Barrymore, Ethel

Barrymore, Ethel (1879–1959), one of the leading actresses of the American stage, grand-daughter of Mrs John Drew and sister of John and Lionel Barrymore. She made her first appearance in New York in 1894, and in 1898 was in London, where she appeared with Henry Irving in Laurence Irving's Peter the Great. In New York she scored her first outstanding success as Madame Trentoni in Clyde Fitch's Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901). She played the title-roles in Maugham's Lady Frederick (1908) and The Constant Wife (1926), and Rose in Pinero's Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ (1911); but she was also successful in more serious parts, such as Marguerite in the younger Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias (1917) and Paula Tanqueray in Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1924). In 1928 she opened the Ethel Barrymore Theatre with Martínez Sierra's The Kingdom of God, returning there in 1931 as Lady Teazle in Sheridan's The School for Scandal. She was outstanding in two English parts—as Gran in Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoaks (1938) and as Miss Moffat in Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green (1940), probably her best role. She also played in vaudeville, notably in Barrie's The Twelve-Pound Look.