Good Night, Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore

by Gene Fowler

(From dust jacket material, hardcover, Viking Press, 1944)

Words alone can scarcely reproduce the unparalleled range between Barrymore's achievement and acclaim and his humiliation and self-torture. Such flights of wild and reckless passion, such scenes of heroic debauchery, such moments of matchless artistic triumph should be played behind the lights, in rich costume, and to the accompaniment of the full orchestra. Barrymore's life was neither comedy or tragedy; it was a grand opera.

But as perfectly as words can do it, Gene Fowler has told the story. Barrymore was his friend, and his book is warm with the affection that flowed between them. The author respects Barrymore too much, however to apologize for him; he admires Barrymore's talents too much to pretend that those talents were not often thrown away. Fowler does not employ sensation for its own sake or dwell on disaster for its morbid interest; but neither does he insult Barrymore by making him respectable. His subject was a great man, and while that does not necessarily mean that he was a sensible one, it does mean that in the hands of a writer as Fowler he becomes the hero of a moving and engrossing human history.

There is a great deal of humor in Good Night, Sweet Prince, for Barrymore was a wit and he consorted with his peers. There is a satisfying amount of the theatre in it, for it spans the period from the great figures of John Drew and Maurice Barrymore to the golden streets of Hollywood in its most spectacular era. There are moments of intense excitement in these pages - the opening night of Hamlet being perhaps the greatest dramatic climax; there are happy and idyllic passages, and there are the others when happiness was destroyed forever as Barrymore brought the roof of his fame crashing down on his head.

In addition to his own knowledge of Barrymore, Fowler has had access to his papers. He as read the actor's journal, and he publishes here for the first time long passages from this private autobiography.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, Theatre, Autobiography, Media Tie In

Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Gene Fowler (born Eugene Devlan) was an American journalist, author, and dramatist, known for his racy, readable content and for the speed of his writing. After a year at the University of Colorado, he took a job with The Denver Post. His assignments included an interview with the frontiersman and Wild West Show promoter Buffalo Bill Cody. He established his trademark impertinence by questioning Cody about his many love affairs.

Fowler left Denver for Chicago, then moved to New York where Fowler worked for the New York Daily Mirror, New York Evening Journal and as managing editor of the New York American and The Morning Telegraph. His work included more than a dozen screenplays, mostly written in the 1930s.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tale, first published in 1944, was written by a close friend of John Barrymore and his use of similes takes some getting used to. In the event that the names of siblings John, Ethel or Lionel Barrymore mean nothing to you, then this biography is probably not for you. The Barrymore name always had a luster associated with it when I was a youthful movie enthusiast. They were Hollywood's royal family during their pre-1940's heyday. As I recall, John Barrymore was sometimes referred to as "the great profile" and you can visit, as I did, what used to be Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and find John Barrymore's profile memorialized in concrete.

While this book offers some insights into acting for Shakespeare and/or role preparation, it is not a treatise on acting. Instead it is a character study concerning the rise and demise of the person, John Barrymore, who the author calls the greatest actor of his time. Sadly we will have to take the author's word for it as there are very few people, if any, living in the first part of the 21st century that are in a position to either confirm or contradict his judgment. Furthermore, no comparisons were made to Asian and other ethnic constituencies. However, it is interesting to note that John Barrymore once dismissed "the greatest actor" myth with the observation that they were all dead.

Acting had been the family business for over 100 years. Ethel was reported to have said that they did not become actors out of a love for acting, but because it was what they were best at. All three were successful stage actors who moved into motion pictures, silent followed by sound. Unlike some silent screen movie stars, all three were successful in talkies. John, the youngest, was the most gifted . His "pre movie career" stage performances of "Richard III" were highly regarded and his "Hamlet" was celebrated in the US and England. He may have been the greatest "Hamlet" of the day. Judging from the book, Mr. Barrymore, would have scoffed at the idea that anyone could be the greatest Hamlet. After all, he observed that the role of Hamlet was so flexible in approach that there could be 1,000 Hamlets with the result that each could be as great as the other. In any case, John Barrymore was one of the best paid actors of his day.

Mr. Barrymore's wide circle of friends ranged from hoboes, everyday people, and sports figures to the likes of Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. He had an excellent sense of humor,was self-deprecating, and was no snob. He did not indulge in self-pity nor was he a whiner. He did not look before he leapt, especially when in love, and possessed a lazy contempt for financial matters. Apparently he possessed all the gifts one could ask for except self discipline. It was almost as if he was in a contest with himself to see how much abuse he could inflict upon himself and still perform at a high level. He spent his money almost as fast as he made it and signed contracts without reading them. He was handsome, athletic, talented, intelligent, perhaps even brilliant, and without vanity. One attribute I admire was his practice of throwing away his mail without reading it. A practice which caused him problems from time to time. He smoked and drank too much. He could intelligently discuss Einstein's work with Einstein. His over indulgences brought "memory loss" later in life and he died in the early 1940s due to complications arising from cirrhosis of the liver.

