Ethel Barrymore

Being born in 1879, I can promise you she's the oldest actor I have ever written about although I may top it one day if I write a piece on brother Lionel.  She came from an acting dynasty and became the First Lady of the American Stage and a premier American character actress in films.  In her quiet way she was a commanding presence.

I first came to know her work of the 1950s in some films that weren't all that impressive although I enjoyed every one of them. Sometimes I didn't even know she was in one of those films but I was happy when I saw her name and after watching her performance, I knew I'd watched one of the greats.

When I went back and watched her forties' work, I saw some better films but the lady, no matter what she was in or when, always gave it her all.

I've never known her to be anything but an older actress.  When her second movie career came about in 1944, she was already 65 years old.  In most everything I saw her in she was bedridden or perhaps in a wheelchair.  A number of times her character was expected to die.

Character actress or not, her roles were usually ones of  superiority.  At least one of the main characters sought out her advice or she managed the purse strings or wielded some power.  Her characters were firm, considerate and  always so wise.

I don't think I ever saw her yell.  Her voice was clear and modulated and kind.  The tone was a bit husky and I thought she sucked on caramels when she spoke and the flavor came through.  

Ethel Barrymore and her acting brothers Lionel and John were proud Philadelphians.  Their parents were Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew.  Ethel's grandmother was actress Louisa Drew and the niece of actors John Drew Jr. and Sidney Drew.  Ethel would become the aunt of actors Diana Barrymore and John Drew Barrymore and the great aunt of Drew Barrymore.    

 

Ethel had planned to break out of the family's acting mold by becoming a concert pianist.  She was raised to be a perfect lady, odd in a family that suffered a number of miscreants, but it also meant something to Ethel.  She loved her family although she always seemed to stand apart from them in some ways.

In the mid-1880s the family traveled to England, Maurice's birthplace, where she was afraid of Oscar Wilde when she met him.  She said her years in England were the happiest of her childhood.

At age 23 and at the request of her uncle, John Drew, Ethel made her Broadway debut.  The public took to her right away.  She alternated between doing plays in New York and London for several years. and was the toast in both cities.  

By 1901 she had been engaged to several prominent men but could never go through with marriage.  This year Winston Churchill proposed to her but she declined saying she didn't want to be married to a politician.  By 1909 she accepted wealthy Russell Colt's proposal.  He was an acquaintance of her brother John.  

The Colts had three children, all of whom dabbled in acting but none of whom was ever serious about it.  Imagine!  Friends of the couple could never understand why they married.  He allegedly beat her.  They divorced acrimoniously in 1923 and because of her strong Catholicism she never married again.

Lionel, Ethel and John

By 1914 with both of her brothers already making movies (and John becoming a serious heartthrob), Ethel decided to try her luck and from 1914-19 she made 14 films.  By the end she decided she didn't like Hollywood and she hightailed it back to Broadway.  

She became an activist by rallying behind the Actors' Equity Association which provided, among other things, that actors receive a bigger share of the profits for Broadway shows.  She helped with the organization conducting a strike.  Some Broadway types (George M. Cohan, for one) never forgave Barrymore for her involvement.  So confident in who she was allowed her to not take much criticism to heart.

In 1928 the Barrymore Theater opened at 243 W. 47th Street in Manhattan, in her honor, and stands to this day.

In 1932 MGM persuaded the three Barrymore siblings to appear in a movie together which is how Rasputin and the Empress came about.  It is the only film to feature the trio. It was also Ethel's first talkie.  Nonetheless she still wasn't impressed with Hollywood.  The people are unreal.  The flowers are unreal.  They don't smell.  The fruit is unreal.  It doesn't taste of anything.  The whole place is a glaring, gaudy, nightmarish set built up in the desert.

So it was back to Broadway and England for more stage triumphs and a life that she knew and loved.  She was close to her children despite her busy time acting on stage.  Her life changed when Cary Grant called and asked her how she'd feel about playing his mother.  She would never act on the stage again.

