Short Biography

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), a prominent and well-respected 19th century actress and theater manager, who instilled in John, his sister Ethel and brother Lionel the ways of acting and theatre life. His uncles were John Drew Jr. and Sidney Drew.

John fondly remembered the summer of 1896 in his youth spent on his father`s rambling farm on Long Island. He and Lionel lived a Robinson Crusoe-like existence, attended by a black cook named Edward . He was expelled from Georgetown Preparatory School in 1898 after being caught patronizing a bordello. He was a hard-drinking adventurer with a jaunty personality.

While still a teenager, 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.

He was staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake struck. He had starred in a production of The Dictator and was booked to tour Australia with it. Since he loathed this prospect, he hid, spending the next few days drinking at the home of a friend on Van Ness Avenue. During his drinking jag, he worked out a plan to exploit the earthquake for his own ends. He decided to present himself as an on-the-scene "reporter", making up vitually everything he claimed to have witnessed. 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." 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.

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 stage-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), The Mad Genius (1931), Grand Hotel

Miscellaneous Information

Distinctive Features

His profile

Friends and Family

Vincent Sherman [Associate]

John Gilbert [Friend]

John Decker [Friend]

Raoul Walsh [Friend]

Constance Collier [Friend]

Carole Lombard [Friend]

John Drew [Grandfather] (Irish Actor. Georgie Drew´s Father)

Louisa Drew [Grandmother] (Georgie Drew s Mother and Actress)

Errol Flynn [Friend] (Errol Flynn idolized John Barrymore)

Gene Fowler [Friend]

W.C. Fields [Friend]

Lionel Barrymore [Brother]

Ethel Barrymore [Sister]

Georgiana Drew [Mother] (actress)

Maurice Barrymore [Father] (Barrymore family patriarch)

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