The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (27 page)

Bruno Barreto was born into the business in Brazil: he was the son of two movie producers, who actually produced his breakthrough picture,
Dona Flor
, a clever, sexy fantasy about a woman torn between her dead husband (a rogue but a great lover) and the dull new guy. In truth, the film was pretty awkward, but it was helped to international success by Sonia Braga’s central performance.

After that, Barreto struggled, though he did work on the screenplay for the worse-than-awkward American remake of
Dona Flor, Kiss Me Goodbye
(82, Robert Mulligan). Then, at the end of the eighties, as he became romantically involved with Amy Irving, Barreto moved to America. Two of his pictures there have been stories about South American political intrigue—Alan Arkin is good as the kidnapped American ambassador in Brazil in
Four Days in September
. But nothing prepared one for
Carried Away
, a rural story, based on a novel by Jim Harrison, about a teacher who has been engaged too long and who is then seduced by a teenager. Dennis Hopper was the teacher, Amy Irving the fiancée, and Amy Locane the kid. The result was sexy, anguished, and remarkable—one of the best American films of the nineties, and easily Barreto’s finest work. After that,
One Tough Cop
seemed all the more sadly routine.
View from the Top
was unforgivable.

Drew Barrymore
, b. Los Angeles, 1975
I can’t help finding it shocking, as well as startling, that Drew Barrymore was born so recently, and yet seems to have been here, and a problem, so long. For she is a part of showbiz family history, not just in her surname, and our wish that some part of the Barrymore line might be reasonably stable, happy, and productive. She is close enough to our own family to make us all aware of the vicissitudes of show biz as an environment. She is the daughter of John Barrymore Jr.—the young man in Joe Losey’s
The Big Night
. She is thus the grandchild of the unique John Barrymore (dead in 1942, more than thirty years before Drew was born) and Dolores Costello (the mother in
Ambersons
), who died when Drew was four.

Drew drank early, which means she drank too much. She has admitted to drugs, and more, in her book
Little Girl Lost
. And yet, she is maybe the most cheerful, resilient, and sensible of the Barrymores—there is a hint at least that she could grow up to be an Ethel, a wise old woman. It may take more than a hint; there may be urges toward naked revelation and self-destruction that are too much to resist. But Drew Barrymore has also been the child and the girlfriend we might like to have. She is not a great actress, yet she promises good company and genuine humor. God save her.

However, somehow, when she was only five, God let her get involved in
Altered States
(80, Ken Russell), and there has been no looking back: immortally naughty in
E.T
. (82, Steven Spielberg); inflammable in
Firestarter
(84, Mark L. Lester); very good in
Irreconcilable Differences
(84, Charles Shyer);
Cat’s Eye
(85, Lewis Teague); being stalked in
Far from Home
(89, Meiert Avis);
See You in the Morning
(89, Alan J. Pakula);
Doppelganger: The Evil Within
(92, Avi Nesler), in which she played with her mother, Jaid Barrymore; pretty good in
Guncrazy
(92, Tamra Davis), if never burning in the cold way that Peggy Cummins managed in the 1949 film; as another bad and dangerous girl in
Poison Ivy
(92, Katt Shea Ruben);
Sketch Artist
(92, Phedon Papamichael);
Wayne’s World 2
(93, Stephen Surjik);
The Amy Fisher Story
(93, Andy Tennant), for TV;
Bad Girls
(94, Jonathan Kaplan); rather neglected in
Batman Forever
(95, Joel Schumacher); excellent in
Boys on the Side
(95, Herbert Ross); a little crazy in
Mad Love
(95, Antonia Bird);
Scream
(96, Wes Craven); actually dubbed in her singing in
Everyone Says I Love You
(96, Woody Allen);
Wishful Thinking
(97, Adam Park);
Best Man
(97, Davis); delectable in
The Wedding Singer
(98, Frank Coraci); very lively in
Ever After: A Cinderella Story
(98, Tennant);
Home Fries
(98, Dean Parisot); pretending to be seventeen in, but coproducer of,
Never Been Kissed
(99, Raja Gosnell).

She was the fantasy girl in
Skipped Parts
(00, Davis); a voice on
Titan A.E
. (00, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman); a producer as well as actress on
Charlie’s Angels
(00, McG);
Donnie Darko
(01, Richard Kelly); and getting her periodic redemption in
Riding in Cars with Boys
(01, Penny Marshall). She was in
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(02, George Clooney);
So Love Returns
(03, Robert Nathan);
Duplex
(03, Danny DeVito);
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
(03, McG);
50 First Dates
(04, Peter Segal).

