The first of his illustrious family of stage actors to appear in films, Lionel Barrymore began performing in silent movies in 1909 and graduated to leads two years later. Appearing in many of D.W. Griffith's early works, Barrymore balanced careers as a Broadway star and film actor until 1926, when he signed with MGM and devoted himself entirely to movie acting. He remained at that studio for the rest of his career, gradually moving from leads to character parts but always retaining a powerful star presence and often dominating his films even in secondary roles. In addition to being one of America's most distinguished actors, Barrymore was an artist, novelist, memoirist, screenwriter, director and composer of orchestral music.

Barrymore (1878-1954) was born in Philadelphia. His parents were Maurice Barrymore and Georgina Drew; his siblings, Ethel and John Barrymore; his niece and nephew, Diana and John Drew Barrymore; and his great-niece, Drew Barrymore. In all, Lionel Barrymore made some 250 movies, playing a wide variety of characters and winning an Oscar® for A Free Soul (1931).

Barrymore's film career of the late 1920s and early '30s includes West of Zanzibar (1928), Tod Browning's lurid story of a crippled magician (Lon Chaney) determined to wreak vengeance on the ivory trader (Barrymore) who, he mistakenly believes, has run off with his wife and fathered her child. Barrymore also directed The Unholy Night (1929), a mystery concerning a group of British officers who are reunited by Scotland Yard to determine which of them is a murderer, and appeared with Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931).

As a follow-up to his award-winning performance in A Free Soul, Barrymore enjoyed a tour de force in Guilty Hands (1931), playing a lawyer who protects his daughter by murdering a man who has taken advantage of her, then making the crime look like a suicide. John and Lionel Barrymore joined forces for Arsene Lupin (1932), in which John is the gentleman thief whose alias gives the film its title, and Lionel is the detective on his trail. The Barrymore duet proved a success, leading MGM to costar the brothers in other films, notably 1932's Grand Hotel.

In Washington Masquerade (1932) Lionel Barrymore plays a U.S. senator who marries a beautiful young woman (Karen Morley) without realizing she is interested in him for purely political reasons. Lewis Stone shares the acting honors with Barrymore in Looking Forward (1933), with Stone playing a department store owner going bankrupt in Depression-era London, and Barrymore as a longtime employee faced with losing his job.

Should Ladies Behave (1933) has Barrymore as a man whose wife and daughter are both attracted to the same man, while Sweepings (1933) casts him as a Chicago department store owner who survives the city's great fire only to see his children become apathetic about inheriting the successful business. Aging credibly, as he does in Sweepings, had become a Barrymore specialty. In This Side of Heaven (1934), a forerunner of the "screwball comedy" style, Barrymore is an accountant who heads up a dizzy family that pulls itself together when Dad is accused of embezzlement.

Expert at playing gruff types who often had a heart of gold, Barrymore was Dr. Gillespie in all 15 films in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. In 1938, he became partially paralyzed by the combination of arthritis and a leg injury, but continued acting from a wheelchair. Notable among his later character roles were the grasping town despot in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the powerful rancher in Duel in the Sun (1946) and the heroic hotel proprietor in Key Largo (1948).

Barrymore appears as himself to host Some of the Best: 25 Years of Motion Pictures (1949), a 45-minute promotional feature released as part of MGM's 25th anniversary celebration, and featuring highlights of the studio's major productions from 1924 through 1948. Barrymore's final film was Main Street to Broadway (1953). He was married to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick.

by Roger Fristoe

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