ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The famous Profile was running to jowl when John Barrymore married his fourth wife, Elaine Jacobs Barrie. Their marriage in the late '30's sold more newspapers than Daddy Browning's did a decade before. Barrymore had been drying out in a New York hospital when he granted an interview to Elaine Jacobs, an ambitious Hunter college undergraduate, still in her teens. She was already working at small acting parts and had swallowed the Barrymore family legends whole. Her bedside manner was such that Barrymore followed her first by phone and then in person. He moved into the Jacobs' apartment and, while his divorce from Dolores Costello was being settled, pursued the girl from the kitchen to the living room and eventually into the bedroom. Hovering at 50, she says that he still dazzled and admits that his promises of stardom were also intriguing. The story of their married life is told in full dialogue as though a gigantic tape recorder had run continuously. It is spliced together by the sticky cliches of Sandford Dody. Occasionally a real bitterness breaks through the convention of sheer fluttery that obtains in the as-told-to form; for instance, toward the Barrymore family who hoped she'd go away if ignored, and toward old, boon, bottle companions -- Hecht, MacArthur and Fowler et al-- described as well- soaked sophomores who went around with their glasses constantly raised to each other. She has never re-married and stockbroking has replaced acting as her career. Badly written Barrymoriana that removes the nobility from the ""Sweet Prince"".

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: ppleton-Century

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION