hollywoodscrapbook:

Ethel Barrymore

locpix:

Ethel Barrymore. 1901

sourvix:

Lionel Barrymore and Joan Crawford, Grand Hotel — 1932

deforest:

A pet peeve of John Barrymore’s was “coughers” in the theatre audience. Consistently offended by such wheezing disturbances, he would often find clever ways to make his displeasure with the cougher known, whether by improvising his dialogue or some other—ahem—extreme means. Below are three instances of such—ahem—means.

Somewhere in this [Plymouth Theatre] balcony long ago, a man suddenly had burst out laughing during Barrymore’s playing of Richard III. You must recall that Scene IV, Act V, opens on Bosworth Field, with Catesby’s speech to Norfolk, suggesting rescue after Richard has been unhorsed in action. Then there is an alarum, and Richard clanks on-stage with his distraught cry: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

On this particular night Barrymore hardly had delivered his penetrating vocals regarding the need of a charger than some gentleman in the balcony emitted the loudest guffaw since the days of Rabelais. Barrymore, encased in black armor, raised his sword toward the balcony and, without departing one beat from the iambic pentameter of the Bard, called out: “Make haste, and saddle yonder braying ass!”

[…]

There was an influenza epidemic during the winter of Redemption. New York always manages to produce a marvelous collection of coughs in winter, but this year the city excelled itself with a million chorusing Camilles and their male counterparts.

As always, Jack resented bronchial excitation in the theatre. One night, while playing a scene with a “dying” fellow-actor, the coughing from the audience rose like the baying of asthmatic beagles. Fedor Vasilyevich Protosov’s lines, pertaining to memories of friends of yore, were being delivered as he leaned above the dying man.

The speech ran something like this: “Do you remember dear Segei? Dead. Do you remember poor Pedrovna? She too is gone…”

Then, without getting out of the scene, but improvising to the name of the coughers, Barrymore asked, “But do you remember dear old Uncle Joe Seabrook? A stomach cough got him. What a fine old hacker he was. Just like the seals in this goddamn audience!”

Playwright Charles MacArthur says that Jack one night quaintly fortified himself against the coughing. At the crescendo of the raspings (MacArthur declares on his honor as a major in the Chemical Corps that it is true) Barrymore brought in a five-pound seabass from beneath his raiment and flung it into the audience with: “Busy yourselves with this, you damned walruses, while the rest of us proceed with the libretto!

— Gene Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore

misscarousel:

Don Juan, 1926.

bobertsbobgomery:

John Barrymore and wife Dolores Costello with their children Ethel Dolores and John Jr., 1933

thefrodisflicka:

Greta Garbo and the great John Barrymore in Grand Hotel, 1932.

We who play, who entertain for a few years, what can we leave that will last?

— Ethel Barrymore