ETHEL BARRYMORE Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

Biography » actors and actresses » ethel barrymore

ETHEL BARRYMORE

Name: Ethel Barrymore.                                                                     
Birth name: Ethel Mae Blythe                                                               
Born: 15 August 1879 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.                                     
Died: 18 June 1959 Los Angeles, California, U.S.                                           
                                                                                           
Ethel Barrymore (August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an Academy Award-winning           
American actress and a member of the famous Barrymore family.                             
                                                                                           
Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the               
second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. She spent her             
childhood in Philadelphia, and attended Roman Catholic schools there.                     
                                                                                           
She was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of             
actor John Drew Barrymore, and the great-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. She was           
also the niece of Broadway matinée idol John Drew Jr.                                     
                                                                                           
Ethel Barrymore was a highly regarded stage actress in New York City and a major           
Broadway performer. Many today consider her to be the greatest actress of her             
generation.                                                                               
                                                                                           
Her first appearance in Broadway was in 1895, in a play called The Imprudent               
Young Couple which starred her uncle John Drew Jr and Maude Adams. She appeared           
with Drew and Adams again in 1896 in Rosemary. She portrayed Nora in A Doll's             
House by Ibsen (1905), and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (1922).               
                                                                                           
Barrymore playing the male character Carrots in a play of the same name, 1902             
                                                                                           
Ethel Barrymore in 1896                                                                   
                                                                                           
She was also a strong supporter of the Actors' Equity Association and had a high-profile   
role in the 1919 strike. In 1926, she scored one of her greatest successes as             
the sophisticated spouse of a philandering husband in W. Somerset Maugham's               
comedy, The Constant Wife. In July 1934 she starred in the play Laura Garnett,             
by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, at Dobbs Ferry, New York State.                               
                                                                                           
She made her first motion picture in 1914 and in the 1940s, she moved to                   
Hollywood, California and started working in motion pictures. The only two films           
that featured all three siblings, Ethel, John and Lionel Barrymore, were                   
National Red Cross Pageant (1917) and Rasputin and the Empress (1932).                     
                                                                                           
She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1944 film None           
but the Lonely Heart opposite Cary Grant, but made plain that she was not overly           
impressed by it. On March 22, 2007, her Oscar was offered for sale on eBay.               
                                                                                           
She made such other classic films as The Spiral Staircase (1946) directed by               
Robert Siodmak, The Paradine Case (1947) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Portrait           
of Jennie (1948), Pinky (1949), and Kind Lady (1951). Her last film appearance             
was in Johnny Trouble (1957). She also made a number of television appearances             
in the 1950s.