Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth (21 September 1849[1] – 25 March 1905),[2] known professionally by his stage name Maurice Barrymore, was an Indian-born British stage actor. He is the patriarch and one of the major ancestors of the prominent Barrymore-Drew acting family, and the ancestor / father of subsequent famous stage, film, radio, and television actors and celebrities of Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore, followed by great grand-daughter current actress Drew Barrymore.[3]
Early life
Born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth in the town of Amritsar, Punjab, of British India in the British Empire (modern Republic of India), he was the son of William Edward Blythe, a surveyor for the mercantile British East India Company, and his wife Charlotte Matilda Chamberlayne de Tankerville. Herbert's mother Charlotte, died shortly after giving birth to him. He was the youngest of their seven children of which three others survived to adulthood. He had an older brother named Will and two older sisters named Emily and Evelin. Three other siblings born to the family had died in infancy.[4] Matilda, after a difficult pregnancy, died shortly after giving birth to Herbert on 21 September 1849. In his formative years Herbert was then raised by his paternal Aunt Amelia Blyth, his mother's sister, and later by other family members. Amelia, a Chamberlayne by birth, had married another brother of Herbert's father and was also a Blyth by marriage.
Herbert's father expected him to become a barrister, but Herbert fell in with a group of actors, which scandalized the elder Blyth. That same year of 1872, Herbert sat for his first posed theatrical photographic portrait by photographer Oliver Sarony, older brother of Napoleon Sarony, also a cameraman. In order to spare his father the "shame" of having a son in such a "dissolute" vocation, he took the stage name Maurice Barrymore (he may or may not have legally changed his name from "Blyth"),[5] inspired by a conversation he had with fellow actor Charles Vandenhoff about his acting ancestor William Barrymore (1759–1830),[6] a late-18th and early 19th century English thespian, after seeing a poster depicting old Barrymore decades before in the famous Theatre Royal Haymarket (a.k.a. Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre), dating back to 1720, with current original structure built 1821 and renovated several times since in the last two centuries, located in London's West End famed theatre district of shows, performances and entertainment.
Now known as "Maurice Barrymore", the former Herbert Blyth wanted his new first name to be pronounced in the proper French language manner (môr-ĒS) instead of the English version (MÔR-is). His friends avoided that choice altogether by simply calling him "Barry".[7]
Career and marriage to Georgiana Drew
actor Maurice Barrymore as "Wilding" in Captain Swift (1888), play by C. Haddon Chambers[8]actor Maurice Barrymore (born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth, 1849-1905), portrait taken c.mid-1890s.
On 29 December 1874, budding actor Blyth / Barrymore emigrated to the United States, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean aboard the passenger steamship S.S. America to Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts , and joined the troup of Augustin Daly (1838-1899), making his American début in their production of Under the Gaslight. He made his New York CityBroadway theatres début a year later in December 1875 in Pique opposite Emily Rigl (1854-c.1921); in the cast was a young 19-year old actress, Georgiana Drew (1856-1893), known as Georgie. Maurice and Georgiana had already been introduced earlier by her brother John Drew Jr. (1853-1927), who had earlier befriended Maurice when he first arrived in America. Drew Jr. and Georgiana later brought Barrymore home to Philadelphia to be introduced to her mother, the formidable and well-known longtime actress and theatre manager Mrs. John Drew Sr. (Louisa Lane Drew, 1820-1897), who for some reason wasn't too enthralled by the new young man.
After a brief courtship, Barrymore and Georgie married a year later on 31 December 1876, and eventually had three children: Lionel (born 1878), Ethel (born 1879), and John (born 1882). While their parents were occasionally on tour, the children lived with Georgiana's mother Louisa Lane Drew in Philadelphia. Barrymore had a lifelong love of animals and in the 1890s bought a farm on Staten Island (then south of New York City on Manhattan and across the New York Bay), to keep his collection of exotic animals. Georgiana died 2 July 1893 at the young age of 37, from Tuberculosis (then called consumption), leaving Maurice a relatively young widower with three teenage children. Three years later, for a summer in 1896, Lionel and John were left on the Staten Island farm in the care of the man who fed the animals. Exactly one year after wife Georgie's death, Barrymore married Mamie Floyd, much to daughter Ethel's consternation.
