Barrymore Falls —And Likes It

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 351, 4 February 1937, Page 3

Barrymore Falls —And Likes It

SURPRISE AIR TRIP TO “MARRY

ING JUDGE.”

Thrice-divorced John Barrymore, the screen lover, surprised the world recently by marrying his 21-y.ear-old .“protegee,” Elaine Barrie, the New York girl, with whom, he recently declared, he “could never get along.’’ The wedding party flew by a special-ly-chartered air-liner from Los Angeles to Yuma (Arizona), where the “marrying judge/ f Earl Freeman, performed the ceremony. Barrymore gave his age as 48, although records place him at 55. “I’m so happy—so happy that you wouldn’t be able to tell in print how happy I am,” he said before he boarded the air-liner.

He wore a dark, business suit, doub-Icd-breasted camelhair overcoat, a jaunty, dark hat and white duck shoes. Brushing aside the question of quarrels with Elaine, he declared; “Ever since I first saw that girl I’ve wanted to marry her, but how could I when she was in New York and I was in Hollywood?”

Elaine, in a wine-silk dress, wool overcoat and small black hat, tapped her toe impatiently, and plucked Barrymore’s sleeve, anxious to be on the way to Yuma.

At Yuma Judge Freeman, who in 10 years has performed more than 15,000 weddings, said: “I’m glad to have the privilege of marrying the famous John Barrymore before 1 retire.”

On the judge pronouncing the couple man and wife Elaine flung herself into Barrymore’s arms, kissing him again and again.

When the judge gave the bride a small horseshoe for their united luck, John came away with a typical Barrymore touch. With a gallant bow to ho said: *‘My dear, I really don’t need that, since with, you I’ll have nothing but luck.” After a hurried wedding breakfast in a restaurant the party left by rail for Hollywood. Elaine Barrie, who became John Barrymore’s “protegee” when 20 years of age, after a quarrel a year ago followed the famous screen lover by aeroplane, train and taxi-cab across America.

John Barrymore’s three previous wives were:— Famous lawyer’s daughter—Katherine Harris. Married John in 1910; “parted amicably” in 1917.

Author, playwright, poetess—Blanche Oelrichs Tfyomas. Marriage lasted from 1920 to 1928; one daughter. Leading lady—Dolores Costello. From 1928 to 1935 the Barrymore-Costello home was Hollywood’s ideal; yet last year, when “Shrimp” and “Winkle”— as they called each other—parted, he described her as an “iron-fisted Amazon. ” Two children.