America's most distinguished acting family, the Barrymores, is saluted each Monday in April with screenings of films featuring the celebrated siblings John, Lionel and Ethel.

John Barrymore (1882-1942), who distinguished himself in Shakespearean roles onstage, acted in some 65 films including Don Juan (1926), which had a synchronized soundtrack but no spoken dialogue and starred Barrymore as the famous womanizer. In A Bill of Divorcement (1932) he and Katharine Hepburn (in her film debut) are part of a family struggling with mental illness. Known for his hard-drinking, high-living ways, John played his final serious film role in The Great Man Votes (1939).

Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954) was noted for playing the irascible Dr. Gillespie in Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and other entries in that series. He began making film shorts in 1908 and continued in movies through 1953, working from a wheelchair from the late 1930s. Lionel counted among his many credits Treasure Island (1934), in which he played the rum-soaked Billy Bones; and Key Largo (1948), in which he is a feisty hotel owner.

Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), known as "The First Lady of the Theater," dabbled in films from 1914 and settled into a Hollywood career as a venerable character actress in the 1940s. She won an Academy Award® as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Cary Grant's sickly Cockney mother in None But the Lonely Heart (1944). Other nominated performances included those in The Spiral Staircase (1945) and Pinky (1949).

John and Lionel costarred in such films as Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933), but the three siblings acted together in only one movie, Rasputin and the Empress (1932).