Diana Barrymore

Diana Blanche Barrymore Blythe (March 3, 1921 – January 25, 1960), known professionally as Diana Barrymore, was an American film and stage actress.

Spouses

Bramwell Fletcher (m. 1942–46)
John Howard lI (m. 1947–48)
Robert Wilcox (m. 1950–55)

Parents

John Barrymore
Blanche Oelrichs

Relatives

Lionel Barrymore (uncle)
Ethel Barrymore (aunt)
John Drew Barrymore (half brother)

Early life

Born Diana Blanche Barrymore Blythe in New York City, she was the daughter of renowned actor John Barrymore and his second wife, poet Blanche Oelrichs. She was stepdaughter of Dolores Costello, half-sister of actor John Drew Barrymore, and aunt of actress Drew Barrymore.

Her parents' tumultuous marriage lasted only a few years and they divorced when she was four. Educated in Paris, Franceand at schools in New York City, she had little contact with her estranged father, a situation exacerbated by her mother's bitterness towards him. Her parenting was left to boarding schools and nannies.

Career

While in her teens, Barrymore decided to study acting and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Because of the prominence of the Barrymore name in the world of theatre, her move onto the stage began with much publicity including a 1939 cover of Life. At age 19, Barrymore made her Broadway debut and the following year made her first appearance in motion pictures with a small role in a Warner Bros. production. In 1942, she signed a contract withUniversal Studios who capitalized on her Barrymore name with a major promotion campaign billing her as "1942's Most Sensational New Screen Personality." However, alcohol and drug problems soon emerged and negative publicity from major media sources dampened her prospects with widely read magazines such as Collier's Weekly, writing about her conduct in an October 1942 article titled "The Barrymore Brat". After less than three years in Hollywood, and six significant film roles at Universal, Barrymore's personal problems ended her film career.

Her father died in 1942 from cirrhosis of the liver after years of alcoholism. Barrymore's life became a series of alcohol- and drug-related disasters marked by bouts of severe depression that resulted in several suicide attempts and extendedsanitarium stays. She squandered her movie earnings and her inheritance from her father's estate, and when her mother died in 1950 she was left with virtually nothing from a once-vast family fortune. In 1949 she was offered her own television talk show The Diana Barrymore Show. The show was all set to broadcast but Barrymore didn't show up and the program was immediately canceled. Had she gone through with the show it would have been the first TV talk show in television history predating Joe Franklin by two years. In the early 1950s she and third husband toured Australia and upon returning to the United States, she expressed her dislike for the continent.

After three bad marriages to addicted and sometimes abusive men, in 1955 Barrymore had herself hospitalized for nearly a full year of treatment. In 1957, she published her autobiography, Too Much, Too Soon, with help and encouragement from ghostwriter Gerold Frank, which included her portrait painted by Spurgeon Tucker. In July 1957 she further promoted the book by appearing on Mike Wallace's TV show The Mike Wallace Interview and the following year Warner Bros.made a film with the same title starring Dorothy Malone as Barrymore and Errol Flynn as her father.

Personal life and death

Barrymore was married three times. Her first to actor Bramwell Fletcher, who was seventeen years her senior, had appeared with her father in his 1931 classic Svengali. Then she married John Howard, a tennis player. Her last marriage was to actor Robert Wilcox. The marriage to Wilcox ended when he died of a heart attack while traveling by train in June 1955, at the age of 45.

Barrymore died from an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills on January 25, 1960 and is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York, next to her mother.

Filmography

1941Manpower Bit part
1942 Eagle Squadron Anne Partridge
1942 Between Us Girls Caroline Bishop
1942 Nightmare Leslie Stafford
1943 Frontier Badmen Claire
1943 Fired Wife Eve
1944 Ladies Courageous Nadine Shannon
1944 The Adventures of Mark Twain Undetermined role Uncredited

1950 D.O.A.Unconfirmed bit partUncredited

1951The Mob Bit partUncredited

Television

• The Diana Barrymore Show (1949) (*cancelled as she didn't show up)
• The Ed Sullivan Show (? 1950)
• The Mike Wallace Interview (1957)
• New York Noir: Entertainment Press Conference (1957)
• The Ben Hecht Show (1958)
• Irv Kupcinet Show (1959)

Bibliography

• Too Much, Too Soon, with Gerold Frank. New York: Henry Holt and Company (1957)