Blanche Sweet
Blanche Sweet, c. 1915
Born	Sarah Blanche Sweet (1896-06-18)June 18, 1896 Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died	September 6, 1986(1986-09-06) (aged 90) New York, New York, USA
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1909 – 1930, 1958 – 1960
Spouse	Marshall Neilan (1922–1929) Raymond Hackett (1935–1958) (his death)

Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896^[1][2][3] – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry.

Early life[link]

Born in Chicago, Illinois into a family of stock theater and vaudeville performers, Blanche Sweet entered the entertainment industry at an early age. At age 4 she toured in a play called The Battle of the Strong whose star was stage luminary Maurice Barrymore. A decade later Sweet would act with Barrymore's son Lionel in a D. W. Griffith directed film.^[4] In 1909, she started work at Biograph Studios under contract to director D. W. Griffith. By 1910 she had become a rival to Mary Pickford, who had also started for Griffith the year before.

Rise to stardom[link]

Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, Judith of Bethulia. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford.

Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer.^[5][6]

During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars.

In 1975, Sweet was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

Talkies[link]

As the "Roaring Twenties" wound down, Sweet's career faltered with the advent of talkies. Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in 1930's Show Girl in Hollywood, before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1935.^[7] The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958.

Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, her career in both of these fields petered out, and she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive recognition for her work. File:Blanche Sweet September 1984.jpg

On September 24, 1984, a tribute to Blanche Sweet was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Miss Sweet introduced her 1925 film, The Sporting Venus.

She died in New York City of a stroke, aged 90.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Blanche Sweet

• Blanche Sweet at the Internet Broadway Database
• Blanche Sweet at the Internet Movie Database
• Blanche Sweet at AllRovi
• Blanche Sweet at the TCM Movie Database
• Blanche Sweet at Golden Silents
• Some contemporary interviews with Blanche Sweet
• Blanche Sweet at Find a Grave
• Blanche Sweet at New York Public Library, B. Rose Collection
• Silent Ladies & Gents
• Photographs and literature on Blanche Sweet

Kate Bruce
with Carol Dempster (right) in Scarlet Days (1919)
Born	1858 Columbus, Indiana, USA
Died	April 2, 1946 (aged 87–88) New York, New York, USA
Other names	Phyllis Forde
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1908-1931

Kate Bruce (1858 – April 2, 1946) was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 289 films between 1908 and 1931.

She was born in Columbus, Indiana and died in New York, New York.

Selected filmography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kate Bruce

• Kate Bruce at the Internet Movie Database

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Lionel Barrymore
Barrymore in 1923
Born	Lionel Herbert Blythe (1878-04-28)April 28, 1878 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	November 15, 1954(1954-11-15) (aged 76) Beverly Hills, California
Cause of death	Heart Attack
Resting place	Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles, California, US
Residence	Beverly Hills, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Episcopal Academy
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1893–1954
Known for	Barrymore Family, Henry Potter
Notable work(s)	A Free Soul, It's a Wonderful Life, Young Dr. Kildare
Home town	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Height	6' 0" (1.83 m)
Religion	Catholic
Spouse	Doris Rankin (m.1904-1923; divorced) Irene Fenwick (m.1923-1936; her death)
Children	Mary Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore
Parents	Georgiana Drew, Maurice Barrymore
Family	Ethel Barrymore (sister), John Barrymore (brother), John Drew Barrymore (Nephew), Diana Barrymore (niece), Drew Barrymore (Great-Niece)
Awards	Academy Award for Best Actor

Lionel Barrymore (April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio.^[1] He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul (1931), and remains perhaps best known for the role of the villainous Henry Potter character in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. He was also a member of the illustrious theatrical Barrymore family.

Early life[link]

Lionel Barrymore was born Lionel Herbert Blythe in Philadelphia, the son of actors Georgiana Drew Barrymore and Maurice Barrymore. He was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore, the uncle of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore, and the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore. Barrymore was raised a Roman Catholic.^[2] He attended the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[3]

In her autobiography, Eleanor Farjeon recalled that when she and Barrymore were friends as toddlers, she would take off her shoes and he would kiss her feet.^[4]

He was married twice, to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick, a one-time lover of his brother John. Doris's sister Gladys was married to Lionel's uncle Sidney Drew, which made Gladys both his aunt and sister-in-law.

