That's All There Is. There isn't any more. -- The Barrymores as Pop Culture Icons

 Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 

[reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-54231] , 1937

Ethel Barrymore appeared as a guest on Bing Crosby’s radio show on December 21, 1949.  It was his annual Christmas show, usually devoted to the singing of carols.  Miss Barrymore joined him for amusing patter about the new artificial Christmas trees that came in white and in pink, and they spoke wistfully of all the Christmases Barrymore spent on the road with her children as she played in theaters across the country.  

Announcer Ken Carpenter teased Bing on his wearing a suit and tie, getting all spruced up in honor of their esteemed guest, whom Bing respectfully addressed as “Miss Barrymore.”

They might speak with equanimity on baseball (she was a fan), but there was no chumminess with this famous guest, yet Ethel Barrymore deigned to do something the dignified thespian never would in her younger days: she parodied herself.

When Bing asked her opinion of his pseudo-rival Bob Hope, she replied, “Well, there’s his childlike simplicity.”

“And?”

She answered, “That’s all there is.   There isn’t anymore.”  

She hardly got the line out before cracking up, and the audience roared with laughter also.  It was a line from a play she had done almost fifty years earlier – a line that made her famous.

This post is part of The Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.  Please have a look at the other participating blogs for some terrific posts.

The “trilogy” in this case, of course, comes from the dynamic trio of siblings who dominated theatre in the early decades of the twentieth century, and came to have a prominent place in film—most especially becoming icons of pop culture in a way entertainers had never been before, or perhaps since.

We have a great book on the trio by theatre critic Hollis Alpert, The Barrymores (NY: The Dial Press, 1964), which dramatically demonstrates the siblings’ dominance of art and culture in the U.S. with an introduction that drops us down on Broadway in the first week of March 1920.

There, at the Plymouth Theatre, John Barrymore, the youngest of the trio at about 37, made his Shakespearian debut in Richard III.

Ethel, the middle child and the reigning grand dame of theatre at 40 years old played over at the Empire in the smash hit, Déclasée.

Lionel, the eldest at 41, known for being a versatile character actor, played at the Criterion in The Letter of the Law. 

These three siblings were stars on Broadway at the same time.  The media took note and around about this time began to refer to the Barrymores as “the royal family of theatre.”

The Barrymore boys have facing pages in 
Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

They became so well known by this moniker that when playwrights George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber wrote their comedy, and rather wicked parody, of the Barrymores, they titled it The Royal Family.  It opened at the Selwyn Theatre in 1927.  It poked fun particularly at John, known as a heavy-drinking womanizer; and Ethel, for being a prima donna of the stage.  John saw it when it played in Los Angeles (Fredric March played the character Tony, which was based on John, and March also appeared in the film version in 1930) and reportedly thought it was funny, but Ethel was not happy.  She had yet to learn to laugh at herself or shrug off the innumerable imitators of herself and her brothers.

Library of Congress

One of the first instances of being imitated occurred in 1904 over her famous “There isn’t anymore” line.  She was playing in a comedy called Sunday on Broadway where her role was a young orphaned woman raised by rough miners in the West, who comes to London to meet her aunts.  Charles Frohman, famous theatrical producer of the day, sat in on the rehearsal.  In a pivotal scene, she is supposed to read aloud a letter from her rough miner guardians to her genteel aunts, but she stops herself because there is a part that is too personal for them to hear.  She just runs offstage.

Ethel suggested to producer Mr. Frohman that it would make more sense for her to say something, in an awkward and embarrassed manner, before she runs off.  He asked what, not given to interference by young ingénues.  

She is reported to have said, “Oh, maybe something like, ‘That’s all there is.  There isn’t anymore.'”

He left it in.  She said it on stage, and because of situation in the plot, and undoubtedly her delivery, it brought the house down.  Author Mr. Alpert notes, “…that line of added dialogue became virtually her trademark—to a degree that annoyed her.” (p.111)

She began to be imitated by comics on the vaudeville stage with this line.

However, though she had a brief foray into silent films in the teens, she preferred the theatre, where she remained, for the most part, until the late 1940s and a string of films, one of which earning her an Academy Award.  We covered her work in The Spiral Staircase (1945) here and Portrait of Jennie (1948) here.  She and her brothers all appeared in Rasputin and the Empress in 1933, which we discussed in this previous post.

Library of Congress

Her brothers took to film early and remained there, Lionel as a character man who appeared in over 200 movies, including his long gig in the Dr. Kildare series.  As versatile in real life as he was in acting, Lionel was also an artist, a composer, a director, and a novelist.  He is also reported to have claimed to have invented the microphone boom for the movies when he suggested a mic be put on a pole above the actors when sound issues were a major problem in the early days of the talkies.

Lionel also was known to a generation for playing Mr. Scrooge on the radio every Christmas in A Christmas Carol.  And like Ethel, he was also parodied in pop culture.   According to author Mr. Alpert, “So familiar was his drawling voice that an imitation of it turned up every other week on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour.”  He is also lampooned in cartoons and the movies, including by his fellow MGM star, Mickey Rooney.

John, of course, was The Great Profile, who played romantic leads until his own dissipated lifestyle and his casual attitude toward his work led him to parody himself far more effectively than another comic probably could.  We discussed his Twentieth Century (1934) here.  He starred in The Great Profile (1940) as a famous actor who drinks heavily.  Two years later, John Barrymore was dead.

They were descended from a long line of actors on both their paternal and maternal sides of their family, the Drews,  and as children they watched the great Edwin Booth and Helen Modjeska and Fanny Davenport on stage in the theater in Philadelphia that their grandmother ran.   None of the trio were ambitious for theatrical careers despite this, but it pulled them in by circumstance and there they outshone all their contemporaries and their famous thespian ancestors.   John did not take his work seriously.  Lionel had other interests as compelling for him.  Ethel had no desire as a child to be on stage, and indeed, spent every opening night of her life nearly paralyzed with stage fright, and yet by the end of her career, her life, she was the most beloved actress the theatre had never known. 

