-
01
Errol Flynn and Raoul Walsh were among the friends who gathered at a bar after Barrymore’s death to commiserate. Walsh pretended to go home but instead bribed the funeral home caretaker to lend them Barrymore’s body, which they propped up in Flynn’s living room chair. Flynn’s autobiography describes his shock, though Gene Fowler denied the story.
-
02
Barrymore was originally cast as Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner 1941 but could not remember his lines due to alcoholism and was replaced by Monty Woolley.
-
03
On his deathbed, when a priest asked if he had anything to confess, Barrymore replied he was guilty of having carnal thoughts about the accompanying homely nurse, shocking the priest.
-
04
Barrymore is the only one of the three Barrymore siblings never to win or be nominated for an Academy Award, despite being considered the finest actor of the three. Most historians believe this was because he never signed a long-term Hollywood contract and thus lacked studio campaign support.
-
05
In May 1915, Barrymore served as a pallbearer at the funeral of Broadway producer Charles Frohman, whose body was recovered from the sinking of the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915.
-
06
Barrymore left specific instructions to be cremated and buried next to his parents in Philadelphia, but his brother Lionel and Mervyn LeRoy had his remains entombed at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. In 1980, his son John Drew Barrymore and grandson John Blyth Barrymore removed the casket and cremated him.
-
07
Barrymore supported his brother Lionel when Lionel’s wife Irene Fenwick died, and filled in for Lionel as Ebenezer Scrooge in a radio production of A Christmas Carol on December 25, 1936.
-
08
Barrymore courted Evelyn Nesbit and proposed marriage when she became pregnant, but architect Stanford White intervened and arranged for Nesbit to undergo an operation for appendicitis. White was later murdered by Nesbit’s husband Harry Thaw.
-
09
Father of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore. Grandfather of Drew Barrymore.
-
10
The three Barrymore siblings appeared in only one film together: Rasputin and the Empress 1932.
-
11
One night while drunk, Barrymore accidentally entered a women’s restroom and relieved his bladder in a potted plant. When a woman reminded him the room was for ladies, he replied, ‘So, madam, is this. But every now and again, I’m compelled to run a little water through it. This incident was included verbatim in the film My Favorite Year 1982.
-
12
Barrymore’s birth certificate lists February 14 as his birth date, conflicting with the family Bible that says February 15. His World War I draft and Social Security records state February 15.
-
13
Barrymore was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6667 Hollywood Blvd. on February 8, 1960.
-
14
Barrymore had a daughter with Dolores Costello: Dolores Ethel Blyth Barrymore, born April 8, 1930.
-
15
When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupted his national tour, the army pressed him into service helping clean up the damage. His sister Ethel said: It took an earthquake to get him out of bed and the army to put him to work.
-
16
Barrymore was considered the greatest Hamlet and Richard III of his time, and is still considered the greatest American actor to have played those roles.
-
17
His 1922 Hamlet was the longest-running Broadway production of the play with 101 performances, until John Gielgud played the role for 132 in 1936.
-
18
For his performance in Beau Brummel 1924, he was given a special self-created award from Rudolph Valentino.
-
19
Barrymore was good friends with Errol Flynn, who later played Barrymore in the film Too Much, Too Soon 1958 about his daughter Diana.
-
20
George Bernard Shaw considered Barrymore’s highly regarded Hamlet one of the worst performances he had ever seen, accusing him in a blistering letter of indulging his own ego at the expense of Shakespeare.
-
21
Barrymore was rebaptized as a Roman Catholic after his mother’s secret conversion. Of the siblings, only Ethel remained a devout Catholic.
-
22
On August 13, 2020, Barrymore was honored with a day of his filmography during Turner Classic Movies Summer Under the Stars.
-
23
Regarding the costume romance films he starred in during the 1920s, he joked they were male impersonations of Lilyan Tashman.
-
24
Barrymore was the son of Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew; grandson of Louisa Drew and John Drew; uncle of Samuel Colt, Ethel Colt, and John Drew Colt.
-
25
After John Gielgud, Barrymore was the most acclaimed Hamlet of the 20th century; his London performance influenced Laurence Olivier’s 1937 stage and 1948 film Hamlet. From 1922 until 1975, he and Walter Hampden were the only Americans to play Hamlet on Broadway.
-
26
Barrymore appeared with Reginald Denny in five films: Sherlock Holmes 1922, Romeo and Juliet 1936, and three Bulldog Drummond films in 1937-1938.
-
27
Five of his films have been selected for the National Film Registry: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ 1925, Grand Hotel 1932, Dinner at Eight 1933, Twentieth Century 1934, and Midnight 1939.
-
28
Barrymore is mentioned in the Three Stooges short Movie Maniacs 1936.
-
29
Barrymore played three different gentleman thieves: AJ Raffles, Arsene Lupin, and the Baron in Grand Hotel.
-
30
Barrymore shared a room in Times Square with journalist Herbert Bayard Swope.
