Lionel Barrymore on stage, screen and radio

Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; 1878–1954) was an American actor of stage, screen, and radio. He also directed several films, wrote scripts, created etchings, sketches, and composed music.^[1] He was the eldest child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgie Drew Barrymore, and his two siblings were John and Ethel; these and other family members were part of an acting dynasty.^[2][3] Reluctant to follow his parents' career,^[4] Barrymore appeared together with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew in a stage production of The Rivals at the age of 15.^[5] He soon found success on stage in character roles. Although he took a break from acting in 1906–1909 to train in Paris as a painter, he was not successful as an artist, and returned to the US and acting.^[1] He also joined his family troupe, from 1910, in their vaudeville act.^[6]

Barrymore began his film career in 1911, appearing in numerous silent films, many of which have subsequently been lost. In 1911, he signed a contract with the Biograph Company and appeared as a character actor in short films, many of them directed by D. W. Griffith, before moving into feature-length productions in 1914.^[1] He began writing scripts and directing films shortly afterwards, and for the next five years, he did not act on the legitimate stage.^[7] Although he had several successes on Broadway after the First World War, he encountered strongly negative criticism in a 1921 production of Macbeth, and in three productions in a row in 1925. Afterwards, he never again appeared on the New York stage.^[1] In 1925, he signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he became a close friend of Louis B. Mayer, for whom he made numerous films.^[1] He directed several films from 1929 to 1931, but concentrated on acting afterwards.^[8][9]

Barrymore became well known in curmudgeonly roles.^[10] In 1938, he broke his hip, and, aggravated by arthritis, he lived the remainder of his life in a wheelchair.^[11] Mayer made sure that roles were found or written to accommodate Barrymore, who continued to act in films until 1953.^[1][12] During that time, he appeared as Dr. Gillespie in the popular Dr. Kildare film series, with Lew Ayres in the title role,^[13] and as Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life—a role that was highly placed on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Heroes and Villains^[14] in a film that the critic Philip French described as "a complex inspirational work".^[15] Beginning in the 1930s, Barrymore increasingly worked in radio, initially as Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which was broadcast annually from 1934 to 1953,^[16] then in Mayor of the Town, beginning in 1942,^[17] and also in a radio series spun off from the Dr. Kildare films (playing the same character that he had played in the films), among others.^[18]

Two of the films in which Barrymore appeared—Grand Hotel (1932), and You Can't Take It with You (1938)—won the Academy Award for Best Picture.^[19][20] He was considered for the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1929 film, Madame X,^[a] and won the Best Actor award for his performance in A Free Soul (1931). He was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960,^[22] and is, along with his two siblings, included in the American Theater Hall of Fame.^[23]