Library of Congress

In 1901, she was appearing at the Garrick Theatre on Broadway in Captain Jinks, and staying at Mrs. Wilson’s boarding house on 36^th Street, in walking distance.  She was about 22 years old.  Her brother John came to escort her to the theater that evening, and when they came in sight of it, she gasped at the her name lit up in the new-fangled electric lights.  She cried.  It became more than the family trade to fall back on then, it was something personal. When she died in 1959, the last of her siblings, the lights dimmed on the marquee and inside the house of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.  She had appeared there when it opened in 1928, as the first leading lady on that stage.

The children of these Barrymores enjoyed varying degrees of success in their own acting careers (or not).  It seemed serendipitous for John’s granddaughter to be named Drew Barrymore after both sides of the acting family.   Though she has climbed the ladder of fame in a way her preceding generation did not,  it is unlikely that anyone in any acting family will achieve the kind of critical respect, and also pop culture fame of John, Lionel, and Ethel Barrymore. Today, we have celebrity, which is not the same thing. Those three were truly greats, we can neither replicate their brand of greatness or the times in which it shone.  Because...

That’s all there is.  There isn’t anymore.

Kindly have a look at the other posts on The Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon hosted by In the Good Old Days of Hollywood.

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Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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My new syndicated column on classic film is up at http://www.go60.us/govoice/advice-and-more/item/2025-ccc-movie-fan, or check with your local paper.

Rasputin and the Empress (1932)

Rasputin and the Empress (1932) is a watershed film in a couple of different respects. First, it unites on film for the only time all three of the Barrymores. Secondly, due to Hollywood’s (or, at least in this case, producer Irving Thalberg’s) penchant for changing history in a movie about a historical subject to suit the needs of script, a lawsuit gave us the immortal movie words, “All the characters in this film are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental,” or words to that effect.

In the first case, bringing all three famous Barrymore siblings together in a film was a treat for filmgoers of the day and a gift to posterity. Before their film careers, they represented the next generation in America’s pre-eminent theatrical family. A dynamic, tempestuous, and talented generation it was. Since this blog is about the history of film and not theatre, it is enough perhaps to say that the names above the title of Rasputin and the Empress were listed simply, and boldly, as:

John - Ethel - Lionel
BARRYMORE

The audience needed no explanation. This was an all-star lineup, the dream team.

Younger son John, the longtime matinee idol, played Prince Paul Chegodieff, friend of the royal Romanov family. Middle girl Ethel plays the Czarina Alexandra, and oldest child Lionel plays the monk Rasputin, a rapacious and slovenly mystic whose ambition leads him into hypnotizing members of the royal family when he is not engaging in debauchery. Ethel is the heartsick mother of little Czarevitch Alexis, who suffers from hemophilia. Rasputin’s influence over the mother as he works, so he says, miracles with the son will bring down the Russian nobility.

The performances, particularly Ethel’s, are theatrical, and there is quite a bit of newsreel footage of czarist peasants and soldiers to attempt a documentary feel despite obvious errors in the telling of the story. Czar Nicholas’ autocratic administration of his country is glossed over, and this instead becomes the story of how John as Prince Paul, a good guy, has to get rid of his brother Lionel, the mad monk in whom his sister Ethel has so much faith.

The siblings’ scenes together are fun to watch, as they are clearly masters at stagecraft and that is what we are seeing here more than scene stealing. In a scene with John and Lionel, as their characters spar psychologically, Lionel as Rasputin declaring, “I will be Russia!” while John listens thoughtfully, his back turned to him, playing with a rapier. Both brothers are strong actors, neither giving an inch, but also respectful of each others talents.

“There’s something clammy about him,” John says of Rasputin, and describes him, “Like a man-eating shark with a Bible under his fin.”

Lionel does some impressive just-short-of-scenery-chewing here. He clearly has the meatiest role. He is disgusting and creepy. There is a particularly unsettling scene where he forces the young czarevitch, played by Tad Alexander, to watch an ant and a fly at combat under a microscope. The audience is forced to watch as well with intense close-ups as the ant attacks and eats the fly, which Rasputin uses as a teaching tool for political theory.

Another creepy scene is when he gets one of the royal daughters aside and places a locket on her, touching her, like a molesting uncle, and she squirms with discomfort but utter helplessness. Like the cavalry, the lady in waiting played by Diana Wynyard comes to her rescue. An early fan of Rasputin, she begins to change her opinion of him and chases him away from the daughters, when he also tries to hypnotize her so that he may have his way with her.

This, evidently, was the sticking point for the lawsuit against the film. A scene, removed later, suggesting she is raped by Rasputin was decried as false by the real-life counterparts of Prince Paul and her character, who was his wife. He sued; he won, and now we are told that the movie we are watching is fictional. Even if all the names and places and events are real, it’s still fictional, that way we can still make up stuff.

An impressive and realistic fight scene between John and brother Lionel illustrates the death of Rasputin by gunshot, poisoning, beating, and finally drowning. Rasputin was like the Energizer Bunny, but he finally succumbed, and John is the only Barrymore sibling to survive the Russian Revolution, as sister Ethel is massacred with the rest of the Romanovs.

There are a lot of character actors to pick out, and many were uncredited in the film, including Anne Shirley as Princess Anastasia, who later came to life as Ingrid Berman in another film, and Mischa Auer as a waiter. Movies depicting historical events and real people always seem to walk a fine line between creativity and accuracy, but this film that gives us the three Barrymores together is a historical document all by itself.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.