“You can’t drown yourself in drink. I’ve tried; you float.”
John Barrymore was universally considered by peers and critics to be greatest actor of the early twentieth century. A theater legend, his 1922 turn as Hamlet (on Broadway and in London) is still considered the definitive performance of the role. Barrymore was perhaps the most prominent member of the multigenerational Drew-Barrymore acting dynasty. His father Maurice, grandmother Louisa Lane Drew, and uncles John Drew, Jr., and Sidney Drew were all thespians. His brother Lionel, sister Ethel, daughter Diana, and granddaughter Drew were all film actors. Working exclusively on the screen after 1925, Barrymore hated film but loved the money. Of his fifty-seven movies, he is best known for his leads in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Don Juan (1926; the first film to use sync sound), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and a comic turn in Grand Hotel (1932). From 1933 through to his death in 1942, Barrymore’s acting ability and looks crumbled due to excessive drinking; his final roles were painful self-parodies. But even his worst work would not tarnish Barrymore’s eulogy: greatest actor of his time.
THE NURSE COULD NOT BE TAMED. Three months prior to his death, the great John Barrymore was bedridden in his Tower Road home, and his few remaining friends wanted desperately to see him. But Barrymore’s nurse, an unyielding and apparently quite large woman, simply would not allow it. Painter John Decker tried a ladder; she pushed it over. Actor Errol Flynn tried to wrestle her and lost. The nurse had been sternly advised that any friendly visit would involve the smuggling of alcohol, and that, she couldn’t have. Alcohol, after all, was the very thing that had brought him to death’s door.
Now we all know that each Hollywood generation has its most handsome leading man, its most admired acting talent, and its most raucous party animal. John Barrymore had the distinction of holding all three titles at once—for twenty years. His striking good looks earned him the nickname “The Great Profile,” and his Broadway version of Hamlet alone would have assured his place in the acting pantheon: Freud had recently published his theory of Hamlet’s Oedipal desire, and Barrymore embraced the idea, giving the doomed prince an unusual touch of sex appeal.
Barrymore’s success with the gambit was no accident: As a teenager, he had lost his virginity to his own stepmother, Mamie Floyd, a tryst that saddled Barrymore with a mistrust of women and a guilt that accelerated his growing fondness for booze. Both the mistrust and the fondness would last the rest of his life.
Although Barrymore would arguably never fully translate his stage magic to the silver screen, Warner Brothers and their $76,250 per picture kept him in Tinseltown. And once he got over the feeling of slumming it, he was just simply bored. “On a movie lot,” Barrymore once said, “you’re nothing but a bloody stooge, a victim of some inept director who doesn’t know his ass from a Klieg.” By the time sound arrived, he was known as much for his off-screen antics as for his acting. His nicknames reflected the shift; The Great Profile had become, among his acquaintances, “The Monster.”
Barrymore ran with a group of fellow revelers and derelicts—W. C. Fields, Errol Flynn, John Decker, John Carradine, and screenwriter Gene Fowler—christened the Bundy Drive Boys. According to Fowler, they showed up at the draft office in 1941 sloshed and anxious to serve; the registrar looked them over and asked, “Who sent you? The Enemy?”
The other Bundy Drive Boys worshipped Barrymore, whose most affectionate nickname for someone was “shithead.” They all drank like devils, but even Fields was no match for him. The volume of fluid he could consume was untouchable, as was, accordingly, his need to relieve it. The Great Profile was famously indiscriminate in his choice of urinals. First it was sinks. Then it was windows. Soon it became anywhere—elevators, cars, the sandbox at the Ambassador Hotel (which banned him), nightclub draperies. (Decades later, Robert Mitchum would demonstrate a similar proclivity.)
One story goes that, while out on a binge, Barrymore accidentally walked into a women’s restroom. Finding no urinal, he proceeded to relieve his bladder in a potted plant. A woman standing nearby reminded him that the room was “for ladies exclusively.” Turning around, his penis still exposed, Barrymore responded, “So, Madam, is this. But every now and again, I’m compelled to run a little water through it.” Roughly fifty years later, the incident made its way, verbatim, into the film My Favorite Year.
It was not surprising that, over time, such debauchery started catching up to Barrymore. And thus, by 1942, did he find himself confined to bed in his Tower Road home, forbidden all drink, with a quite large nurse barring all visitors. The only exceptions were his brother Lionel, his daughter Diana, and doctors. Then there was the insurance adjuster who showed up one day dressed in the black flannel suit of a pallbearer and introducing himself as Harleigh P. Wigmore. The nurse led the man into Barrymore’s room. No sooner had she left, than poor, haggard Barrymore brightened, “What is this, a dress rehearsal for my obsequies?” The adjuster smiled back and pulled something out of his briefcase: an ancient bottle of Napoleon cognac. The man was, in fact, Barrymore’s close friend, director Raoul Walsh, who’d concocted the ruse to get past the nurse.
The nurse had been sternly advised that any friendly visit would involve the smuggling of alcohol, and that she couldn’t have. Alcohol, after all, was the very thing that had brought him to death’s door.
