series in the ’70s and had a number of small movie roles during the ’80s and ’90s.

Drew Barrymore is the youngest of the acting Barrymores and the youngest to attain stardom.  She was the adorably naughty Gertie in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which made her famous at the age of seven.  Irreconcilable Differences (1984) earned her good reviews.  She went through some rebellious tween and teen years, and wrote a book about them, Little Girl Lost.  In Scream (1996) she made a brief but eerily memorable appearance, and she costarred with Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer (1998).  She starred in the comedy Never Been Kissed (1999), the first film from her own production company, which had a hit a year later with Charlie’s Angels.  Reteaming with Sandler she made 50 First Dates (2004) and received generally good reviews for Music and Lyrics (2007), with Hugh Grant.  In 2009 she directed her first feature, Whip It, a comedy starring Ellen Page.  This past week she won a Golden Globe for playing “Little Edie” Bouvier in the HBO film Grey Gardens.  The still-young Barrymore is in her thirties now, and the worst of her troubles seem to be behind her.  She’s talented, and if she may not have all the brilliance of some in her lineage, she may at this point be more stable, and more appealing.

Beyond the final credits
The families we featured this week made a lot of movies, but none of them made a movie in which all three generations appeared.  For that feat we need to look to another family.  A 2003 comedy-drama about a family of prominent and dysfunctional New Yorkers starred the father-son-grandson trio of Kirk, Michael, and Cameron Douglas.   Diana Dill, real-life mother of Michael and real-life ex of Kirk, played the elder father’s wife.  The title’s an apt one (you knew this already, right?):  It Runs in the Family.

---

You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur

---

Quote of Note
“First there was the dream, now there is reality. Here in the untainted cradle of the heavens will be created a new super race, a race of perfect physical specimens. You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in public capacities in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens.”
— Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), Moonraker (1979)

…58…59…60.