Currie-Porter-Barrymore Shooting
On 19 March 1879, while touring the country, was in the town of Marshall, in northeastern Texas near its eastern border with Louisiana, when then 30-year old Barrymore and fellow actor Ben Porter were shot by a notorious local gunfighter and bully named Jim Currie.[9] Barrymore and friend Porter had played cards earlier with Currie, winning some money from him. Later that evening, while Barrymore, Porter and the actress Ellen Cummins dined at the White House Saloon, an intoxicated Currie began insulting and goading them into a fight. Barrymore challenged Currie to a fistfight. Currie shot him in the chest and then shot Porter in the stomach. John Drew, Jr., also with the company, showed up at the doorway after being alerted by all the commotion, but Currie didn't shoot him, possibly having run out of bullets. Porter was unfortunately killed, while local doctors spent the night operating on Barrymore to save his life. Georgie, then several months pregnant with baby daughter Ethel, rushed to Texas to be at her husband's side enduring a long train trip. He eventually made a full recovery, and returned to Marshall for the legal procedures that followed. Currie's brother was Andrew Currie, mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, (the closest major town further east) from 1878 to 1890 and also later a prominent member of the Louisiana State Legislature at their state capital of Baton Rouge,[10] who apparently used his influence to secure a not guilty verdict (after a short 10-minute deliberation by a hometown jury).[9] An enraged Barrymore vowed never to return to or perform in Texas ever again.[11]
According to a 2004 cable TV channel of the A&E Network program series Biography piece, on the Barrymores, after the Ben Porter tragedy, Barrymore asked wife Georgiana to tour with him and Helena Modjeska, in a play he had written. Georgiana and the children had converted their faith to Roman Catholicism under Helena's influence. Learning that he and Helena had resumed their earlier secret romance, Georgiana, who had been given legal ownership of the play by Barrymore, forced his hand by closing down the production. Helena's husband, its producer, then sued her. The real reason for Georgiana's actions never got into the press. However, Barrymore's many extra-marital dalliances and scandalous womanizing did make the newspapers features and entertainment pages.[citation needed]
Nadjezda legal controversy
In 1884, Barrymore wrote a play titled Nadjezda (meaning "hope").[12] During this period he sailed with his wife Georgiana and their children Lionel, Ethel and John, (then respectively at ages 6, 5 and 2, years old), back across the Atlantic to England to visit relatives he hadn't seen since first migrating to America. (He had inherited some money from his aunt Amelia, one of his family members who had helped raise him.) During the trip Barrymore met the French actress and star Sarah Bernhardt. Without previously copyrighting his play, he gave her a copy of the manuscript text. Two years later in 1886, Victorien Sardou, another friend of Bernhardt's, wrote his play La Tosca, which later achieved great fame as an opera. Barrymore claimed that Bernhardt had given his play to Sardou and that the La Tosca script had plagiarized it, and sought a legal court injunction to stop actress Fanny Davenport from putting on any further performances. In affidavits read out in court Bernhardt said that she had never seen the play and knew nothing about it, and Sardou said that preliminary material for the play had been in his desk for fifteen years. In fact, the only resemblance to La Tosca is the unholy bargain the heroine makes to save her husband's life, similar to that of Tosca and Baron Scarpia. As Sardou pointed out in his legal affidavit, this plot device is a common one and had been notably used by William Shakespeare himself in Measure for Measure.
In 1896, Barrymore became the first major Broadway theatre acting star to headline in vaudeville entertainment—a brave foray at that time. During his acting career, Maurice Barrymore played opposite many of the reigning female stars of the time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including: Helena Modjeska, Mrs. Fiske (a.k.a. Minnie Madern Fiske), Mrs. Leslie Carter (born Caroline Louise Dudley), Olga Nethersole, Lillian Russell, and Lily Langtry.
In the 1895 theater season on New York's Broadway, he co-starred with Mrs. Leslie Carter in the David Belasco production of The Heart of Maryland. Four years later in the 1899 theatrical season again on Broadway, he had a subsequent additional success playing opposite Mrs. Fiske in the part of "Rawdon Crawley" in the Langdon Mitchell (1862-1935), 1899 play Becky Sharp.[13] This play was based by playwright Mitchell on a character "Becky Sharp" from English author William Thackeray's (1811-1863), classic novel of 1847/48, Vanity Fair. The 1899 play production Becky Sharp was Barrymore's last Broadway theatre success, and was later remade 36 years later into a Hollywood feature film in 1935.
