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The Barrymores: The Royal Family in Hollywood
The Barrymores The Royal Family in Hollywood Author:James Kotsilibas-Davis When Lionel Barrymore made his first film in 1912 in a seedy loft in lower Manhattan, the Barrymores were already the first family of Broadway. These were theater people, serious actors, artists. For them, making films was dirty work and the only stimulant for mucking around in the movies was the obvious one -- money. Yet when the film business ... more »moved west to that godforsaken wasteland known as Hollywood, so did the Barrymores. Despite disdain, "disgrace,' and often denial, the Barrymores left us hundreds of monumental movie triumphs, culminating in Rasputin and the Empress, in which John, Lionel, and Ethel each had starring roles.
The Barrymores: The Royal Family in Hollywood chronicles the films of each Barrymore in fascinating detail, but this book is much more than a mere film story. Here also are the personal lives of each: We live the superlative success and gaudy decline of Jack; we experience the myriad talents as well as the personal frustrations of Lionel; we relish the biting wit and indomitable spirit of Ethel. Finally, we witness the rarely studied lives of Barrymore children and grandchildren, especially Diana and John, Jr., who most profoundly experienced both the gifts and the blows of the remarkable Barrymore legacy.
Woven into the glitter Barrymore tapestry are rich anecdotes of other Hollywood kings and queens including Garbo, Gable, Hepburn, Loy, Harlow, Gilbert, Thalberg, Cukor, Fairbanks, and Pickford, to mention only a few. In a panorama even D.W. Griffith would approve, here is the greatest of Hollywood stories and the history of America's quintessential theatrical family.« less