Doris Rankin bore Lionel two daughters, Ethel Barrymore II (b. 1908) and Mary Barrymore. Unfortunately, neither baby girl survived infancy, though Mary lived a few months. Lionel never truly recovered from the deaths of his girls, and their loss undoubtedly strained his marriage to Doris Rankin, which ended in 1923. Years later, Barrymore developed a fatherly affection for Jean Harlow, who was born about the same time as his two daughters and would have been about their age. When Jean died in 1937, Lionel and Clark Gable mourned her as though she had been family.

Stage career[link]

Lionel Barrymore in the trailer for Camille

Barrymore began his stage career in the mid 1890s, acting with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew. He appeared on Broadway in his early twenties with his uncle John Drew Jr. in such plays as The Second in Command (1901) and The Mummy and the Hummingbird (1902), both produced by Charles Frohman. In 1905 Lionel and his siblings, John and Ethel, were all being groomed under the tutelage of Frohman. That year Lionel appeared with John in a short play called Pantaloon while John appeared with Ethel in Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire.

In 1910, after he and Doris had spent many years in Paris, Lionel came back to Broadway, where he established his reputation as a dramatic and character actor. He and his wife often acted together on stage. He proved his talent in many plays, including Peter Ibbetson (1917) (with brother John), The Copperhead (1918) (with Doris), and The Jest (1919) (again with John). Lionel gave a short-lived performance as MacBeth in 1921. The play was not successful and more than likely convinced Lionel to permanently return to films. One of Lionel's last plays was Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1923) with his second wife, Irene Fenwick. This play would later be made into a 1928 silent film starring Lionel's friend, Lon Chaney, Sr..

Film career[link]

Barrymore began making films about 1911 with D.W. Griffith at the Biograph Studios. There are claims that he made an earlier film with Griffith called The Paris Hat (1908) but no such movie exists. Lionel and Doris were in Paris in 1908, where Lionel attended art school and where their first baby, Ethel, was born. Lionel mentions in his autobiography, We Barrymores, that he and Doris were in France when Bleriot flew the channel on July 25, 1909.

Entering films the same year his uncle Sidney Drew began a film career at Vitagraph, Barrymore made The Battle (1911), The New York Hat (1912), Friends and Three Friends (1913). In 1915 he co-starred with Lillian Russell in a movie called Wildfire, one of the legendary Russell's few film appearances. He also made a foray into directing at Biograph. The last silent film he directed, Life's Whirlpool (Metro Pictures 1917), starred his sister, Ethel.

In early 1920, Barrymore reprised his title role in the stage play, The Copperhead (1920), in a Paramount Artcraft film of the same name. ^[5]

Before the formation of MGM in 1924, Barrymore forged a good relationship with Louis B. Mayer early on at Metro Pictures. He made numerous silent features for Metro, most of them now lost. He occasionally freelanced, returning to Griffith in 1924 to film America. His last film for Griffith was in 1928's Drums of Love.

With wife Irene Fenwick

After Lionel and Doris divorced in 1923, he married Irene Fenwick. The two went to Italy to film The Eternal City for Metro Pictures in Rome, combining work with their honeymoon. In 1924 he went to Germany to star in British producer-director Herbert Wilcox's Anglo-German co-production Decameron Nights, filmed at UFA's Babelsberg studios outside Berlin.

Prior to his marriage to Irene, he and his brother John fell out over the issue of Irene's chastity in the wake of her having been one of John's lovers. The brothers didn't speak again for two years and weren't seen together until the premiere of John's film Don Juan in 1926, having patched up their differences. In 1924, he left Broadway for Hollywood. He starred as Frederick Harmon in director Henri Diamant-Berger's drama Fifty-Fifty (1925) opposite Hope Hampton and Louise Glaum, and made several other freelance motion pictures, including The Bells (Tiffany Pictures 1926) with a then-unknown Boris Karloff. After 1926, however, he worked almost exclusively for MGM, appearing opposite such luminaries as John Gilbert, Lon Chaney, Sr., Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and his brother John.

Barrymore in David Copperfield trailer, 1935

On the occasional loan-out, Barrymore had a big success with Gloria Swanson in 1928's Sadie Thompson and the aforementioned Griffith film, Drums of Love. Talkies were now a reality and Barrymore's stage-trained voice recorded well in sound tests. In 1929, he returned to directing films. During this early and imperfect sound film period, he made the controversial His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, Madame X starring Ruth Chatterton, and Rogue Song, Laurel & Hardy's first color film. Barrymore returned to acting in front of the camera in 1931. In that year, he won an Academy Award for his role as an alcoholic lawyer in A Free Soul (1931), after being nominated in 1930 for Best Director for Madame X. He could play many characters, like the evil Rasputin in the 1932 Rasputin and the Empress (in which he co-starred with siblings John Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore) and the ailing Oliver Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933 – also with John Barrymore, although they had no scenes together).

