Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- The Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Pre-Bard Stage Career of John Barrymore
- 2 Dangerously Modern: Shakespeare, Voice, and the “New Psychology” in John Barrymore's “Unstable” Characters
- 3 The Curious Case of Sherlock Holmes
- 4 John Barrymore's Introspective Performance in Beau Brummel
- 5 “Keep Back your Pity”: The Wounded Barrymore of The Sea Beast and Moby Dick
- 6 From Rome to Berlin: Barrymore as Romantic Lover
- 7 The Power of Stillness: John Barrymore's Performance in Svengali
- 8 Prospero Unbound: John Barrymore's Theatrical Transformations of Cinema Reality
- 9 A Star is Dead: Barrymore's Anti-Christian Metaperformance
- 10 Handling Time: The Passing of Tradition in A Bill of Divorcement
- 11 John Barrymore's Sparkling Topaze
- 12 “Planes, Motors, Schedules”: Night Flight and the Modernity of John Barrymore
- 13 Barrymore and the Scene of Acting: Gesture, Speech, and the Repression of Cinematic Performance
- 14 “I Never Thought I Should Sink So Low as to Become an Actor”: John Barrymore in Twentieth Century
- 15 Barrymore Does Barrymore: The Performing Self Triumphant in The Great Profile
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - The Pre-Bard Stage Career of John Barrymore
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- The Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Pre-Bard Stage Career of John Barrymore
- 2 Dangerously Modern: Shakespeare, Voice, and the “New Psychology” in John Barrymore's “Unstable” Characters
- 3 The Curious Case of Sherlock Holmes
- 4 John Barrymore's Introspective Performance in Beau Brummel
- 5 “Keep Back your Pity”: The Wounded Barrymore of The Sea Beast and Moby Dick
- 6 From Rome to Berlin: Barrymore as Romantic Lover
- 7 The Power of Stillness: John Barrymore's Performance in Svengali
- 8 Prospero Unbound: John Barrymore's Theatrical Transformations of Cinema Reality
- 9 A Star is Dead: Barrymore's Anti-Christian Metaperformance
- 10 Handling Time: The Passing of Tradition in A Bill of Divorcement
- 11 John Barrymore's Sparkling Topaze
- 12 “Planes, Motors, Schedules”: Night Flight and the Modernity of John Barrymore
- 13 Barrymore and the Scene of Acting: Gesture, Speech, and the Repression of Cinematic Performance
- 14 “I Never Thought I Should Sink So Low as to Become an Actor”: John Barrymore in Twentieth Century
- 15 Barrymore Does Barrymore: The Performing Self Triumphant in The Great Profile
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Early in the sound film revolution, the major American studios decided to emulate a current Broadway trend by creating revues—films that featured discrete musical and dramatic sequences designed to dazzle all the senses and show off the various talents of their major stars. These often exposed stars’ less attractive attributes as well as exploiting what they were good at, Paramount on Parade (1930) proving, for example, that Clara Bow's singing voice was not strong. Warner Bros.'s contribution to the genre was one of the earliest and most commercially successful: Show of Shows, released in April 1929. It was as variable in entertainment, artistic merit, and technical sophistication as any of its competitors’ efforts, and was certainly as long (clocking in at well over two hours in its initial screenings) but among the musical and comic acts was an anomaly: the studio's most celebrated “serious” star, John Barrymore, famous as both a stage and screen actor and personality, making his sound film debut by delivering the Duke of Gloucester's soliloquy from William Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part One, on an impressive set featuring a menacing barren mountain, the whole affair introduced and concluded by spare but suitably ominous sound effects. Before his performance, Barrymore, clad in evening dress, steps in front of a stage curtain; the camera cuts to a medium close-up and he delivers the following introduction with an air of charm and almost diffidence. I include his pauses and emphases, particularly in the first part of the address, to convey Barrymore's informality and indeed intimacy with the audience:
Ladies and gentlemen: The, uh, soliloquy you are about to hear is from the, uh, First Part of Henry the Sixth, when Richard the Third was, uh, Duke of Gloucester and before he became King. In it, he, uh, not only discloses his own … piquant psychology, but he also infers that he Although it is not clearly indicated in this particular soliloquy whether he does so or not … permit me to assure you that he eliminates them all … with the, uh … graceful impartiality … of Al Capone [which Barrymore pronounces in the correct Italian manner “Caponeh”].
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- Hamlet Lives in HollywoodJohn Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen, pp. 10 - 21Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017