A Gracefully Written, Insightful Book from/of Another Era... | Good Night Sweet Prince (Lively Arts Series)...

book: Good Night Sweet Prince (Lively Arts Series) | Gene Fowler

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	• Good Night Sweet Prince (Lively Arts Series) Gene Fowler Mercury House, 1989 - 493 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews
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Old-fashioned but moving John Barrymore biography

Toward the end of his life John Barrymore frequently experienced a disorientation of time and place. On may 19, 1942 he searched in vain for his Japanese gardener. He had forgotten that his devoted employee had been moved to an internment camp, forgotten that he had run after the government car to protest against this injustice. He dragged himself for the last time to the rehearsal of his weekly radio program. He had not been drinking for the last 2 or 3 days. After the rehearsal he was no longer able to locate his dressing-room. "Some tourists watched him as he tiredly leaned against the wall. Several of the sightseers shook their heads as though in disapproval of the moral character of the man". Ten days later he was "beyond anyone's censure or praise". Fowler was present during his agony and spares us no detail: "Nurses now found it necessary to restrain him. I now found myself unable to look at him again".

Such moments compensate for Fowler's literary sins: Invented dialog, blow-up anecdotes, irritating omissions. Fowler was forced to skip certain omissions out of consideration for people still living: Three ex-wives with a mania for lawsuits. He could not bypass the actor's ex-manager though: This smart businessman eased Fowler of a considerable sum of money for the permission to cite from John's sea log and his reminiscences of his flight to India. Fowler could of course presume that the readers of 1943 were familiar with John's escapades and his frank and sympathetic account of his friend's addiction to alcohol that wrecked everything - health, career, marriages, friendships, fatherhood, self-esteem - made his book into a deserved bestseller.

Lionel was of course the main source about his brother's childhood. Born into a family of actors in 1882 John lost his mother at ten and was educated (spoiled) by his easygoing father Maurice. He spent the summer of his fifteeth year with his dying grandmother ("He bathed her swollen ankles and feet"). Fowler becomes melodramatic when he describes John's debut in the bedroom at 14: "The woman was unable to restrain her desire for the son of the man to whom she was supposed to be attached. She brought to this occasion the a virtuosity that belonged to Persian literature". Fowler disguises her identity - John's stepmother; he could not shove under Lionel's nose that he failed to protect his little brother...

Fowler continues with the tragic collapse of Maurice's once brilliant mind (without mentioning syphillis) and John's art-studies. At 21 he succombed to the family curse: acting. Besides: his relatives - uncle Drew, sister Ethel - were more tolerant of his laziness and unreliability than his editor at the Hearst press where he worked as cartoonist. His indulgent audience forgave him everything because he "inspired love". Absinthe was always handy.

THE FORTUNE HUNTER 1909 made him a star. (I will give details about his plays and biographies in my review of MARTIN F. NORDEN: JOHN BARRYMORE - A BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY). He married a stagestruck society girl. He drank. They quarreled. And finally she told the judge: "He read all night and slept all day". Edward Sheldon inspired the lazy dreamer into becoming America's greatest actor. Precious-curious anecdotes creep around his New York apartment, his triumphs, his altercations with the audience and his pranks. Arthur Hopkins and Alexander Woolcott shared their memories of RICHARDIII and HAMLET with Fowler.

He pours mockery and derision over the actor's second marriage ("Michael Strange had he face of a Romney portrait and the spirit of a U.S. marine"). That she made him wear partner-look, that she exposed him to ridicule in her self-written CLAIR DE LUNE 1923...Later biographers - John Kobler, Margot Peters - were even more malicious.

John's Hollywood years are the best-documented part of his life, tales about his legendary prodigality - villa, yacht, private zoo, art-collection - colorful. Dolores Costello is regarded as his "good" wife - and yet he was afraid of her. She owed him her career. He coddled her like a princess. I don't mind that she left the sinking ship with the major part of his possessions - but was it really necessary to sue him when he was down and out although she earned her own money? No Barrymore biographer had something nice to say about Mrs. Barrymore nr.4, Elaine. Fowler's account reaches the bottom on page 241 when poor John meets his future manager-couple. Make sure your stomach is empty before reading about their "enormous services - for free!".

Fowler's description of the breakdown and aftermath of his friend's life is perceptive and powerful. His emotional attempts to penetrate the oppressive and suffocating world of the late John Barrymore can move even hardened readers.

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A Gracefully Written, Insightful Book from/of Another Era...

Gene Fowler wrote gracefully and eloquently of his great friend John Barrymore in this, a biography from an era in which private lives were not seen as tabloid fodder and in which an author could concentrate on the significant moments of an artist's journey rather than sensationalism. As Fowler intended, Barrymore emerges from this book not as a hell-raising, womanizing alcoholic who was also an actor, but as an artist of real merit and significance whose life was by turns quixotic, hilarious, tragic, the man himself an authentic genius (as can still be seen in some of his film performances) doomed by self-destructive alcoholism. And yet, as Fowler states, "...his spirit remained essentially young and unconquered." Highly recommended for any readers interested in writing as elegant as a Fred Astaire dance number about a great, misunderstood man and actor.

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