Lionel Barrymore

Lionel Barrymore, born Lionel Herbert Blyth on April 28, 1878, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American actor, film director, and radio performer whose career spanned stage, screen, and broadcast media until his death on November 15, 1954. The son of actors Georgiana Drew Barrymore and Maurice Barrymore, he was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore and a member of one of the most prominent theatrical families in American history. He was also the uncle of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore and the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore. Despite his lineage, Barrymore was reluctant to pursue acting, preferring painting and musical composition. He attended private schools in his youth, including the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and the Art Students League of New York, and graduated from Seton Hall Preparatory School in 1891.

His stage career began in 1893 when, at the age of fifteen, he appeared on tour alongside his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew in a production of The Rivals. His Broadway career commenced in his early twenties, when he appeared with his uncle John Drew Jr. in The Second in Command in 1901 and The Mummy and the Hummingbird in 1902, the latter earning him critical acclaim. The Other Girl, which ran during the 1903–04 season, proved a long-running success. In 1905, he appeared alongside John and Ethel in a pantomime, taking the title role in Pantaloon and a second character in the companion piece Alice Sit-by-the-Fire.

Following a series of disappointing stage appearances in 1906, Barrymore and his first wife, actress Doris Rankin, traveled to Paris, where he pursued training as a painter. Their first child, Ethel, was born in Paris in 1908. He did not succeed as a visual artist and returned to the United States in 1909, resuming stage work. After appearing in The Jail Bird on Broadway in 1910, he joined his family's vaudeville act that same year. From 1912 to 1917 he stepped away from the stage to build his film career, returning to Broadway in Peter Ibbetson in 1917 alongside his brother John. He achieved star billing in The Copperhead in 1918, performing opposite Doris Rankin, and maintained that billing over the following six years in productions including The Jest in 1919, again with John, and The Letter of the Law in 1920.

His Broadway credits during this period also included The Humming Bird, The Letter, and Taps. In 1921, Barrymore performed the role of Macbeth opposite veteran actress Julia Arthur as Lady Macbeth, though the production received strongly negative criticism. He met his second wife, actress Irene Fenwick, while the two performed together in The Claw in 1922, and his final Broadway success came the following year in Laugh, Clown, Laugh! in 1923, in which Fenwick also appeared. He received negative notices for three consecutive productions in 1925, and after appearing in Man or Devil in 1926, he signed a contract with MGM. With the arrival of sound films in 1927, Barrymore never returned to the stage.

His film career had begun years earlier when he joined Biograph Studios in 1909 and began appearing in leading roles by 1911 in films directed by D. W. Griffith, including The Battle, The New York Hat, Friends, and Three Friends. He also wrote and directed at Biograph, and his final silent film as director, Life's Whirlpool for Metro Pictures in 1917, starred his sister Ethel. In 1920, he reprised his stage role in the film adaptation of The Copperhead and starred in The Master Mind with Gypsy O'Brien. He made several silent features for Metro before the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, and in 1923 traveled to Rome with Fenwick to film The Eternal City, combining the production with their honeymoon. He returned to Griffith in 1924 for America before relocating from New York to Hollywood in 1925.

After signing with MGM in 1926, his first picture for the studio was The Barrier, and his first talking picture was The Lion and the Mouse. He directed several early sound films, among them His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, Madame X starring Ruth Chatterton, and The Rogue Song, Laurel and Hardy's first color film. He was credited as the first director to move a microphone on a sound stage. Returning to acting in 1931, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of an alcoholic lawyer in A Free Soul. He played Rasputin in the 1932 film Rasputin and the Empress, the only film in which he appeared alongside both John and Ethel, and appeared in Dinner at Eight in 1933 with John. He portrayed Professor Zelen in the 1935 horror film Mark of the Vampire and played the villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life in 1946, a role for which he remains widely recognized. He also became known to radio audiences for annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge during the last two decades of his life, and played Dr. Leonard Gillespie across nine MGM Dr. Kildare films, six subsequent films centered on the Gillespie character, and a radio series titled The Story of Dr. Kildare.