Her Oscar-winning role opposite Cary Grant

None But the Lonely Heart (1944) is a moody drama about a sickly English shop owner who asks her itinerant son to come home and help her when she gets cancer.  They come up with some illegal ideas to keep things moving.  Barrymore won a supporting Oscar for the mother role and Grant, in one of his most unusual roles, has generally been considered miscast, certainly too old.  Still, it's well worth a gander.

At the insistence of Heart's director-writer Clifford Odets, she was billed as Miss Ethel Barrymore.  She could hardly believe how well she was treated by everyone and she not only saw moviemaking in a new light but Los Angeles as well.  She even packed all her goods and moved there, leaving her beloved New York. 

Another eloquent turn and one of my favorite EB performances came in the RKO suspenser, The Spiral Staircase (1946).  A mute young woman (Dorothy McGuire) becomes a caretaker for a bedridden woman in a dark, cavernous home around the time that someone is murdering people with physical afflictions.  While the ending is fairly predictable, it's a tense journey getting there and Barrymore glows in her role for which she was Oscar-nominated.

Comforting Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase

She turned to comedy for The Farmer's Daughter (1947) in which she plays the matriarch of a wealthy, powerful political family whose Swedish maid surprisingly finds herself involved in politics as she is romanced by a son in the household.  Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten star along with Barrymore. 

Moss Rose (1947) takes places in turn-of-the-century England where a man's girlfriends over time are murdered and others besides the police are determined to find out why.  Victor Mature is the man and Barrymore as his mother easily steals the acting thunder.  It is weak but entertaining.

The Paradine Case (1947) is one of Hitchcock's least successful films.  It would be simple to say it's about a married English barrister who falls in love with the client he is defending in a murder case but it's way more involved than that.  

I liked it because I am crazy about trial movies and then, of course, there's a great cast... Gregory Peck, Alida Valli, Charles Laughton, Louis Jourdan, Ann Todd, Charles Coburn and Barrymore.  She and Laughton are husband and wife (he's the judge) and one would think these two acting giants would lay it down but their dialogue was rather silly.  Nonetheless, she was again nominated for a supporting Oscar.  Peck enjoyed chatting with her and said she was given to great enthusiasm over boxing and the New York Giants.

The story of a struggling artist and his encounter with a lovely ghost is at the heart of Portrait of Jennie (1948) with Cotten and Jennifer Jones as the leads.  It is highly regarded by some who have a fondness for the pair and the quartet of films they made together.  But they didn't turn in their best performances here and the story is oh so maudlin  and odd.  Barrymore may be the best thing about it in a role too small.

Another all-star cast in another film of questionable quality, The Great Sinner (1949), features Barrymore in a small role as Ava Gardner's grandmother in a tale of a gambling addiction.  Peck is not well-cast as the lead.  In The Red Danube (1949) she is a Mother Superior caught up in wartime drama about the Russians who want their ballerina back.  Walter Pidgeon, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury and Peter Lawford costar.

That Midnight Kiss (1949) has Barrymore as a wealthy woman who finances an opera company so her niece, Kathryn Grayson, can sing.  But Grayson muddies the path when she falls for a singing truck driver, Mario Lanza.  The film, a little light on substance, nonetheless proves to be a winning vehicle for the singing stars.

Pinky (1949) was the controversial yet popular film about a light-skinned black nurse passing as white.  When she returns to her grandmother's southern home for a visit, she is asked to care for a neighbor woman who is ill.  Pinky does not like the woman but accepts the task and the story falls into place as the two women grapple with their past history.

Two formidable Ethels in Pinky

Caucasian actress Jeanne Crain played the title role, something that would not go over well today and there were two camps at the time... she's awful and she pulled this off.    I don't think I'm alone when I offer that it's probably Crain's best role.  She was rarely asked to do much stretching in her acting career.  Director Elia Kazan didn't care for the actress and said that handling her gently was a must.  