During the 1930s and 1940s, he became stereotyped as grouchy but sweet elderly men in such films as The Mysterious Island (1929), Grand Hotel (1932, with John Barrymore), Captains Courageous (1937), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Duel in the Sun (1946), and Key Largo (1948).

AFRS "Concert Hall" Radio Show, circa 1947

In a series of Doctor Kildare movies in the 1930s and 1940s, he played the irascible Doctor Gillespie, repeating the role he'd created in the radio series throughout the 1940s. He also played the title role in another 1940s radio series, Mayor of the Town. Barrymore had broken his hip in an accident, hence he played Gillespie in a wheelchair; later, his worsening arthritis kept him in the chair.^[6] The injury also precluded his playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 MGM film version of A Christmas Carol, a role Barrymore played every year but one on the radio from 1934 through 1953.

His final film appearance was a cameo in Main Street to Broadway, an MGM musical comedy released in 1953. His sister Ethel also appeared in the film.

Perhaps his best known role, thanks to perennial Christmastime replays on television, was Mr. Potter, the miserly and mean-spirited banker in It's a Wonderful Life (1946) opposite James Stewart. The role suggested that of the "unreformed" stage of Barrymore's "Scrooge" characterization. Lionel's wife, Irene, died on Christmas Eve of 1936 and Lionel did not perform his annual Scrooge that year. John filled in as Scrooge for his grieving brother.

Barrymore loathed the income tax system which kept him working to the end of his life. He expressed an interest in appearing on television in the 1950s but felt compelled to remain loyal to his old friend and employer Louis B. Mayer and MGM.^[7]

Composer[link]

Barrymore was also a prolific composer. His works ranged from solo piano pieces to large-scale orchestral works, such as "Tableau Russe." His piano compositions, "Scherzo Grotesque" and "Song Without Words", were published by G. Schirmer in 1945.

Graphic artist[link]

Barrymore was also a very skillful graphic artist. For years, he maintained an artist's shop and studio attached to his home in Los Angeles. His etchings and drawings are prized by collectors around the world.

Death[link]

Lionel Barrymore died on November 15, 1954 from a heart attack in Van Nuys, California, and was entombed in the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.^[8]

He is honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the motion picture and radio categories.

Popular culture[link]

• In the classic animated series Johnny Quest in the episode Turu the Terrible the villain is a character called 'Deen'. He is elderly and wheelchair bound and is in command of a large pteranodon, an apparent survivor from the prehistoric dinosaur age. While Deen does not look like Lionel Barrymore, he is voiced by actor Everett Sloane whose voice is a deadringer for Barrymore's.

Partial filmography[link]

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Barrymore family

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lionel Barrymore

Further reading[link]

• Menefee, David W. The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era.

External links[link]

• Lionel Barrymore at AllRovi
• Lionel Barrymore at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs of Lionel Barrymore
• Lionel Barrymore at Internet Broadway Database
• Lionel Barrymore photo gallery NYP Library
• NY Times August 29 1908 A NEW ETHEL BARRYMORE; Daughter Born To Lionel in Paris
• Lionel Barrymore and several other actors on Orson Welles Radio Almanac 1944
• Lionel Barrymore in 1902 in "The Mummy and the Hummingbird", portrait by Burr McIntosh for Munseys Magazine
• Lionel with brother John Barrymore, 1917
• Lionel Barrymore as a child (* if photo doesn't load click -> the worthpoint link then return and click)

Mabel Normand
Born	Amabel Ethelreid Normand (1892-11-09)November 9, 1892 New Brighton, Staten Island, U.S.
Died	February 23, 1930(1930-02-23) (aged 37) Monrovia, California, U.S.
Other names	Mabel Normand-Cody
Occupation	Actress, comedian, director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1910–1927
Spouse	Lew Cody (1926–1930)

Mabel Normand (November 9, 1892^[1] – February 23, 1930) was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios^[2] and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors.^[3] Onscreen she co-starred in commercially successful films with Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle more than a dozen times each, occasionally writing and directing movies featuring Chaplin as her leading man.^[4] At the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Normand had her own movie studio and production company.

Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with widely publicized scandals including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines, who was shot by Normand's chauffeur with her pistol. She was not a suspect in either crime. Her film career declined, possibly due to both scandals and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, retirement from films and her death in 1930 at age 37.^[5][6]