How 'Hollywood's first family' found fame, fortune and tragedy
Hollywood’s first family
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Often referred to as "Hollywood’s first family", it may surprise you to learn that the Barrymore clan has been in the acting business for hundreds of years. However, the dynasty's impressive journey from destitute stage performers to Hollywood superstars has been far from smooth sailing.
A screen-worthy story of showbiz, scandals, and even family curses, read on to discover how the Barrymores found fame and fortune.
All dollar amounts in US dollars
Acting ambitions
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We'll start with Herbert Blythe (pictured), who was born in India in 1849. His father, William Edward Blythe, was a wealthy surveyor for the British East India Company, and he sent his son back to England to be educated at the elite Harrow School and later Oxford University.
Herbert's father had hopes that his son would become a lawyer. Instead, the rebellious young Blythe became an amateur boxer and eventually a stage actor, much to his family's dismay.
The Barrymore name
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Herbert Blythe travelled to America in 1875, where he adopted the stage name "Maurice Barrymore" to protect his family from the perceived scandal of his acting career.
He joined the company of renowned playwright Augustin Daly where he met fellow thespian Georgiana Drew when they co-starred in a production of Pique. The couple married on New Year's Eve in 1876.
Beginnings of a dynasty
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While Maurice was the first in his family to try acting, his wife Georgiana was a member of the Drew theatrical family, which can trace its thespian roots back to 18th-century Britain.
Georgiana's parents were the actors John (pictured) and Louisa Lane Drew. The pair were heavily involved in the Arch Street Theatre company in Philadelphia. John managed it for years and it was later renamed "Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theatre" when Louisa became the manager after her husband's death in 1862.
Stage star
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Louisa Lane Drew (pictured) was the granddaughter of Thomas Haycraft Lane and Louisa Rouse Lane, travelling actors in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
She was considered a child prodigy and shared the stage with many of the era's greatest actors, including John Wilkes Booth of the illustrious Booth theatre family, who went on to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
A new generation of stars
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Georgiana and Maurice (pictured together) had three children together: Lionel Barrymore, born in 1878; Ethel Barrymore, born in 1879; and John Barrymore, born in 1882.
The Barrymore line of thespians almost ended here, as the new generation of Barrymores had no plans to become actors. Ethel aspired to be a pianist, and the boys wanted to be painters, but all three children were forced into the family business under tragic circumstances.
Tragedy strikes
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In 1891, Georgiana had to quit acting after falling ill with tuberculosis. In 1893, she travelled west with her daughter Ethel (pictured) to find a cure, but it was unsuccessful, and she succumbed to her illness just weeks later. She was 36 years old.
Their mother's untimely death forced the two eldest children, Lionel and Ethel, to find work, as the family had not yet made their fortune. Ethel would later go on to observe: "I always wanted to be a pianist, but I had to eat, and acting seemed like the natural thing to do since the family was already in it."
Maurice's madness
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Maurice Barrymore also met a tragic end. While performing on stage in New York in 1901, according to The New York Times, he "suddenly dropped his lines and began to rave."
It was later discovered that Maurice – known for his many affairs while married – had advanced-stage syphilis. His son John had him committed to Bellevue Hospital in New York and he was later transferred to Amityville, where he died in 1905.
The first Barrymore movie star
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With their parents dead, it was up to the three Barrymore children to make their own way in the world. Following in the footsteps of his parents, eldest son Lionel (pictured) started out as a stage actor, and quickly gained acclaim for his roles in plays such as Peter Ibbetson (1917) and The Copperhead (1918).
Lionel moved to Hollywood in 1926 and started to make a name for himself as a screen star. Throughout his career, he appeared in over 150 movies and is perhaps best known for playing Mr Potter in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He also won the Academy Award for Best Actor after starring in A Free Soul, released in 1931.
Hollywood's golden era
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Lionel Barrymore rose to stardom during Hollywood's "Golden Age" and he had a contract with MGM, one of the "big eight" major studios of the time. It was a period of intense prosperity for the industry; between 1930 and 1945, more than 7,500 movies were released, and an impressive 80 million Americans watched at least one movie per week in the cinema.
Needless to say, this was a lucrative time to be an actor. By the time Barrymore died in 1954 at the age of 76, he’d reportedly amassed a $3 million fortune – that’s around $35 million (£27m) in today's money.
