Ethel Barrymore

Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), American stage and film actress and theatre owner, winner of an Academy Award for her performance in None But the Lonely Heart (1944). She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1894 she made her debut in New York in The Rivals by the British dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Barrymore played opposite the British actor Sir Henry Irving in England in 1898 and was the star of Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines in the United States in 1900. A succession of later performances, including leading roles in A Doll's House by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen in 1905 and Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire by the Scottish dramatist James Matthew Barrie in 1906, established Barrymore as one of the foremost actors in the American theatre. She played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 1922 and Ophelia in Hamlet in 1925. In December 1928 she opened the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York. Other plays in which she starred include The School for Scandal (1931) by Sheridan and The Corn Is Green (1941-1945) by the Welsh playwright Emlyn Williams. Barrymore also played in films, with her brothers John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in Rasputin and the Empress (1933), and as a star in a number of other films. Her autobiography, Memories, was published in 1955.