She was in
Fever Pitch
(05, Peter and Bobby Farrelly); a voice on the TV series
Family Guy;
and a voice in
Curious George
(06, Matthew O’Callaghan); with Hugh Grant in
Music and Lyrics
(07, Marc Lawrence);
Lucky You
(07, Curtis Hanson); a voice in
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
(08, Raja Gosnell);
He’s Just Not That Into You
(09, Ken Kwapis); with Jessica Lange in
Grey Gardens
(09, Michael Sucsy);
Everybody’s Fine
(09, Kirk Jones); and
Whip It
(09), where she directed herself.

John Barrymore
(John Blythe) (1882–1942), b. Philadelphia
The young brother of Ethel and Lionel, John was the son of English actor Maurice Barrymore and American actress Georgina Drew. There have been many attempts to take John Barrymore seriously: in these scenarios he was a genius actor dreadfully sapped by Hollywood’s malicious willingness to pay for all his booze and by his efforts to justify the tag of the screen’s great lover. His Hamlet, Richard III, and Mercutio are talked of in hushed voices as creations near to the sublime. The latter-day decline into B pictures and grotesque parodies of himself is offered as a tragedy from which we must stand back so that the echoes of Kean-like grandeur may have proper room. But who knows how great an actor Kean was? And Barrymore’s Hamlet is now lost among opinions. Barrymore survives less as a Kean than as the Kean concocted by Sartre, Pierre Brasseur, Vittorio Gassman, and Alan Badel—note, the Barrymore of, say, 1926, “the great profile,” astonishingly resembles Badel. That is to say, he is an actor who cannot believe in acting in the way that his romantic audience did. None of his own weapons—handsomeness, rhetoric, or flamboyance—actually convinces him. Acting becomes a trap and “John Barrymore” an onerous part that he alternately mocks and falls short of. The truth therefore is black comedy, and at that level alone is Barrymore important or serious. Luckily one masterpiece illustrates the helpless pursuit of himself:
Twentieth Century
(34, Howard Hawks), which has Barrymore as Oscar Jaffe, ham extraordinaire, an actor-manager engaged in a merciless upstaging affair with Carole Lombard: the limelit union of two rabid frauds. Like Badel in
Kean
, so Barrymore in
Twentieth Century
simultaneously glorifies and ridicules acting. He is a ham, but a skeptic, incredulous of romance yet hopelessly enthralled by it as the only alternative to chaos. In this light, Barrymore becomes the more engaging as his material deteriorates, and the drunken decline is the inevitable tragi-comedy that he brought upon himself. After all, is it likely that a handsome, charming American in 1925 would take Hamlet more seriously than Dolores Costello and a bottle of bourbon?

He made his film debut in 1913 in
An American Citizen
and worked for Famous Players–Lasky for the next few years, largely in comedies. It was after the First World War that he began to make his mark in featured roles:
Raffles the Amateur Cracksman
(17);
Here Comes the Bride
(18);
Test of Honor
(19);
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(20, John S. Robertson);
The Lotus Eater
(21, Marshall Neilan); and
Sherlock Holmes
(22, Albert Parker). He made
Beau Brummel
(24, Harry Beaumont) for Warners and stayed with them for
The Sea Beast
(26, Michael Webb) and
Don Juan
(26, Alan Crosland). The first was a version of
Moby Dick
that contrived to add Dolores Costello to the crew, while the second was the first feature to have a musical soundtrack. It is more interesting for the way Barrymore tried in vain to have a former mistress, Mary Astor, replaced by the new one, Costello. He was with her again in
When a Man Loves
(27, Crosland) and he then played François Villon in
The Beloved Rogue
(27, Crosland), followed by
The Tempest
(28, Sam Taylor) and
Eternal Love
(29, Ernst Lubitsch). Sound was no obstacle to Barrymore: he kept alcohol for that. He made
General Crack
(29, Crosland),
The Man From Blankley’s
(30, Alfred E. Green),
Moby Dick
(30, Lloyd Bacon)—this time with Joan Bennett—and two versions of the Svengali theme—
Svengali
(31, Archie Mayo) and
The Mad Genius
(31, Michael Curtiz)—before joining MGM. His looks were going and drink was doing all it is supposed to do, but Barrymore remained a leading star in
Arsene Lupin
(32, Jack Conway); hardly impressed by Garbo in
Grand Hotel
(32, Edmund Goulding); in
State’s Attorney
(32, George Archainbaud); as Katharine Hepburn’s father in
A Bill of Divorcement
(32, George Cukor); with his brother and sister in the notorious
Rasputin and the Empress
(32, Richard Boleslavsky); opposite Diana Wynyard in
Reunion in Vienna
(33, Sidney Franklin); in two all-star productions,
Dinner at Eight
(33, Cukor) and
Night Flight
(33, Clarence Brown); as the schoolteacher in
Topaze
(33, Harry d’Arrast); and
Counsellor-at-Law
(33, William Wyler).

