Background
She was born on July 11, 1856, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From her parents she inherited a wit, a fineness, a polish which gave her great appeal
She was born on July 11, 1856, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From her parents she inherited a wit, a fineness, a polish which gave her great appeal
Like most of the Drews, she grew up and was educated in Philadelphia and there entered into her theatrical career under the direction of her mother, beloved of all actresses.
This began with a small rôle in Scribe's The Ladies' Battle in 1872, at the Philadelphia Arch Street Theatre where she remained for several years. But her brother, John Drew, having, in 1875, joined Augustin Daly, she followed in 1876, making her début as Mary Standish in Pique on April 17, taking the place of Jeffreys Lewis. While with Daly, Miss Drew assumed such rôles as Mrs. Torrens in The Serious Family, Helen in H. J. Byron's Weak Women, Celia in As You Like It (to the Rosalind of Fanny Davenport and the Orlando of Charles Coghlan), Louise in Frou-Frou, Grace in Divorce, Mrs. Gresham in Life, Maria in an elaborate revival of The School for Scandal (December 4, 1876), and Agnete in The Princess Royal.
She next joined Palmer's stock company; for a while she supported her husband's venture as a star, and at brief periods was in support of Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, and John McCullough. At various times she was also seen in Diplomacy, The Wages of Sin, Moths, L'Abbé Constantin, and Mr. Wilkinson's Widow. Serious illness cut short her career in 1892, her last Boston appearances being in Bisson's Settled Out of Court, September 26, 1892, and Lestocq's The Sportsman, October 17, 1892. In May 1893 she journeyed with her daughter Ethel to Santa Barbara, and it was there that she died.
When her husband went to California in support of Madame Modjeska, she and her children joined him there, and it was while living under the sway of Modjeska's charm and devotion that Mrs. Barrymore, whose own family, as well as that of her husband, were Episcopalians, became Catholic.
Mrs. Barrymore's natural vivacity and quickness of intellect, her wit and sense of the comic, marked her both on the stage and in society - "a woman with a voice that is thin and that breaks a woman with a fund of animal spirits and fin de siècle repartee. "
Critics of the time drew attention to the contagious humor of her look and gesture, to what they called her élan. She had a way, so it was claimed, of saying anything that came into her head. When she supported W. H. Crane in The Senator, she was described as being "as handsome as a picture, exquisitely dressed, brimming over with fun and an actress to the tips of her fingers. " As to her appeal, the same review declared that "she captured her audience at once and kept them in roars of laughter. " Miss Barrymore calls her mother gay and gallant, and designates the association of husband and wife as "a game of battledore and shuttlecock, his amazing brain against her native wit. "
She married Maurice Barrymore.