Evening star., 1933-01-20
Barrymore Tells Theater
"TO Go Jump in the Lake."

n EADERS of John Barrymore's
- life saga in the current
American Magazine will find
L him rhapsodiZing as follows:
las far as my brother
Licnel and I are concerned, the
Barrymore family seems to have told
the theater to go jump in the lake.
We are movie actors. We like being
movie actors; We are proud of being
movie actors. We feel that we are
in no way debasing our so-called
art, nor fouling the honor of our
illuStriouS ancestors when we allow
our histrionic antics to be recorded
on celluloid and packed in tin cans
and shipped, like tomatoes, all over
the earth.
I'VE feel that it is better, and
certainly more profitable, that we
should appear in 500 theaters day
before a million persons than in one
theater before thousand. A thou
sand, that is, except on rainy nights
or during holy week!
I'VE doubt seriously, and with real
reverence, that our father and
mother, Maurice Barrymore and
George Drew Barrymore, were they
alive today, would look with horror
upon our present method of earning
a living.
But my sister Ethel is different.
She will carry the torch for the
Barrymore family in the theater
until she drops. She has no patience
whatsoever with Lionel's philosophy
and mine, that it is better to please
Minnie Johnson of Topeka, and
Henry Higgins and wife and children
of Tacoma, and Oscar Olson and his
Aunt Agatha Of Babylon, Long
Island, than to keep four-square with
the, to us, pedantic and dull ideals
of the late Mr.. William Winter.
Ethel Barrymore is still queen in
the Royal Family, and she would
no more abandon the theater than
Queen Mary would give up the
traditions and customs of the House
of Windsor to become door-to-door
saleswoman for vacuum cleaners.
But here she is, in the movies
with Lionel and me-the three of us
in one show Cor the first time since,
as kids (more than 40 years ago., we
played Camille in a barn on Staten
Island.
LAS this is written we are making
'Rasputin,' the story of the Mad
Monk of Russia, and Ethel is the
lovely Czarina. Lionel, buried in
wtiskers, is Rasputin, and I am a
young mana very young man, as a
matter Of fact-named Paul"
MR.. BARRYMoRE's frank state
~. ments-his go jump in the
lake. statements are pleasant ad-
mission OF cinematic faith at a
time when most of the other great"
are sidestepping. Says one, "Oh,
I'm crazy about the MOVIES" and
the next minute she, or he, is knee
deep on Broadway. Says another,
"Oh, I hate the MOVIES and the
following Friday may be seen at
every available neighborhool house
In a not-so-bad film production.
Most actors are dilly-dallying back
and forth between one medium or
the other. Mr.. Barrymore is the first
to come out and tell the world that
the movies are plenty" good enough
for him.
This Is all the more surprising
when it is a fact that Mr.. Barry
more hasn't up until recently been
getting all the breaks that he
should have Nor has he been per-
forming with all the glsto which
characterized him formerly on the
stage. However, his confession that
the movies please him, that his
salary pleases him, that Hollywood
pleases him, is a healthy signal of
good cheer from some one who
should do much to give the talkies
one Of the better boosts.
WE are sorry to learn, for in
w stance, that the Lunt family
has veered away from this sport.
Mr.. Lunt said only this week, mo
more movies" He and his delight
full wife are, of course, so wrapped
up in the theater and in the bril-
liant play which Mr. Coward has
written for them. that it would be
difficult for them to turn their
thoughts to Hollywood, where. when
they performed in 1.-THE Guards
man." they had a nice enough time,
but where somehow the soul Of
their art was curiouSly (according
to them) mislaid