Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blyth; April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul (1931) and is known to modern audiences for the role of villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life.

He is also particularly remembered as Ebenezer Scrooge in annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol during his last two decades. He is also known for playing Dr. Leonard Gillespie in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's nine Dr. Kildare films, a role he reprised in a further six films focusing solely on Gillespie and in a radio series titled The Story of Dr. Kildare. He was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family.

Early life

right|thumb|Young Lionel with [[John Barrymore|John, Ethel, and their mother (1890)]]

Lionel Barrymore was born Lionel Herbert Blyth in Philadelphia, the son of actors Georgiana Drew Barrymore and Maurice Barrymore (born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth). He was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore, the uncle of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore and the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore, among other members of the Barrymore family. He attended private schools as a child, including the Art Students League of New York. While raised a Roman Catholic, Barrymore attended the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. Barrymore graduated from Seton Hall Preparatory School, the Roman Catholic college prep school, in the class of 1891.

Career

Stage

thumb|150px|left|Barrymore, 1906

Reluctant to follow his parents' career, Barrymore appeared together with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew on tour and in a stage production of The Rivals in 1893 at the age of 15. He later recounted that "I didn't want to act. I wanted to paint or draw. The theater was not in my blood, I was related to the theater by marriage only; it was merely a kind of in-law of mine I had to live with." He appeared on Broadway in his early twenties with his uncle John Drew Jr. in such plays as The Second in Command (1901) and The Mummy and the Hummingbird (1902), the latter of which won him critical acclaim.

In 1906, after a series of disappointing appearances in plays, Barrymore and his first wife, the actress Doris Rankin, left their stage careers and travelled to Paris, where he trained as an artist. Lionel and Doris were in Paris in 1908 when their first baby, Ethel, was born. Lionel confirms in his autobiography, We Barrymores, that he and Doris were in France when Bleriot flew the English Channel on July 25, 1909. He did not achieve success as a painter and in 1909 he returned to the US. In December of that year he returned to the stage in The Fires of Fate, in Chicago, but left the production later that month after suffering an attack of nerves about the forthcoming New York opening. The producers gave appendicitis as the reason for his sudden departure.

From 1912 to 1917 Barrymore was away from the stage again while he established his film career, but after the First World War he had several successes on Broadway, where he established his reputation as a dramatic and character actor, often performing with his wife. He returned to the stage in Peter Ibbetson (1917) with his brother, John, and achieved star billing in The Copperhead (1918) (with Doris). This was likely intended to distract from, and prevent MGM attendance of, the Confessions of a Nazi Spy premiere that occurred simultaneously. The injury also precluded his playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 MGM film version of A Christmas Carol, a role Barrymore played every year but two (replaced by brother John Barrymore in 1936 and replaced by Orson Welles in 1938) on the radio from 1934 through 1953. He also played the title role in the 1940s radio series Mayor of the Town.

He is well known for his role as Mr. Potter, the miserly and mean-spirited banker in It's a Wonderful Life (1946) opposite James Stewart.

He had a role with Clark Gable in Lone Star in 1952. His final film appearance was a cameo in Main Street to Broadway, an MGM musical comedy released in 1953. His sister Ethel also appeared in the film.

Personal life

Barrymore was married twice, to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick, a one-time lover of his brother, John. Doris's sister Gladys was married to Lionel's uncle Sidney Drew, which made Gladys both his aunt and sister-in-law. Doris Rankin bore Lionel two daughters, Ethel Barrymore II and Mary Barrymore. Neither child survived infancy. Barrymore never truly recovered from the deaths of his girls and their loss undoubtedly strained his marriage to Doris Rankin, which ended in 1922. Years later Barrymore developed a fatherly affection for Jean Harlow, who was born about the same time as his daughters. When Harlow died in 1937, Barrymore and Clark Gable mourned her as though she had been family.

Political views

Barrymore was a Republican. In 1944, he attended the massive rally organized by David O. Selznick in the Los Angeles Coliseum in support of the Dewey-Bricker ticket as well as Governor Earl Warren of California, who would become Dewey's running mate in 1948 and later the Chief Justice of the United States. The gathering drew 93,000, with Cecil B. DeMille as the master of ceremonies and with short speeches by Hedda Hopper and Walt Disney. Among the others in attendance were Ann Sothern, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Adolphe Menjou, Gary Cooper, Edward Arnold, William Bendix, and Walter Pidgeon.

right|thumb|Hosting "Concert Hall" for [[Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II, c. 1942]]Barrymore registered for the draft during World War II, despite his age and disability, to encourage others to enlist in the military.

He loathed the income tax, and by the time he was appearing on Mayor of the Town, MGM withheld a sizable portion of his paychecks, paying back the IRS the amount he owed.

