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Lionel, the eldest of the three Barrymores, has a warm heart. He calls brother John "The Kid"
FROM infancy on, I heard about "The Barrymore Tradition." Along with Mother Goose and the Katzenjammer Kids and Horatio At The Bridge and Alice In Wonderland and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, there were woven frequent allusions to the Barrymore Tradition. Tales of Grandmother Louisa Drew and daughter, Georgie Drew Barrymore. Tales of Maurice Barrymore and John Drew. Later tales of Lionel Ethel and John. Until the Barrymore Tradition became a part of the American tradition to me, folklore as fabled and fantastic as the tales of the brothers
Grimm. , _
The verv mention of the name of Barrymore conjured up— and still conjures up— The Theatre, mysterious and glamorous. They were the Theatre, the Barrymores. They were, and they are, what vou mean when you say, The Theatre. _ ' I remember hearing my father tell amusing tales of Maurice, father of Lionel. Ethel and John. How once, while Maurice was the great matinee idol ot London and John was at school in England he was required, always, when he came up to the city to visit his father, to travel third-class. John didn t
tbose
They're synonymous with "The Theatre' ' corner of the land . . . . other actors envy
Barrymore
understand this. He resented it. And on one such occasion he said hotlv to his father, "How is it that while all of my friends, sons' of fathers of whom no one has ever heard, travel first or second I, the son of the great Maurice Barrymore, have to travel third?" Whereupon the superb 'Maurice drew his dramatic brows together and responded deeply, You travel third, my son, because there is no fourth!
Such stories as that. , . . ,
People went about intoning "That's all there is-there isn t anymore . . ." in the sombre, throatily thrilling cadences of
The first serious epidemic of fan fever broke out over the profile of John, matinee idol extraordinary. It was the profile of John which really paved the way down which the fans have
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travelled bearing frankincense and myrrh to the Valenti nos Gables Coopers, et al. Girls wrote fervid love letters to that profile' G?rls Sd WOmen framed that perfect profile and hung ft in their boudoirs. There are Ariels now as there were
ArBu? Sever knew exactly what the Barrymore Tradition reallv meant I thought there might, perhaps, have been a mSer Tn tL archive! of their ancestry. Or perhaps a bar "nister upon the 'scutcheon And so, now, many Y^ter I have endeavored to find the explanation of The Barrymore Tradition by the simple and direct expedient of asking Lionel
3naS£t of The Devil Doll, Lionel, John and I We sat on the side-lines talking between Lionels scenes,