On September 21, 1849, celebrated stage actor and patriarch of the Barrymore theatrical dynasty Maurice Barrymore was born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth in Amritsar, India. Raised in a British colonial family, he was sent to England for his education, attending Harrow School and studying law at Oxford University. Before choosing the stage, he became an accomplished amateur boxer, winning England’s amateur middleweight championship in 1872.
Abandoning a prospective legal career for the theater, he adopted the stage name Maurice Barrymore—reportedly in part to spare his family the embarrassment then associated with acting—and emigrated to the United States in 1875. He soon established himself as a prominent romantic lead of the Gilded Age, appearing with Augustin Daly’s company and performing alongside major figures including Helena Modjeska and Lily Langtry.
In 1876, Barrymore married actress Georgiana Drew, uniting two prominent theatrical families. Their children—Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore—became celebrated performers in their own right, and the family’s acting legacy later extended to his great-granddaughter, Drew Barrymore.
Barrymore’s touring life also brought him into one of nineteenth-century theater’s most dramatic offstage episodes. On March 19, 1879, after a performance of Diplomacy in Marshall, Texas, Barrymore, fellow actor Benjamin F. Porter, and actress Ellen Cummens encountered James “Big Jim” Currie, a drunken Texas & Pacific Railroad detective. As Currie insulted Cummens, Barrymore and Porter intervened. Currie shot both men: Porter died shortly afterward, while Barrymore survived after physicians operated through the night.
Barrymore returned to New York and continued his career, ultimately becoming a central figure in one of America’s most enduring theatrical families. His life reflects both the glamour of the late-nineteenth-century stage and the precarious realities of touring entertainment in that era.
Image: Maurice Barrymore, father of Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