“Ingenious,” Barrymore told him, as they sat sharing a bottle for what would be the very last time. Barrymore was now more animated than ever. He told Walsh that he’d be donating his liver to Smithsonian, “for their Civil War display.” When the nurse suddenly returned, Barrymore alerted her as to exactly who the “insurance man” was. Then he blew a kiss, exclaiming, “If only I were ambulatory, I would spring from this bed of thorns and pay you my praise in the coinage of rapture.” The woman left, blushing, and Barrymore raised the bottle of cognac to his friend. “My farewell performance as Don Juan,” he toasted.
H. L. MENCKEN ONCE DECLARED, “I’m ombibulous: I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.” A nice sentiment, but John Barrymore put Mencken to shame, such was the breadth of his taste for alcohol. When Barrymore’s second wife broke every bottle in their house, he drank all of her perfume. When he embarked on a 1935 boating trip with their daughter and discovered (once at sea) that the ship had been stripped of booze, he siphoned a pint of the engine’s coolant. Two wives later, he drank a goblet of boric acid intended to soothe his sunburn.
Perhaps Barrymore mellowed as he aged, though the stories argue otherwise. For the last two years of his life, he was a permanent guest on the radio show of singer Rudy Vallée. And every day at 4 p.m., on his way to the studio, he’d stop at St. Donat’s Bar on Sunset and order his favorite drink: a Pimm’s Cup. You can’t get more civilized.
PIMM’S CUP
2 OZ. PIMM’S NO. 1
3 OZ. FRESHLY SQUEEZED LEMONADE
1 LEMON-LIME SODA SUCH AS 7UP OR SPRITE
2 CUCUMBER SLICES
1 MINT SPRIG
ASSORTED FRUIT OPTIONAL: ORANGE SLICE, APPLE SLICE, STRAWBERRIES
Pour Pimm’s and then lemonade into a chilled highball glass filled with ice cubes. Top off with soda. Stir. Garnish with cucumber and mint, additional fruit may be added. Serve with straw.
FIRST OPENING ITS DOORS on New Year’s Day 1921, the posh Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire quickly overtook the Alexandria as the ne plus ultra destination for Hollywood elites, visiting dignitaries, and clandestine lovers.
The hotel would host six Academy Awards ceremonies and the first Golden Globes. Marilyn Monroe got her start at the poolside modeling agency, Blue Book, and the jury for the Charles Manson case stayed there during his trial.
So frequently was the hotel used as a set in both films and television, it was nicknamed the “Ambassador Studios.” Some titles include: A Star Is Born, The Graduate, Rocky, Pretty Woman, Hoffa, Apollo 13, and Forrest Gump.
But in real life, the Ambassador’s most storied parties took place in the tropically themed supper club and dancehall, the Cocoanut Grove. Decorated by palm trees inherited from the set of the Valentino silent The Sheik, the Grove was unique among hotspots because it hosted constant performances. These eventually became de facto auditions. Bing Crosby and Merv Griffin first sang there. Judy Garland recorded her comeback album there. And a host of young female superstars were first discovered dancing there: Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, and Joan Crawford (who won over a hundred dance trophies). Years later, the Rat Pack adopted it as their haunt of choice, and in 1963 Sammy Davis, Jr., even recorded a live album there.
But over time the Ambassador Hotel would earn its place in history more through tragedy than celebration. In 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, fresh from his victory speech in the California primary, was shot in the pantry area of the hotel’s kitchen.
The death of Kennedy, along with the deterioration of the surrounding neighborhood, marked the beginning of the end for the hotel. Drugs and gang warfare, already on the rise, would soon flood the area. In 1971 an attempt was made to renovate the Cocoanut Grove, overseen by none other than Sammy Davis, Jr., himself, but the effort only led to such seemingly incongruous bookings as the Grateful Dead and Sly Stone. The credits were already rolling.
The Ambassador heaved its final sigh and closed its curtains in 1989, then languished behind weeds and chain-link fences as a movie location for more than a decade longer. In 2006, it was demolished. The only bright note to its unhappy demise was that the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools rose out of the ashes, a complex of six public schools in downtown L.A. Designed loosely on a modern interpretation of the hotel, a 582-seat school theater now stands in the footprint of the original, a showplace for a new generation of performers.
IT WAS PERHAPS the most glamorous nightclub ever. Beneath the palm trees and coconuts, watched by the mechanical monkeys with their glowing eyes, the world’s biggest stars laughed and danced and above all else drank.
There is the story of a young Tallulah Bankhead enamored with a much older John Barrymore. After a night at the Grove and one too many, she sneaked into Barrymore’s Ambassador Hotel bungalow and hid under the sheets to wait for him. Back from the club and three sheets himself, upon discovering the naked starlet, Barrymore just groaned “Tallu … I’m too drunk and you’re too awkward.” It was a hell of an offer to turn down. Their cups truly overflowed.
COCOANUT GROVE COCKTAIL
2 OZ. DRY GIN
½ OZ. MARASCHINO LIQUEUR
¼ OZ. FRESH LIME JUICE
¼ OZ. GRENADINE
ORANGE WHEEL
MARASCHINO CHERRY
Pour all of the liquid ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange wheel and cherry.
