John Barrymore (John Sidney Blyth) è un attore statunitense, è nato il 14 febbraio 1882 a Filadelfia, Pennsylvania (USA) ed è morto il 29 maggio 1942 all'età di 60 anni a Los Angeles, California (USA).
JOHN BARRYMORE (1882-1942) lives on in the popular imagination as the consummate stage performer, a thespian of the old school armed with an impossibly cultured voice, a gift for grand gestures and majestic poses, and a mysterious ability (lost to us now) to look good in tights.
But by 1925 Barrymore's theatrical career was effectively over, and he had become almost entirely a creature of the movies. A new boxed set from Kino International, “The John Barrymore Collection,” offers four of his starring vehicles from the silent period: “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1920), “Sherlock Holmes” (1922), “The Beloved Rogue” (1927) and “Tempest” (1928). Each offers ample evidence of his oversize talent and cinematic appeal. (Though only “Sherlock Holmes,” presented in a fine restoration from George Eastman House, is new to DVD, the others having previously appeared on Kino or other labels.)
Barrymore began his Broadway career as a light comedian and was only gradually persuaded to try dramatic roles. He entered films in 1914 and at first appeared almost exclusively in comedies. The anonymous reviewer of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in The New York Times was surprised and gratified to find that Barrymore had broken with “the style of his previous screen work” as “an out-and out-farceur.”
“Unlike many players with stage reputations,” the reviewer for The Times wrote, “he has come to the screen with an appreciation of the requisites for acting before the camera and the ability to suit his acting to his understanding.” The review went on to say, “He belongs conspicuously in the relatively small class of actors in motion pictures who are really motion picture actors.”
Silent movies might have taken away his marvelous voice, but close-ups gave him greater use of another highly expressive instrument, his eyes. Arching his artfully plucked eyebrows, he could concentrate a magnetizing, hawklike stare, an effect he could vary in intensity by narrowing down or opening up his eyelids, like a stagehand controlling the intensity of an arc light with a shutter. One of his most characteristic gestures is his way of clawing his hair back with a wide-spread hand, which served to redirect attention to his powerful gaze.
Directed by John S. Robertson, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is derived from the Robert Louis Stevenson novella by way of an 1887 stage adaptation by T. R. Sullivan, apparently the first version of the story to turn Hyde into a physical as well as a moral monster. (Stevenson describes the character only as exuding a strange sense of evil.)
Barrymore performs the first transformation scene without the aid of optical effects or makeup, willing himself from Jekyll to Hyde by distending his facial muscles, popping his eyes and jutting out his lower jaw. Like some early practitioner of Butoh he carefully, painfully, deforms himself.
Barrymore was, of course, a deeply conflicted man, a heavy drinker with an addiction to disastrous marriages. In an introduction filmed for a television broadcast of “The Beloved Rogue,” Orson Welles describes his friend and fellow Shakespearean as “a man with no vocation for acting but a great genius for it.” If Barrymore was ambivalent about his career, he seemed actively resentful of his famous good looks: the vaulted brow and long, straight nose that earned him the adoring nickname the Great Profile.
In three of the four films in this set Barrymore goes out of his way to disfigure himself. In “Dr. Jekyll” he hides under a straggly fright wig, and in “Sherlock Holmes” he revels in some conspicuously unconvincing old-age makeup. In “The Beloved Rogue” he moves into Lon Chaney territory, making himself unrecognizable as a bulbous-nosed King of the Revels for a medieval All-Fools Day, apparently filmed on the Paris set of Universal's “Phantom of the Opera.”
But invariably there comes a scene in which Barrymore removes his false face, twisting off the putty nose, and the Great Profile reappears. Perhaps audiences of the time enjoyed these moments as we appreciate the chameleon transformations of Sean Penn or Cate Blanchett, both as acting and proof of acting.
In 1924 Barrymore began a long tenure at Warner Brothers (he was the studio's biggest star next to Rin Tin Tin) with the costume drama “Beau Brummel.” He would continue to explore that genre, principally under the direction of Alan Crosland, through his first all-talking star vehicle, “General Crack,” in 1930. These elegant and exhilarating films — “Don Juan” (1926) is probably the best known — are Barrymore's most satisfying silent work.
Barrymore and Crosland made “The Beloved Rogue” on loan-out to United Artists, although it contains all the elements that made Barrymore's Warner Brothers films popular: a lush historical background (designed by William Cameron Menzies), a swashbuckling plot (as the populist poet François Villon, Barrymore helps rescue Louis XI, played by Conrad Veidt, from the perfidious Burgundians) and a heaving-bodice love story (the low-born Villon dares to romance the king's ward, played by Marceline Day). It was a formula that worked equally well 10 years later when Warner Brothers, faced with another unruly, hard-drinking actor, revived and reshaped it for the classic Errol Flynn swashbucklers.
A United Artists production, “Tempest” is a heavier, less engaging historical melodrama set in pre-revolutionary Russia; Barrymore seems distracted throughout. Perhaps he was sensing the change in the air. Directed by Sam Taylor, this late silent film emerged in a market increasingly given over to talkies, and Barrymore would soon shoot his first speaking scene — a monologue as Richard III — for the Warner Brothers all-star revue “The Show of Shows.”
