Lionel Barrymore

Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), American stage and film actor, who became a leading Hollywood character actor during the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in London. He made his debut in New York in 1893, appearing with his grandmother, Louisa Lane Drew, in The Road to Ruin. Among the plays in which Barrymore had leading roles were Peter Ibbetson (1917), The Jest (with his brother John Barrymore, 1919), Macbeth (1921), Laugh, Clown, Laugh! (1923), and Man, a Devil (1925). He began a film career in 1907 and, after leaving the stage in 1925, appeared in numerous film and radio dramas and on television. In one of his best-known film roles he portrayed Dr. Gillespie in the Doctor Kildare series, which included Dark Delusion (1947).