Ethel Barrymore (August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an Academy Award-winning American actress and a member of the famous Barrymore family.
Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. She spent her childhood in Philadelphia, and attended Roman Catholic schools there.
She was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore, and the great-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. She was also the niece of Broadway matinée idol John Drew Jr and early Vitagraph movie star Sidney Drew.
Ethel Barrymore was a highly regarded stage actress in New York City and a major Broadway performer. Many today consider her to be the greatest actress of her generation.
Her first appearance in Broadway was in 1895, in a play called The Imprudent Young Couple which starred her uncle John Drew Jr and Maude Adams. She appeared with Drew and Adams again in 1896 in Rosemary. She portrayed Nora in A Doll's House by Ibsen (1905), and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (1922).
Barrymore playing the male character Carrots in a play of the same name, 1902
Ethel Barrymore in 1896
She was also a strong supporter of the Actors' Equity Association and had a high-profile role in the 1919 strike. In 1926, she scored one of her greatest successes as the sophisticated spouse of a philandering husband in W. Somerset Maugham's comedy, The Constant Wife. In July 1934 she starred in the play Laura Garnett, by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, at Dobbs Ferry, New York State.
She made her first motion picture in 1914 and in the 1940s, she moved to Hollywood, California and started working in motion pictures. The only two films that featured all three siblings, Ethel, John and Lionel Barrymore, were National Red Cross Pageant (1917) and Rasputin and the Empress (1932).
She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1944 film None but the Lonely Heart opposite Cary Grant, but made plain that she was not overly impressed by it. On March 22, 2007, her Oscar was offered for sale on eBay.
She made such other classic films as The Spiral Staircase (1946) directed by Robert Siodmak, The Paradine Case (1947) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Portrait of Jennie (1948), Pinky (1949), and Kind Lady (1951). Her last film appearance was in Johnny Trouble (1957). She also made a number of television appearances in the 1950s.
Ethel Barrymore by Carl Van Vechten (December 12, 1937)
Winston Churchill proposed to her around 1900, but she turned him down. Ethel married Russell Griswold Colt(1883-1959) on March 14, 1909. The couple had three children: actress/singer Ethel Barrymore Colt (1912 - 1977), who appeared on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Follies; Samuel Colt (1909-1986); and John Drew Colt (1913-1975). They divorced in 1923. A devout Roman Catholic, she never remarried though she had relationships with other men most notably actor Louis Calhern.
Ethel Barrymore died of cardiovascular disease in 1959, at her home in Hollywood, California, following a long battle with a heart condition. She was two months shy of her 80th birthday. She is interred in the Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles. The Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City is named after her.
