Barrymore, Ethel

Barrymore, Ethel (1879–1959), actress. Born in Philadelphia, daughter of Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew Barrymore, she made her stage debut in 1894 playing opposite her grandmother Mrs. Drew in The Rivals. After performing with her uncle, John Drew, in The Bauble Shop later the same year, she assumed a number of other minor roles before sailing for London to play with William Gillette in Secret Service and to act with Sir Henry Irving's great company at the Lyceum. Back in America, Charles Frohman recognized her growing talent and awarded her star billing as Madame Trentoni in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) and she, indeed, became a star. Barrymore attempted Nora in A Doll's House (1905) and Mrs. Grey in Alice Sit‐by‐the‐Fire (1905), but most of her assignments were in the polite, well‐made importations that Frohman favored. More substantial roles in English works came her way when she played the falsely accused servant Mrs. Jones in The Silver Box (1907); the title part in Lady Frederick (1908); Zoe Blundell, whose marriage is destroyed by illness in Mid‐Channel (1910); and Rose in Trelawny of the Wells. About this time she began filling in periods between plays with vaudeville tours in which she starred in short or abbreviated dramas, the most famous of which was Barrie's The Twelve‐Pound Look. She enjoyed one of her longest runs as the motherly business woman of Our Mrs. McChesney (1915), then turned to her own favorite role, Marguerite Gautier in Edward Sheldon's redaction of The Lady of the Camellias (1917). Barrymore scored a major success as the self‐destructive Lady Helen Haden in Déclassée (1919), only to come a cropper with her interpretation of Juliet (1922). Further revivals saw her play Paula in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1924), Ophelia, and Portia (1925). In 1926 she created one of her most memorable parts as Maugham's The Constant Wife, which she played until she assumed the role of Sister Gracia in The Kingdom of God (1928) at the opening of a New York theatre named in her honor. For the next decade success eluded her, albeit she gained some attention playing a 101‐year‐old grandmother in Whiteoaks (1938). Her finest achievement may well have been the compassionate schoolmarm, Miss Moffat, in The Corn Is Green (1940). Her last two shows, Embezzled Heaven (1944) and The Joyous Season (1945), the latter offered only on tour, were failures. John Mason Brown remembered “the fluttering eyes, the throaty voice, and the imperious beauty, lending her special alchemy to Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife,” but many playgoers will recall her most fondly for the famous line she always delivered at the end of her curtain calls: “That's all there is, there isn't any more!” Autobiography: Memories, 1955; biography: The House of Barrymore, Margot Peters, 1990.