Hats off to Lionel Barrymore
Today, he is most well-remembered for stealing $8000 as the villainous Mr. Potter of It’s a Wonderful Life. He also railed against the income tax and played the harmonica as Martin Vanderhof in You Can’t Take It with You, put Death up a tree in On Borrowed Time, cursed Greer Garson’s love life in The Valley of Decision, struck fear and awe into the hearts of doctor and patient alike as Dr. Leonard B. Gillespie in MGM’s Dr. Kildare series and slugged Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo. (Or at least made a commendable attempt to.)
And those are only six examples, out of a career that spanned more than fifty years, including stage, screen, and radio. He appeared in roughly thirty-one plays, and his stacked filmography racks up the credits to approximately 132 silent films and 81 talkies for a whopping total of 213 motion pictures. In addition to these cinematic achievements, Lionel also directed several films, was an accomplished artist and composer, and wrote a novel, as well as a volume of memoirs.
Born Lionel Herbert Blythe on April 28, 1878, he was one of the foremost members of the theatrical dynasty, the royal family of Broadway and Hollywood, the legend that is Barrymore. He was elder brother to the notorious John Barrymore and leading stage actress Ethel Barrymore.
In 1903 he married Doris Rankin and soon after that traveled to Paris to become an artist — on Ethel’s money, remaining abroad for a little under four years. He had two children with Doris, Mary and Ethel, after his sister, both of whom died at less then one year old. He never had any other children, and he and Doris were divorced in December of 1922. I’ve always thought this was an exceptionally sad part of Lionel’s story, and after hearing about it myself, I began to watch with closer interest the scenes in movies where he had to act with young children. Based on everything I know about the man, I believe he would have made a wonderful father and grandfather. He certainly could play them like no other.
In 1925, Lionel made his break with Broadway and so began almost thirty years dedicated purely to the motion picture industry. He has been credited with the invention of the boom microphone, a distinction which may or may not be true. The incident took place during the filming of Madame X (1929) starring Ruth Chatterton, during which he took a fishing pole and tied a microphone to the end of it, propping it out of the range of the camera and having it moved right along with her as she walked across the set. In his 1951 autobiography, We Barrymores, Lionel admits that he may not have been the first, and that there are a number of others who claim the distinction, ending the anecdote with this: “All I can say is that in 1929 I recorded Miss Ruth Chatterton’s voice with a fishing pole.”
In 1931, he appeared in A Free Soul, a shamelessly melodramatic but nonetheless entertaining movie starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. Lionel played Stephen Ashe, a brilliant but tragically alcoholic defense attorney. Almost more interesting than the movie itself is the story behind Lionel Barrymore’s only Academy Award. If the film had been made only a few years later, the part Lionel played would most likely have been nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category. But since said category had not yet been introduced, Lionel was nominated for Best Actor, and walked off with the Oscar. The story goes that at the awards ceremony when he was called up to receive his award, he limped up to the stage and merely mumbled, “Thank you.”
There is much controversy that surrounds the events which ultimately caused him to spend the latter half of his film career in a wheelchair. Most sources claim that he suffered from crippling arthritis, a claim which he personally refutes. According to his autobiography, he was handicapped by a twice-broken hip: the first time in 1936 when he upset a drafting board in his studio, causing it, and him, to fall, and the second time during the filming of Saratoga (1937) when he tripped over a sound cable. Various sources say that in addition to these injuries, because of his arthritis he became hooked on painkillers, morphine and cocaine in particular. I can’t say whether or not this was true, though I will admit that Lionel seemed to have a vague way of “skirting around” some things in his book. Another theory I have come across in my readings is that he contracted syphilis in 1925. There does not appear to be anything substantial in the way of proof regarding this, and as a possible theory it is rejected by other biographers. As to what I personally believe, this is my take on it: I don’t believe he had syphilis because it simply doesn’t fit in with other things I have read. I think most of his trouble probably did come from his bad hip. As to arthritis and a drug addiction, I don’t know, but it is at least possible. All that’s left to say concerning this is that even when confined to a wheelchair, for whatever reason, Lionel Barrymore’s thespian talent still shined through.
In fact, it was because of his accident that he could not play the role of Scrooge in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, which ended up starring Reginald Owen. However, Lionel did go on to essay the role many times in an annual radio broadcast of Dickens’ classic tale. Now that is a role I would have loved to see Lionel do on the screen!
He continued acting right up until the end, his last film appearance being a cameo role in Main Street to Broadway in 1953, which Ethel also appeared in.
In November of 1954, he died in such a way that merely befits a Barrymore: he had a heart attack while reading aloud a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
His brother John was known as “the Great Profile”. His sister Ethel was the “First Lady of the American Theatre”. I hereby give him the title “Genius of a Thousand Roles”. Hyperbole? Maybe so, but Lionel Barrymore deserves it.
Ethel was a fine old lady.
Yes, John had a very nice profile.
Lionel is still the only Barrymore for me.
