“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh—at yourself.”—Actress Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), quoted in Reader’s Digest, September 2009
In London, early in her career as an actress, Ethel Barrymore turned down a proposal from a smitten young man. Despite the fact that his family traced all the way back to one of England’s greatest generals, that his mother was a Brooklynite from a well-to-do family, and that he himself possessed considerable talent with words and aspired to be a politician like his father, she rejected him. It had something to do with her thinking he didn’t have much of a future.
The young man was Winston Churchill. After she herself was divorced, her judgment in men, I suppose, was one of the things she learned to laugh about.
On the other hand, it’s fairly easy to see what the future Last Lion saw in her. There was the sense of humor, hinted at in this quote. There was the family good looks (kid brother John was The Great Profile before drink ruined him, and the picture here reminds me a little of grandniece Drew).
And there was the shining talent, mostly glimpsed on the stage, but long enough on film that she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the dying cockney mother worried about her aimless son in one of Cary Grant’s best films, None But the Lonely Heart.
In London, early in her career as an actress, Ethel Barrymore turned down a proposal from a smitten young man. Despite the fact that his family traced all the way back to one of England’s greatest generals, that his mother was a Brooklynite from a well-to-do family, and that he himself possessed considerable talent with words and aspired to be a politician like his father, she rejected him. It had something to do with her thinking he didn’t have much of a future.
The young man was Winston Churchill. After she herself was divorced, her judgment in men, I suppose, was one of the things she learned to laugh about.
On the other hand, it’s fairly easy to see what the future Last Lion saw in her. There was the sense of humor, hinted at in this quote. There was the family good looks (kid brother John was The Great Profile before drink ruined him, and the picture here reminds me a little of grandniece Drew).
And there was the shining talent, mostly glimpsed on the stage, but long enough on film that she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the dying cockney mother worried about her aimless son in one of Cary Grant’s best films, None But the Lonely Heart.
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