The Lionel Barrymore Movies Ranked
Looming large within the clan of actors that came into being as early as the early 1800s, Lionel Barrymore is, I would hope, to this day recognized as one of the greatest performers put on screen. But of course, his career started on the stage, when Barrymore appeared in THE RIVALS (1775) with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew at age 15 in 1893. Older brother of John and Ethel and great-uncle of Drew, Lionel charted a path of great acting success over the 61 years that formed his career, ending upon his death in 1954. Barrymore was awarded with an Oscar (predating that nickname, by the way) for his 1931 film A FREE SOUL, is known perennially to this day for his role as Mr. Potter in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), and has appeared in a million great movies besides.
Appearing in pictures as early as 1909, when stars weren’t even billed and movies were looked down on by veteran stage performers, Lionel, like his brother John, made a name for himself as a bankable star in the 1920s under the auspices of MGM. The rest is history. But much less is known about Lionel Barrymore’s directing history. Taking the reins behind the camera now and then while also acting at Biograph in the 1910s, Barrymore came back to the director’s chair at the end of the ’20s for another stint of a few years before he returned to “only” acting.
The results of these directed efforts often trend towards mediocrity, that’s for sure, but such an aspect of a renowned figure was too interesting for me to pass up an opportunity to write about it. Barrymore had a couple of uncredited retake contributions on movies during his directing career, but discounting those as not “Lionel Barrymore films,” he still ended up with 12 under his belt over the 18 years from 1913 to 1931. Written about here, however, are only four, because of those other eight’s lost status or unavailability through even unconventional internet sources. Most glaring are the exemptions of the thinly reconstructed yet potentially impressive musical THE ROGUE SONG (1930) and John Gilbert’s infamous first (released) talkie HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT (1929), which survives but is quite difficult to track down. In any event, the films of Lionel Barrymore that remain to write about here are flawed yet telling aspects of a great performer’s larger artistic contribution.
#4 — HIS SECRET (1913)
Lionel Barrymore’s first film was thought of as lost until quite recently. This short, which does indeed have a bit missing from it, was made for Biograph while serving as one of that studio’s stock actors and isn’t much to look at today. But HIS SECRET is an interesting little capsule of Barrymore’s directing work at such a nexus point of change for the film industry, which was still not actually in Hollywood. He would go on to make four more shorts for Biograph and one feature for Metro, LIFE’S WHIRLPOOL (1917), all lost, before his “revival” directing period when sound entered the picture(s). This inauspicious debut is actually not poorly made for its time, and indeed, there are a couple of approaches to framing in the exterior scenes that indicate Barrymore’s awareness of theatrical blocking. But HIS SECRET’s melodramatic story of a man turned to thievery is given so little time and often rendered in the stock style of the time that it isn’t much more than a curio within the director’s filmography.
#3 — THE UNHOLY NIGHT (1929)
Barrymore’s second sound feature, made for MGM, has a lot in common with the studio and Tod Browning’s THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR of the same year. Both are hammy and tropey murder mysteries that illustrated the moribund inhibitions of early sound film technology. Although based on a short story by the usually vigorous Ben Hecht, THE UNHOLY NIGHT plays like one of the many stagey adaptations that woefully represent Hollywood’s first few years of sound film production. A static film of few locations need not be boring, but the growing pains of 1929 and ’30 American films rarely dispelled that idea. Barrymore’s contributions behind the camera may have supported to some extent the always reliable presence of Roland Young, but even he seems restrained and mild for a character that is technically in keeping with his later charmers. And at times, a strong eye from Barrymore comes through, as strong chiaroscuro enables specters to enter a séance. But too much of THE UNHOLY NIGHT consists of characters talking around in circles about mystery developments with which modern audiences are all too familiar; almost surely, contemporary audiences were too.
#2 — MADAME X (1929)
MADAME X wasn’t technically Barrymore’s return to directing after a 12 year hiatus since 1917’s LIFE’S WHIRLPOOL; that honor would go to the short CONFESSION, released earlier in 1929 (but perhaps lost and anyways not ranked here). MADAME X, however, has the distinction of being Barrymore’s major revival of his directorial career. That didn’t go unnoticed at the time either. For his work on the film, Barrymore was nominated for Best Director at the 2nd Academy Awards in April 1930 (I’ve written about them here). But as with many of those early nods (and perhaps with many since), such an honor is somewhat suspect. Although MADAME X ranks here as Barrymore’s second best directed film, I would not say it’s a great movie, and perhaps not even an especially good one. There’s something to be said for its approach to dramatic material during the first full year of American sound film, as opposed to revue-style showcases many studios were focusing on for that very brief window. But amid the many “fallen women” movies of this period, MADAME X is a middling contribution. There are even better examples of the tropey subgenre in which Ruth Chatterton specifically yearns to be reunited with her child (such as Dorothy Arzner’s SARAH AND SON [1930] and William A. Wellman’s FRISCO JENNY [1932])! In short, MADAME X offers a few compelling moments, almost never due to the visual treatment of the film, but its biggest value today is as an Academy-Award-nominated film and certainly Barrymore’s greatest critical and commercial success as director.
#1 — TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931)
Calling TEN CENTS A DANCE Barrymore’s best directed film may be a dubious honor. Given time behind the camera beyond this, his final as director, he may have made much more lasting and impressive films. But as his directed pictures stand today, they are inhibited by stylistic choices that soon gave way to forms much more recognizable and enjoyable today, both in terms of his pre-BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) shorts and early talkies. That being said, TEN CENTS A DANCE, while no certified Pre-Code classic, hews much more closely to the brief dips into sleaze that I do love from the era. Barbara Stanwyck plays a strangely cynic-turned-naive-homemaker-turned-back-to-defiant-woman from a script that is a bit too full of convenient twists, but there’s no doubt that Stanwyck commanded a certain power even this early in her career. She is so natural compared to the acting styles of, say, Chatterton and other early talkie performers in vogue during the previous few years. Ricardo Cortez, who usually rankles me, is also surprisingly powerful as an understated and admirable rich guy. But more than anything, the filmic language that came from a couple more years of familiarity with sound film technology allowed for a fluidity that far outpaces the approach on a film like MADAME X. There’s some creativity in the staging, blocking, and camera movement; the movie’s not just a poorly filmed stage play! TEN CENTS A DANCE is certainly not a film that matches the heights of Barrymore’s acting career, but as his best movie as director, it does offer an entertaining B-experience amid the many Pre-Code explorations of a woman’s place in a Depression-era America.
