page_title: Lionel Barrymore
section_title: Film career
hierarchical_section_title: Lionel Barrymore / Film career
caption_attribution_description: English: Motion picture advertisement on lantern slide for the film The Devil's Garden (1920) starring Lionel Barrymore. Used for future films at theaters. Library of Congress Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-83667.
context_page_description: Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul, and remains best known to modern audiences for the role of villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life.
  He is also particularly remembered as Ebenezer Scrooge in annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol during his last two decades. He is also known for playing Dr. Leonard Gillespie in MGM's nine Dr. Kildare films, a role he reprised in a further six films focussing solely on Gillespie and in a radio series entitled The Story of Dr. Kildare. He was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family.
context_section_description: Barrymore joined Biograph Studios in 1909 and began to appear in leading roles by 1911 in films directed by D. W. Griffith. 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 was involved in writing and directing at Biograph. The last silent film he directed, Life's Whirlpool (Metro Pictures  1917), starred his sister, Ethel. He acted in more than 60 silent films with Griffth.
  In 1920, Barrymore reprised his stage role in the film adaptation of The Copperhead. Also in 1920, he starred in the lead role of The Master Mind with Gypsy O'Brien co-starring. 
  Before the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, Barrymore forged a good relationship with Louis B. Mayer early on at Metro Pictures. He made several silent features for Metro, some surviving, some now lost. In 1923, Barrymore and Fenwick went to Italy to film The Eternal City for Metro Pictures in Rome, combining work with their honeymoon. He occasionally freelanced, returning to Griffith in 1924 to film America. In 1924, he also 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 of Berlin. In 1925, he left New York 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 more freelance motion pictures, including The Bells (Chadwick Pictures 1926) with a then-unknown Boris Karloff. His last film for Griffith was in 1928's Drums of Love.
  Prior to his marriage to Irene, Barrymore and his brother John engaged in a dispute 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, by which time they had patched up their differences. In 1926, Barrymore signed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and his first picture there was The Barrier. His first talking picture was The Lion and the Mouse; his stage experience allowed him to excel in delivering the dialogue in sound films.
  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. In 1929, he returned to directing films. During this early and imperfect sound film period, he directed the controversial His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, Madame X starring Ruth Chatterton, and The Rogue Song, Laurel and Hardy's first color film. He was credited with being the first director to move a microphone on a sound stage. 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 considered 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 for the only time with siblings John and Ethel) and the ailing Oliver Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933 – also with John, although they had no scenes together). He played Professor Zelen, the Occultist expert, in the classic horror Mark of the Vampire (1935).
  During the 1930s and 1940s, he became stereotyped as a grouchy but sweet elderly man 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), On Borrowed Time (1939, with Cedric Hardwicke), Duel in the Sun (1946),  Three Wise Fools (1946) and Key Largo (1948).
  In a series of Doctor Kildare movies in the 1930s and 1940s, he played the irascible Doctor Gillespie, a role he repeated in an MGM radio series that debuted in New York in 1950 and was later syndicated. Barrymore had broken his hip in an accident, hence he played Gillespie in a wheelchair. Later, his worsening arthritis kept him in the chair. The injury also precluded hi
caption: Lionel and first wife Doris (in rocking chair) in 1920 silent film The Devil's Garden.
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