I suspect to know him was to like him and to his credit he had a large group of friends who loved him and would step in from time to time to save him from himself. I found that reading this 468 page melancholy tome was not unpleasant, but neither is it uplifting. I have little patience for stories of self-destruction. So, I guess you had to be there.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are times when it seems uncanny, my skill at finding unlikely and rare things right when I go looking for them. Such was the case a few years ago went I went to a flea market hunting for this book and finding it. It's not exceedingly rare, but not exactly common either. It was published in 1944, not long after Barrymore's alcoholic death. Gene Fowler was a prominent journalist and non-fiction author of the mid-20th century, whose circle of acquaintances included W.C. Fields and other movie stars, including the great stage and film actor, John Barrymore, who is probably better known today as the granddad of Drew. He was also the brother of two other famous actors: Lionel and Ethel. I had read a previous Hollywood book by Fowler, Minutes of the Last Meeting which chronicled the hard-drinking antics of Hollywood's first Rat Pack in the 1930s and early 1940s, consisting of Barrymore, Fields, the Tinseltown commercial artist John Decker, and the wayfaring Japanese-American eccentric poet Sadakichi Hartmann. It's a poignant and beautiful book. Fowler's tremendous powers of description and feeling for nostalgia are brought fully to bear in this exceptional biography of Barrymore. Even though it's apparent Fowler never tries for a dispassionate distance between himself and a subject whom he personally cherished, it hardly matters because of Fowler's exceptional gifts as a writer and insight as a close friend. The book begins with one of the most lovely descriptions of a bygone era that I've ever read: detailing the gaslit theatrical New York City of the 1800s, where Barrymore's forebears first hit the stage. The rest details Barrymore's own great successes on stage, his maddening contradictions and whims, his problems with women, his rise in Hollywood and his descent into alcoholism. It's a sweeping book, as beautifully crafted as any I've read, and it is a personal favorite that will always have a place on my shelf as long as I live.

[Brenda C · Rating 4 out of 5]

The earliest chapters of this book were the most enchanting to me. The author really painted a clear picture of the young lives of the Barrymores together. Particularly the stories of him and Lionel together were the most charming to me
As the book went on it became difficult to read of the self destruction of such a talented man and his so called
friends around him who were more enablers than anything else. It was a fascinating read but not a feel good book. It left me with alot of melancholy.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the first biographies of John Barrymore, by his close friend, the journalist and screenwriter Gene Fowler. It's really a sad story of a talented actor and artist who was his own worst enemy, drinking a lot, spending a lot, and having sex with many women, as well as marrying four of them (none happily for long). Apparently he was charming, talented, and amusing, but also unreliable, moody, and self-destructive. Fowler is sympathetic to his friend and tries to engage the reader in Barrymore's charms, not always successfully. There is a lot of attention to detail, to Barrymore's finances, and to his brief diaries, which really don't need to be quoted in as much detail, as much of it us pretty banal. The inside covers have sketches by Barrymore, which are intriguing. Not very much about his movies, especially his later ones, except to say that he had terrible trouble with his lines and didn't think much of what he was doing. My overall impression is one of sadness and waste.

[Toni Wyatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Barrymore, it turns out, was a pretty eccentric guy. While there were definitely parts of this biography that I enjoyed, I felt as if it was pretty jumbled up and didn't really delve too much into the reasons why Mr. Barrymore was the way he was.

He was a reluctant actor with one heck of a drinking problem. He had four unsuccessful marriages. I had the impression that the idea of romance enveloped him, but the reality of it was always disappointing for him. He would behave as if he were a caged animal, and he needed to escape. Perhaps, if he hadn't had some of the friends he had, he would have been better off.

I had a hard time understanding why someone who loved animals as much he did, would also enjoy the sport of killing them.

It's unfortunate that he was never able to quit drinking for very long, and it is even more unfortunate that he allowed himself to be taken advantage of. If we take Mr. Fowler's word for it, it sounds as if Mr. Barrymore's last wife was a gold digger, so why was he still willing to take her back up until the very end? His life was a jumbled up mess of trying to belong, find lasting love, and trying to fit into a world that he didn't really seem to care much about.

[Jmolentin]

I read this and loved it. I found it in a pile of books left on the curb in NJ, loaned it out and was not returned. Then I gave another book to a friend of a friend and told him I wanted Good Night Sweet Prince in return. Amazingly he found it and sent it to me. It is a 1945 edition, inscribed as a gift to Mommie from Just Kenney

[Ronald · Rating 3 out of 5]

read SOME TIME in 1999

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

By the writer of the brilliant "Timberline," the somehow tedious life story of the 20th century's most debauched actor. I bailed halfway through. I think I'm immune to most showbiz tell-alls.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fitfully amusing, as only alcoholic thespians can be.