The First Lady of the American Theatre
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Lionel's sister, Ethel Barrymore (pictured), preferred the stage to the screen and was nicknamed "The First Lady of the American Theatre."
Despite that, she still starred in more than 30 films, even bagging the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in 1944’s None but the Lonely Heart.
A political proposal
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Ethel (pictured) was considered a great beauty and had many admirers, even catching the attention of Winston Churchill. He reportedly proposed marriage to her in 1900. She turned him down as she had no wish to become a political wife.
In 1909, Ethel married Russell Griswold Colt, who The New York Times once described as "one of the wealthy young men of New York". The couple had three children together, who all entered the entertainment industry with little-to-moderate success.
Barrymore and Colt divorced in 1923, and Ethel never remarried.
The family curse
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Lionel and Ethel's younger brother, John Barrymore (pictured), was considered one of the greatest actors of his generation. Famed for movies such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) and Sherlock Holmes (1922), John's dashing good looks earned him the nickname "The Great Profile".
Despite his obvious talent, John Barrymore hated being an actor. Deeply affected by his mother's death, he began drinking heavily at 14. His alcoholism meant he was unable to hold down ordinary jobs, and when discussing his future with his brother, he reportedly observed: "It looks as though I’ll have to succumb to the family curse, acting."
John's marriages
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After divorcing first wife Katherine Corri Harris, John Barrymore married playwright, poet, and suffragette Blanche Oelrichs (pictured) in 1920. She's most famous for publishing poetry under the alias Michael Strange and for her Broadway production of Clair de Lune which her husband starred in.
The couple had one child together, Diana, born in 1921.
Goddess of the Silent Screen
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A year after his marriage to Oelrichs ended, John Barrymore met silent movie star Dolores Costello (pictured) on the set of The Sea Beast. Rich and famous in her own right, the talented Costello was known as the "Goddess of the Silent Screen".
The couple married in 1928 and had two children together: Dolores "DeeDee" Barrymore and John Drew Barrymore, born in 1930 and 1932 respectively. Barrymore and Costello eventually divorced when John’s alcoholism spiralled out of control. In 1942, he passed away from cirrhosis of the liver, kidney failure, and pneumonia.
While Barrymore's net worth at the time of his death is unknown, he had signed a five-film contract with Warner Bros. in the 1920s earning him $150,000 per movie. That's the equivalent of around $2.4 million (£1.8m) per picture today.
The curse strikes again...
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The "family curse" that John referred to struck again with the next generation. Both of his children, who aspired to be stars like their father, struggled with addiction.
His eldest child, Diana (pictured), set her sights on a showbiz career and appeared in numerous movies, including the likes of Nightmare (1942) and Fired Wife (1943). However, her struggles with substance abuse stopped her career from ever really taking off. She died from an overdose in 1960 aged just 38.
Diana's younger sister, Dolores, was the only one of John's three children who didn't chase fame and is still alive today at the grand old age of 94.
...And again
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Diana and Dolores also had a younger brother, John Drew Barrymore (pictured). He decided to pursue an acting career and starred in movies such as 1952’s Thunderbirds and 1961’s The Trojan Horse.
However, his addiction issues prevented him from ever making a true success of his career. He died of cancer in 2004, aged 72.
Rocky relationships
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John Drew Barrymore was married – and divorced – four times.
His first bride was the actress Cara Williams, who he married in 1952. The couple had one son, John Blyth Barrymore (shown here with his father). They divorced in 1959, and the following year Barrymore wed Gabriella Palazzoli. Their daughter, Blyth Dolores Barrymore, was born in 1960 and the pair were married for a decade before splitting in 1970.
In 1971, Barrymore married German actress Ildikó Jaid Makó, who gave birth to Drew Barrymore in 1975. Barrymore later tied the knot with actress Nina Wayne, although they split in 1994 after nine years of marriage.
A star is born
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While John Drew Barrymore only achieved moderate success as an actor, his daughter Drew (pictured) would go on to become the most successful member of the dynasty.
Eager for her baby daughter to enter the family business, Jaid Mako became her manager, and Drew appeared in a dog food commercial at the tender age of 11 months.
