Think of Hollywood families, and many names—including Bridges, Douglas, and Sutherland—come up, but there are fewer reigns that have lasted three or more generations. First among any catalog of multigenerational movie families (and not just because of alphabetical order) is the Barrymores.
In the early decades of the 20th century, the Barrymores, John, Ethel and Lionel, sons of 19th century thespians Maurice and Georgiana Barrymore, were stage and screen royalty.
John, later nicknamed “The Great Profile” because of his classically handsome face, went to the theater in 1905 and found fame within a few short years. He was making silent films from 1912 and became one of the big screen legends, but his career was in the sound era (the highlight of which was “Grand Hotel”< /a>) was unstable due to alcoholism, and died in 1942 at 50.
Ethel, who, like John, initially had other plans (he briefly worked as an illustrator but had planned to become a musician), went to the theater in 1895, but did not appear in films until the mid-30s. She continued to appear frequently onstage, but also attempted film roles until the late 1950s. (“Rasputin and the Empress,” the only film starring the three Barrymore siblings, was the first sound film.
Lionel, the youngest of the three, wrote and produced films and was a composer (and is credited with inventing the boom microphone), but appeared in over 200 films. Actor best known by character in such films as “Don’t take it with you” and “It’s a wonderful life” wheelchair for 15 years used in his life, onscreen and off.
The latter dynasty included John Drew Barrymore, John’s son, who worked in TV and film from about 1950 to the mid-1970s (most notably in Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps”), and his sister Diana, whose promising life quickly faded due to alcohol and drug abuse. Ethel’s son Samuel Colt played parts in a few films in the 1950s, but another son, John Drew Colt, had only one film role and his daughter Ethel Colt only acted on stage, mostly in the 1930s.
Barrymore, the daughter of John Drew Barrymore, hit the big time as a child actor in “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”, but She worked mostly on TV throughout the rest of the 1980s. Her youth was clouded by alcohol and drug abuse, and although Drew worked regularly, she was only in the late 1990s. info.vn/tag/box-office”>box, from which, although, visibly in Charles’s “Angels” and its sequels. His half-brother, John Blyth Barrymore, was not well, constantly but without distinction from the middle years Working from the 1970s until the mid-1990s.
Neither Drew Barrymore nor John Blyth Barrymore had any children, so they may be the first filmmaking family in the last generation.
