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John Barrymore,
Shakespearean Actor

During the 1920s, a wave of postwar ebullience exploded into the Jazz Age, bringing a new and unprecedented accent on youth and a generation that cast off the vestiges of Victorian culture and embraced new trends in art, music, dance, poetry, fiction, and drama. The way was open for an actor who could recapture and redefine the glamour, skill, and galvanizing presence of an earlier day.

John Barrymore was such an actor, and his Richard III and Hamlet, first seen in New York during the 1919-20 and 1922-23 seasons, stand as high water marks of twentieth century Shakespearean interpretation. Many conventions of modern practice can be traced to Barrymore's performances: he was the first actor to bring the vocal and physical manner of a postwar gentleman to Shakespeare's tragic protagonists and was the first to reinterpret time-honored roles in light of Freudian psychology. His dynamic portrayals and the groundbreaking innovations of his production team, the director Arthur Hopkins and the designer Robert Edmond Jones, helped to revitalize Shakespearean acting and production in America and Great Britain and changed the direction of subsequent revivals.

Barrymore was an original, capable of electrifying audiences with the force and subtle brilliance of his acting. A colorful, complex, mercurial figure, his legendary performances made an extraordinary impression upon the playgoers of his generation.

John Barrymore's journey to Shakespearean distinction had been neither sudden nor easy. He was born in Philadelphia on February 15, 1882 into an illustrious theatrical family. His grandmother, Louisa Lane Drew, served for three decades as manager of Philadelphia's Arch Street Theatre. His father, Maurice Barrymore, was a dashing leading man. His mother, Georgiana Drew, was an accomplished comedienne, and his uncle, John Drew, was the "First Gentleman of the American Stage." Yet he resisted the family trade, preferring to try his hand as a painter and commercial illustrator while frequenting New York's clubs and night spots. Only economic necessity forced him to join sister Ethel and brother Lionel on the stage, which to him was simply "the easiest place to earn a decent living."

Within a few years, his handsome profile and amiable disposition had helped him become a popular matinee idol in light comedy and farce. In 1909, his appearance in 'The Fortune Hunter' catapulted him to Broadway stardom. The following year he entered into the first of his four marriages with Katherine Harris, a stage-struck 18-year-old debutante.

A fortuitous meeting with the playwright Edward Sheldon during the 1911-12 season ultimately led to a new direction for Barrymore's career. Blithe and mercurial by nature, with a penchant for alcohol and chorus girls, Barrymore had never taken himself or the theatre seriously. Yet Sheldon detected hidden reserves of dramatic power that lay untapped in his abilities and gradually persuaded him to look beyond the trivial entertainments that for years had provided his livelihood.

On November 16, 1922, at the Sam H. Harris Theatre, they presented Hamlet. Barrymore's portrayal - colloquial, restrained, yet forceful and startlingly clear - electrified the audience and moved the critics to proclaim him as one of the greatest Hamlets seen in New York. His characterization was revolutionary in its use of Freudian psychology; in keeping with the post World War I rebellion against everything Victorian, he eschewed the genteel, idealized "Sweet Prince" of 19th-century tradition, imbuing his character with danger and sexuality. His impersonation, proclaimed Arthur Hornblow in Theatre Magazine, was "alive with virility and genius."

Barrymore returned to New York in May 1925, and the rest, for many years, was motion pictures. Those who had worked with Barrymore during the period when he was Broadway's leading tragedian lamented his defection to Hollywood, yet they were aware of his fundamental aversion to the nightly grind the theatre demanded, his boredom with long runs. "The creative part of the theatre he loved," recalled Arthur Hopkins. "Its repetition was unbearable." For several years Barrymore concentrated exclusively on silent films, appearing mainly in swashbuckling costume melodramas such as Don Juan (1926) and The Beloved Rogue (1927). With the coming of sound, he found his services even more in demand. In the early 1930s he appeared in more than a dozen films including Grand Hotel (co-starring Greta Garbo and his brother Lionel), A Bill of Divorcement (Katharine Hepburn's screen debut), and Rasputin and the Empress - the only film in which all three Barrymore siblings appeared together.

By the mid-1930s, however, years of hard living, reckless drinking, and a mercurial disregard for his personal well-being had taken their toll. Barrymore began to experience numerous alcohol-related illnesses, and his memory became increasingly erratic; on several occasions, he found himself unable to remember his lines.

By that time, it was clear to the film community that Barrymore's skills and memory were in decline. Forced to read lines from blackboards placed just out of camera range, he was cast mainly in secondary roles in inferior films as a parody of his former self. During the 1939-40 season, he made an ill-starred return to Broadway in My Dear Children, a flimsy, exploitative comedy in which he burlesqued his image as an over-the-hill ham. The play opened to scathing reviews, yet audiences came to see a once-magnificent talent, lured by his propensity to make unpredictable departures from the script.

In the years that followed, Barrymore, in part to honor his monumental debts to ex-wives and the Internal Revenue Service, continued to accept whatever roles were offered. He became a fixture on Rudy Vallee's radio show, where the jokes invariably centered on his drinking, marital problems, and has-been status. Even in decline, he continued to harbor quixotic hopes of returning to the stage in a worthy Shakespearean vehicle, despite ravaged powers and recurring memory loss.

On May 19, 1942, Barrymore collapsed during a rehearsal of the Vallee radio program. He was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, where he was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia, hardening of the arteries, hemorrhaging ulcers, and cirrhosis of the liver. For ten days he faded and rallied, drifting in and out of consciousness until May 29, when at 10:20 p. m. he died in his sleep.

Portions of this article appeared originally in STAGEBILL. Special thanks to John Istel and Alex Stark. Portions and photos from John Barrymore Shakespearean Actor by MICHAEL A. MORRISON.

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