Instead of enhancing his talkie appeal Barrymore's stentorian voice seemed in some odd way to date him, and he would spend much of his career in sound films making fun of his theatrical demeanor and fading image. Always a comedian at heart, he was brilliant at first in films like Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast's “Topaze” (1933) and Howard Hawks's “Twentieth Century” (1934). But later, as his alcoholism caused his memory to fail and he could no longer remember his lines, he found himself stranded in B pictures like “The Invisible Woman” (1940) and “Playmates” (1941).
In 1942 he collapsed during a radio broadcast and died. Better we should remember him as he is here, at the height of his preposterous talent. (Kino, boxed set $59.95; “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Beloved Rogue” and “Tempest” $24.95 each; “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” $19.95, not rated).
Fa The New York Times, 9 luglio 2009
Il più giovane membro della 'famiglia reale di Broadway' (sono figli di due attori), iniziò la sua carriera in teatro nel 1903, dopo aver lavorato come caricaturista in un quotidiano newyorkese. A quattordici anni era già un alcolizzato e arrivò al palcoscenico dopo anni di vita da bohèmien. In teatro sostenne per lo più ruoli brillanti, acquistando anche una certa notorietà. Del 1913 è il suo debutto cinematografico, con An Amenican Citizen (Un cittadino americano) di J. Scarle Dawley. Tra il 1914 e il 1919 B. realizzò film per la Famous Players, in gran parte versioni cinematografiche di commedie di successo, che lo resero molto popolare e ne misero in luce lo spirito e il talento di attore brillante. La sua carriera teatrale nel frattempo assunse maggior rilievo, in seguito al passaggio a ruoli drammatici. Nel 1920, anno di una sua eccellente interpretazione del 'Riccardo III' di Shakespeare, sostenne il doppio ruolo di Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dottor Jekyll e Mister Hyde, 1920) di J.S. Robertson, il film che gli assicurò un successo internazionale e che è generalmente considerato il migliore della sua carriera durante il muto. L'anno successivo - ancora in teatro - fu un memorabile Amleto. Nel cinema con Don Juan (Don Giovanni e Lucrezia Borgia, 1926) di Alan Crosland, B.- quarantenne - acquistò il titolo di «più grande amante di ogni tempo» e tale fama si accrebbe all'avvento del sonoro, anche per la sua bella voce. Nuovo mito maschile, 'The Barrymore, Lionel profile'- questo era il suo soprannome -durante gli anni '20 fu impegnato in film romantici e d'avventura, spesso in costume: da Beau Brummel (Lord Brummel, 1924) di H. Beaumont, a The Sea Best (Il mostro del mare, 1925) di Millard Webb, da When a Man loves (Gli amori di Manon Lescaut, 1927) di Alan Crosland a The Eternal Love (La valanga, 1929) di Ernst Lubitsch, dalla prima versione di (Moby Dick, il mostro bianco, 1980) di L. Bacon a Svengali (1931) di Archie Mayo e a The Mad Genius (Il diavolo sciancato, 1931) di Michael Curtiz. Dopo il 1932 prende forma la sua immagine cinematografica più conosciuta, quella del viveur internazionale raffinato e spiritoso, eccentrico e impertinente, personaggio che interpreta in film come Arsène Lupin (Arsenio Lupin, 1932) di Jack Conway, in cui è contrapposto al fratello Lionel, Grand Hôtel (1932) di Edmund Goulding, dove impersona un ladro di gioielli al fianco di Greta Garbo, A Bill of Divorcement (Febbre di vivere, 1932) di George Cukor, partner di Katherine Hepburn, Topaze di H. Abbadie d'Arrast, Dinner at Eight (Pranzo alle otto) di G. Cukor, ambedue del 1933, anno in cui B. cominciò a dar segni di declino a causa del suo stato di alcolizzato cronico. Girò ancora Twentieth Century (Ventesimo secolo, 1934) di Howard Hawks, assieme a Carole Lombard, nel ruolo di Mercuzio Romeo and Juliet (Giulietta e Romeo, 1936) di G. Cukor, Midnight (La signora di mezzanotte, 1939) di Mitchell Leisen. Attore di eccezionale talento e grande personalità, ma male utilizzato, B. concluse la sua carriera interpretando numerose commedie in cui ironicamente riviveva sullo schermo il suo alcolismo e la sua esistenza lacerata: come in The Great Profile (Il grande profilo, 1940) di Walter Lang dove interpretava se stesso, e Playmates (Compagni di gioco, 1941) di David Butler, in cui ripeteva un episodio veramente successo: la sua incapacità di proseguire nel monologo dell'Amleto. Nel 1957 Errol Flynn ne ha rievocato la vita in Too Much, Too Soon (Furia d'amare) di Art Napoleon. Nel 1926 B. aveva scritto un'autobiografia: 'Confessions of an Actor', nel 1935, un libro di ricordi e riflessioni sulla 'famiglia', 'We Three'. Ha avuto quattro mogli: dal matrimonio con la poetessa Michael Strange (Bianche Oelrichs) nacque Diana Barrymore (1921-1960, donna e attrice sfortunata che tentò invano di affermarsi in teatro e sullo schermo per uscire da una grave forma di dipsomania); da quello con l'attrice Dolores Costello nacque, nel 1932 a Beverly Hills, John Drew Barrymore, ragazzo turbolento più volte finito in carcere per droga e per risse, attore di qualche merito (ha lavorato anche in Italia) ma troppo incostante per costruirsi una vera carriera.
Da F. Di Giammatteo, Nuovo dizionario universale del cinema. Gli autori, Editori Riuniti, 1996, Roma