Medical issues

Several sources argue that arthritis alone led Barrymore to use a wheelchair. Film historian Jeanine Basinger says that his arthritis was serious by at least 1928, when Barrymore made Sadie Thompson. Film historian David Wallace says it was well known that Barrymore was addicted to morphine due to arthritis by 1929. A history of Oscar-winning actors, however, says Barrymore was only suffering from arthritis, not crippled or incapacitated by it. Marie Dressler biographer Matthew Kennedy notes that when Barrymore won his Best Actor Oscar award in 1931, the arthritis was still so minor that it only made him limp a little as he went on stage to accept the honor. Barrymore can be seen being quite physical in late silent films like The Thirteenth Hour and West of Zanzibar, where he can be seen climbing out of a window.

Paul Donnelly says Barrymore's inability to walk was caused by a drawing table falling on him in 1936, breaking Barrymore's hip. (Film historian Robert Osborne says Barrymore also suffered a broken kneecap.) The injury was so painful that Donnelly, quoting Barrymore, says that Louis B. Mayer bought $400 worth of cocaine for Barrymore every day to help him cope with the pain and allow him to sleep. Author David Schwartz says the hip fracture never healed, which was why Barrymore could not walk, and MGM historian John Douglas Eames describes the injury as "crippling". Barrymore himself said in 1951, that it was breaking his hip twice that kept him in the wheelchair. He said he had no other problems, and that the hip healed well, but it made walking exceptionally difficult. Film historian Allen Eyles reached the same conclusion.

Lew Ayres biographer Lesley Coffin and Louis B. Mayer biographer Scott Eyman argue that it was the combination of the broken hip and Barrymore's worsening arthritis that put him in a wheelchair. Barrymore family biographer Margot Peters says Gene Fowler and James Doane said Barrymore's arthritis was caused by syphilis, which they say he contracted in 1925. Eyman, however, explicitly rejects this hypothesis. On his next picture, Saratoga, Barrymore tripped over a cable on set, breaking his hip for the second time in two years and reportedly breaking his knee cap. Afterward, Barrymore was able to get about for a short period of time on crutches even though he was in great pain. He could, however, stand for short periods of time such as at his brother's funeral in 1942. which was performed twice in Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day (1941) as Cornelia's Symphony, first on piano by Nils Asther's character and later by a full symphony orchestra. His piano compositions, "Scherzo Grotesque" and "Song Without Words", were published by G. Schirmer in 1945. Upon the death of his brother John in 1942, he composed a work "In Memoriam", which was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. His orchestral Partita was given multiple performances. He also composed the theme song of the radio program Mayor of the Town. Some of his etchings were included in the Hundred Prints of the Year. He was entombed in the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.

Tributes

Barrymore received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960—a motion pictures star and a radio star. The stars are located at 1724 Vine Street for motion pictures, and 1651 Vine Street for radio. He was also inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, along with his siblings, Ethel and John.

Works

See also

  • List of actors with Academy Award nominations

References

Bibliography

  • Basinger, Jeanine. Silent Stars. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
  • Bergan, Ronald; Fuller, Graham; and Malcolm, David. Academy Award Winners. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1994.
  • Block, Alex Ben and Wilson, Lucy Autrey. George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies, Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success. New York: itBooks, 2010.
  • Coffin, Lesley L. Lew Ayres: Hollywood's Conscientious Objector. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
  • Culbertson, Judi and Randall, Tom. Permanent Californians: An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of California. Chelsea, VT: Chelsea Green Pub. Co., 1989.
  • Donnelly, Paul. Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries. London: Omnibus, 2003.
  • Eames, John Douglas. The MGM Story: The Complete History of Fifty Roaring Years. New York: Crown Publishers, 1975.
  • Eyles, Allen. That Was Hollywood: The 1930s. London: Batsford, 1987.
  • Eyman, Scott. Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.
  • Kennedy, Matthew. Marie Dressler: A Biography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006.
  • Marzano, Rudy. The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s: How Robinson, MacPhail, Reiser, and Rickey Changed Baseball. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
  • Norden, Martin F. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
  • Osborne, Robert A. Academy Awards Illustrated: A Complete History of Hollywood's Academy Awards in Words and Pictures. La Habra, CA: E.E. Schworck, 1969.
  • Reid, John Howard. Hollywood Movie Musicals: Great, Good and Glamorous. Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2006.
  • Schwartz, David. Magic of Thinking Big. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
  • Silvers, Anita. "The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Disability, Ideology and the Aesthetic." In Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare, eds. New York: Continuum, 2002.
  • Wallace, David. Lost Hollywood. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.
  • Wayne, Jane Ellen. The Leading Men of MGM. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005.
  • Willian, Michael. The Essential It's a Wonderful Life: A Scene-by-Scene Guide to the Classic Film. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006.
  • Photographs of Lionel Barrymore
  • Lionel Barrymore photo gallery NYP Library
  • Lionel Barrymore and several other actors on Orson Welles Radio Almanac 1944
  • Lionel Barrymore in 1902 in "The Mummy and the Hummingbird", portrait by Burr McIntosh for Munseys Magazine
  • The Other Girl(1903) with Elsie De Wolfe, Frank Worthing and Lionel Barrymore (NY Public Library Billy Rose collection)
  • Lionel with brother John Barrymore, 1917
  • Lionel Barrymore as a child