Child prodigy
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Much like her great-great-grandmother Louisa Lane Drew, the young Drew Barrymore (pictured here with her mother in 1982) was considered something of a child prodigy.
Drew became a household name at the tender age of seven when she landed the role of adorable Gertie in her godfather Steven Spielberg's 1982 blockbuster E.T., and that very same year she also became the youngest-ever person to host Saturday Night Live.
But while the future looked bright, Drew's personal life was falling apart behind the scenes.
Studio 54 scandal
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After her parents separated in 1984, Drew's father John was largely absent from her childhood and her mother would regularly take her to the infamous Studio 54 nightclub in New York City. At just nine years old, Drew was introduced to drugs and alcohol at the celebrity hot spot, and was even encouraged to dance with young male stars.
Recalling this period of her life in an episode of Norm Macdonald has a Show, Barrymore told the comedian: "I had a mom but she was more like my best friend. She was like, 'Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?' And I was like, 'Yes, absolutely!'"
Hollywood to hospital
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By the time she was 12 years old, the self-proclaimed "party girl" was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and at 13 began an 18-month stint in rehab. She tried to commit suicide the following year and was institutionalised by her mother as a result.
Speaking about her rehab experience in a 2015 interview with British newspaper The Guardian, she said: "It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half, but I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline."
Breaking the curse
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Acting on the advice of her doctors, Barrymore became emancipated from her mother after her release from hospital and set out to turn her life around. Her half-brother, John Blyth Barrymore, once famously observed: "Everyone in my family had a bad patch. My sister Drew was the only smart one. She got hers over before she was even 18."
Drew's half-sister Jessica was less fortunate. Falling victim to the supposed "family curse", she died from a drug overdose in 2014 aged just 47.
From riches to rags
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Although she’d bravely overcome her addictions, Barrymore claimed that she’d become a "pariah" in Hollywood, revealing that directors would laugh at her when she turned up at auditions.
In her 2015 Guardian interview, she explained: "To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years – people going, you’re an unemployable disaster – that’s a tough trip to have by the time you’re 14. To have access to so many things, then to nothing."
At 16, the former child star was working in restaurants and "cleaning toilets" to make ends meet.
"It girl"
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The determined young Barrymore eventually decided to take her failing career into her own hands and launched production company Flower Films when she was 20 years old.
Flower Films is behind some of Barrymore’s biggest box office hits, including Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie’s Angels (2000), and 50 First Dates (2004). Just like that, Barrymore was once again Hollywood's golden girl.
Screen starlet
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With her dark days well and truly behind her, Barrymore has continued to enjoy a thriving film career, starring in the likes of Music and Lyrics (2007) and He's Just Not That Into You (2009).
She made her directorial debut with the 2009 sports comedy Whip It, which she also starred in. She's enjoyed small-screen success, appearing in Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet between 2017 and 2019 and voiced characters in Family Guy and The Simpsons.
Fortune and fame
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And it’s not just acting that Drew has made a fortune from. The entrepreneurial Barrymore has her very own beauty and clothing brand, a signature wine range, and even a wildflower-inspired kitchenware line.
The actress-turned-author has also published several books, including her autobiography Wildflower (2015) and lifestyle guide Rebel Homemaker (2021).
Sources estimate Drew's net worth today is between $85 million (£65m) and $125 million (£96m), making her the most successful member of the Barrymore dynasty by far.
Stepping away from the spotlight
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After a lifetime in the spotlight, Barrymore is now taking a break from acting, although she's still hosting her eponymous TV talk show on CBS.
Drew is currently focusing on raising her two young daughters, Olive and Frankie (born in 2012 and 2014 respectively). In a 2014 interview with Today, she admitted that "it's hard to be present when you wake up before them and come home after they've gone to bed. That's just not the way I want to have this journey with my kids at this point in their life."
The end of a dynasty?
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And does Drew plan to let her daughters dabble in the world of showbiz? Let's just say that if she had it her way, the Barrymore acting dynasty would end with her...
Drew (pictured here with daughter Frankie) told The Guardian: "I mean, I come from a family that has done acting for 400 years. But film sets are a bizarre world. For me, it was better than my circumstances. It was a saviour. For my children, it will not be better than their circumstances. They are going to be so saved and so loved that they won't need a film set to make their life better."
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