In his autobiography, the outspoken Kazan said affectionately that Barrymore was a grand old battlewagon.  He said that like many old-timers, she had patience for only one take of a scene and when he asked her to do another take she'd say...   why, I can't do it better, boy?  If he pushed her, she'd smile through saying what do you want it for, your collection?  He knew what others knew... she was the grande dame who was utterly prepared and hit her marks, always letter-perfect.  Kazan added that she had no time for heavy Actors Studio-type directorial analyses beforehand.

At Oscar time, Barrymore, Crain and Ethel Waters (as the grandmother) all received Oscar nominations.

In the late forties-early fifties it was discovered that Barrymore suffered from a weak heart.  She was determined to keep making movies and doing television though she felt restricted in what she could or should do.

It's a shame that Kind Lady (1951) slipped under the radar not only because it is a good thriller but is a rare film in Barrymore's second movie career in which she is top-lined.  She's plays a wealthy woman with a passion for art.  One day she meets a painter and his wife who insinuate themselves into the old woman's life with the intention of robbing her.

It's a tense piece of storytelling and Barrymore always made it worthwhile watching her play a victim.  Maurice Evans, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn and Betsy Blair costar and all are up to the task.  This film is rarely on television but is worth catching if it comes along.

The Secret of Convict Lake (1951) was Barrymore's only western.  It's a complicated story surrounding a group of escaped prisoners who descend upon a small desert town inhabited mainly by women.  Glenn Ford is a good guy who is falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit.  He falls in love with town member Gene Tierney who is engaged to the man who actually committed the crime.  Barrymore's role is largely inconsequential but her name in a cast always raised the prestige.

Deadline USA (1952) never got as much press coverage as some of Humphrey Bogart's other flicks and that's too bad.  This film noir has Bogie as a reporter at a newspaper that publisher-owner Barrymore is about to sell.  It all comes about as a racketeer has just buffaloed a senate probe and Bogie wants to use the paper to upset the thug's plans.  Tough-guy director Richard Brooks found a perfect project for himself.  Barrymore is strong and shrewd.

The first time I ever saw her in a film was in 1952's Just for You.  She has a small role as the headmistress of a girl's finishing school.  The lightweight musical-comedy has Jane Wyman noticing that her fiancé Bing Crosby is not paying much attention to his children, Natalie Wood and Bob Arthur, and she's out to correct it.  

The Story of Three Loves (1953) we just showcased in these pages.  Barrymore plays a wise, old woman with special powers who assists young Ricky Nelson in becoming an adult for a few hours so that he (as Farley Granger) can romance Leslie Caron.  The charming segment is called Mademoiselle.

Young at Heart (1954) is a musical remake of 1938's Four Daughters.  With one less daughter, we still have Doris Day, Dorothy Malone and Elizabeth Fraser living with father Robert Keith and aunt Barrymore as they all navigate their lives alongside the girls' boyfriends, Frank Sinatra, Gig Young and Alan Hale Jr.  Based on a Fannie Hurst short story, remember... fairytales can come true.  It could happen to you.

Sinatra & Malone wishing a Happy Birthday

Johnny Trouble (1957) was Barrymore's final film and it's too bad it wasn't better.  The actress, however, was perfection itself as a wealthy, wheelchair-bound senior in hopes of connecting one more time with her long-lost son.  She comes across Stuart Whitman and is excited thinking he is her boy.  The film has some credibility issues and a so-so supporting cast.

She was constantly besieged with requests for interviews.  There were always requests to discuss the Barrymore family and her longevity.  John Barrymore had died in 1942 and Lionel in 1954.  She was frequently asked how she felt about being the country's premier stage actress and how she liked her second movie career.  It was known she once disliked Hollywood but had changed her mind.  I laughed at one of her comments about the movie capital... half the people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered and the other half are afraid they will be.

The great lady's heart finally quit in 1959 in Beverly Hills, CA.  She was 79 years old.

Next posting:

Hitchcock's favorite film