Twentieth Century
marked a break in his career. After abandoning a project to film Hamlet, he played a plump Mercutio in Cukor’s
Romeo and Juliet
(36) and then slipped into supporting parts and B pictures:
Maytime
(37, Robert Z. Leonard);
True Confession
(37, Wesley Ruggles); three Bulldog Drummonds;
Spawn of the North
(38, Henry Hathaway); and Louis XV in the Norma Shearer
Marie Antoinette
(38, W. S. Van Dyke). His last years saw a succession of fascinating movies in which a dying Barrymore sardonically reveals his own fraudulence:
Hold that Co-Ed
(38, George Marshall);
The Great Man Votes
(39, Garson Kanin); a very funny observer of intrigue in
Midnight
(39, Mitchell Leisen);
The Great Profile
(40, Walter Lang);
The Invisible Woman
(41, Edward Sutherland);
World Premiere
(41, Ted Tetzlaff); and
Playmates
(41, David Butler). He died, of course.

Lionel Barrymore
(Lionel Blythe) (1878–1954), b. Philadelphia
The older brother of Ethel and John, Lionel was unlike John in all important ways: professional, hardworking, ambitious, humorless, and dull. He began in the theatre but in the years before the First World War he joined D. W. Griffith’s company and acted in a great many two-reelers, occasionally contributing scripts. He became a leading player only in the mid-1920s when he established himself at MGM:
The Face in the Fog
(22, Alan Crosland);
The Eternal City
(23, George Fitzmaurice);
America
(24, Griffith);
The Splendid Road
(25, Frank Lloyd);
The Bells
(26, James Young);
The Barrier
(26, George Hill);
The Lucky Lady
(26, Raoul Walsh);
The Temptress
(26, Fred Niblo);
The Show
(27, Tod Browning);
Women Love Diamonds
(27, Edmund Goulding);
Drums of Love
(28, Griffith); as Atkinson in
Sadie Thompson
(28, Walsh);
West of Zanzibar
(28, Browning);
Alias Jimmy Valentine
(29, Jack Conway); and
The Mysterious Island
(29, Lucien Hubbard, Maurice Tourneur, and Benjamin Christensen). But it was in the years after the coming of sound that he was most active. As well as acting—in
A Free Soul
(30, Clarence Brown), for which he won the best actor Oscar;
The Yellow Ticket
(31, Walsh);
Arsene Lupin
(32, Conway);
Grand Hotel
(32, Goulding);
Mata Hari
(32, Fitzmaurice);
Rasputin and the Empress
(32, Richard Boleslavsky);
Dinner at Eight
(33, George Cukor);
Night Flight
(33, Brown); and
Carolina
(34, Henry King)—he worked as a director at MGM. His output is little seen today and surrounded with mystery.
Madame X
(29) is reputed to be one of the first films to use a moveable microphone, while
His Glorious Night
(29) is sometimes alleged to have been mounted in order to discredit John Gilbert. He directed only three other films,
The Rogue Song
(29),
The Unholy Night
(29), and
Ten Cents a Dance
(31). After his department store mogul in
Sweepings
(33, John Cromwell), he settled for extravagant character parts:
Treasure Island
(34, Victor Fleming);
David Copperfield
(34, Cukor);
Mark of the Vampire
(34, Browning);
Ah, Wilderness!
(35, Brown);
The Devil Doll
(36, Browning);
The Gorgeous Hussy
(36, Brown);
Camille
(36, Cukor); and
Captains Courageous
(37, Fleming). He played Judge Hardy in the first Andy Hardy movie,
A Family Affair
(37, George Seitz), and after
Saratoga
(37, Conway),
A Yank at Oxford
(38, Conway),
Test Pilot
(38, Fleming), and
You Can’t Take It With You
(38, Frank Capra), arthritis forced him into a wheelchair. The most suitable role for this handicap was Dr. Gillespie to Lew Ayres’s Kildare. In fact, Barrymore slogged on after Ayres had been struck off, and played the veteran doctor fourteen times—infirmity prospering at medicine’s expense. As he grew older, the crust on his performances hardened until sometimes it could be lifted off to show a little old man asleep underneath:
The Man on America’s Conscience
(41, William Dieterle);
A Guy Named Joe
(43, Fleming);
Since You Went Away
(44, Cromwell);
Valley of Decision
(45, Tay Garnett); the rancher in
Duel in the Sun
(46, King Vidor);
The Secret Heart
(46, Robert Z. Leonard); the gloomy city boss, Potter, in
It’s a Wonderful Life
(46, Capra);
Key Largo
(48, John Huston);
Down to the Sea in Ships
(49, Henry Hathaway);
Right Cross
(50, John Sturges);
Bannerline
(51, Don Weis);
Lone Star
(52, Vincent Sherman); and
Main Street Broadway
(53, Garnett).