Cantankerous Barrymore
John Barrymore is playing the fool. Running in Chicago is My Dear Children, locally described as a " Ham Show," in which, last month, Barrymore had played to 150,000 people for a boxoffice gross of something like £50,000 It’s not the play, it’s the player. Every night, report quotes the doorman, Barrymore arrives, " dead or alive," sometimes ill, sometimes tight, always the trouper. Improvising brilliantly as the correct lines go out of his head, from puzzlement, muzzlement, or deliberate intent, Barrymore holds the crowds so long as he does not play the part straight. He injects remarks with no reference to the play, recognises people in the audience, delivers addresses on loss of memory when he forgets his lines, sometimes acts sitting down because he cannot stand up, and once even demanded a wheelchair when bodily powers failed him at the dressing-room door. Because her husband spanked her too hard in the play, Elaine Barrie has filed a divorce suit against Barrymore. In October, Barrymore ‘was reported as saying to his lawyers about his fourth wife: "Make any possible. settlement, but be sure to get rid of her."
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19391215.2.62
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 25, 15 December 1939, Page 45
Word Count
189Cantankerous Barrymore New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 25, 15 December 1939, Page 45
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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