The great Barrymore. The scion that went to seed – the baby – the brightest of them all. Born Valentine’s Day, 1882, Philadelphia, where his mother’s family, the Drews (Drew Barrymore) had been breeding actors for generations. Barrymore was his father’s stage name fresh off the steamer from London. Of the trio Maurice and Georgianna Barrymore sired, the two boys, Lionel and John, grew up painters, artists, and considered it their failing that they had to fall back on the family business. Sister Ethel was less dramatic. The stage made all three stars, but only John still haunts Broadway as Hamlet and Richard III. His silent films, swashbucklers like Don Juan, trade on Barrymore’s innate thespian grandeur, even if they miss his perfect e-lo-cu-tion. In Hawks on Hawks, director Howard Hawks’ anecdote about recruiting Barrymore for Twentieth Century transcends the written page once you’ve heard the actor’s delivery style:
Barrymore: “Mr. Hawks, just why do you think I would be any good in this picture?”
Hawks: “It’s the story of the greatest ham in the world, and God knows you fit that.”
Barrymore: “I’ll do your picture.”
This Tuesday, the Austin Film Society screens Twentieth Century, the fifth in its ongoing series, “Lovers and Lunatics: Screwball Comedy of the Thirties.” It was the first of Hawks’ three immortal screwball goldmines, four years prior to Bringing Up Baby, and six before His Girl Friday, which was also scripted by Twentieth Century team Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Barrymore as Oscar Jaffe (OJ), Broadway writer/producer svengali, and Carole Lombard as Mildred Plotka, ingenue and soon-to-be star (Lombard’s real-life reward). When Barrymore and the great Walter Connelly and Roscoe Karns get a full head of steam up on the train – named the Twentieth Century – a locomotive wreck couldn’t be more exhilarating. It was a role Barrymore had lived, had been around his whole life, had in his genes, and it’s arguably his finest 91 minutes on film precisely for those reasons. Twentieth Century on the big screen, the closest you’ll ever come to witnessing “The Great Profile” perform King Lear.
This article appears in January 25 • 2002.