In 1900, Barrymore toured the U.S. with a play called The Battle of the Strong co-starring a young Holbrook Blinn. In the cast company of this play was a five-year-old child actress, Blanche Sweet (1896-1986), who later grew up to be a silent movie actress in the 1910s and 1920s, and acted with son Lionel in his first Biograph Studios ((then of The Bronx, New York City), production of a silent film. When the Battle of the Strong company stopped in Louisville, Kentucky, Barrymore sat for his last posed photograph portrait. Also during this time he got to spend time with his youngest son John, who was now in his late teens; the two lived together awhile in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the early motion pictures center and outdoor film set of American film-making in the early 20th century). Lionel and Ethel were then elsewhere on the road in touring theater companies, having already started their own acting careers by then.
Mental breakdown and death
On 28 March 1901, Barrymore was performing at the Lion Palace Theatre in New York City when he suddenly departed from his monologue and shocked the audience with what was described as "a blasphemous attack on the Jews" and a rant of "such an emotional pitch that tears rolled down his face." After further erratic behavior, Barrymore was committed to the local municipal Bellevue Hospital by a court order obtained by his son John.[14]
In reporting his death four years later on 25 March 1905, The New York Times recalled that "He was playing a vaudeville engagement at a Harlem theatre in northern Manhattan when he suddenly dropped his lines and began to rave." The following day he became violent and was taken to Bellevue insane ward by his son, John, who lured him under the pretense of starring in a new play. At Bellevue and later Amityville he was diagnosed with the lingering effects of syphilis, an incurable disease at that time. During his stay at Bellevue he almost strangled unfortunately his daughter Ethel during a visit.[15] Ethel, through her early success on the stage, paid for her father's stay in the medical institutions. A trained boxer, Barrymore retained his strength, despite his age ; in a scuffle with one of the Bellevue Hospital attendants, he picked the man up over his head and threw him into a corner.
In his last year of 1905, Barrymore's eldest son Lionel visited him at the village Amityville and the subject of San Francisco came up. Maurice called Lionel a "goddamned liar" and stated that San Francisco had been destroyed by earthquake and fire. Lionel writes in his published autobiography, that his father had apparently had somehow foreseen the devastating disaster of the infamous Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of April 1906, a full year before it took place.[16]
Barrymore died in his sleep at the relatively young age of 55 years, on Saturday, March 25, 1905, at his country home in the village of Amityville, New York. Middle daughter Ethel, after seeking permission from her maternal uncle John Drew, had his remains transported south to be buried in the family plot at Glenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia.[17][3][18] When the cemetery later was closed, his remains were moved to the nearby Mount Vernon Cemetery where his first wife and her family are buried. Barrymore was fondly remembered, and his death was widely reported in the country's newspapers. He had lived long enough to see all three of his children enter the family business of acting and be featured in theatres around the country and [19]
In memoriam
In honor of his life, Michael J. Farrand penned the memorial narrative poem "The Man Who Brought Royalty to America" in 2000, based on the definitive biography Great Times, Good Times: The Odyssey of Maurice Barrymore by James Kotsilibas Davis (Doubleday, 1977).
References
^ abJames Kotsilibas Davis (ca. 1977) Great Times Good Times: The Odyssey of Maurice Barrymore
^Kotsilibas Davis wrote that he never changed his name legally from Blyth-to-Barrymore, but a 1901 newspaper article says that he did ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH "Maurice Barrymore Has After A Dangerous Outbreak Been Put In An Asylum ; Saturday March 30, 1901
^American and British Theatrical Biography page 74 c.1979 by J.P. Wearing Retrieved 12 August 2015 ISBN0-8108-1201-0
^ abDeArment, Robert K. (30 March 2012). Deadly Dozen: Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West. Vol. 2. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 37–46. ISBN9780806138633.
^"Literary gossip". The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts. 1 (10): 158. 7 February 1884. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
^Famous Actors and Actresses On the American Stage: Documents of the American Theater History Vol. 1 A-J by William C. Young c.1975; (Maurice Barrymore entry pages75-81 with splendid photo as Rawdon Crawley)
