by Robert Laurence
Maurice Barrymore (l847-l905), the founder of the important family of
American actors, changed his name from Herbert Blythe early in his career,
taking his new name from a playbill he noticed hanging on a theater wall.
Born in India and schooled at Cambridge, the handsome Barrymore was
well-known as a boxer before turning to the stage. After a distinguished
twenty-five years as an actor in America he became a vaudeville star
toward the close of his life, when mental illness struck and finished his
career. Though there were signs before, the end came while he was on stage
at the Lion Palace Music Hall in New York. A news item in Billboard (April
6, l90l) tells the story:
There was a large audience present at the Lion Palace on Thursday night
when Maurice Barrymore went insane. They were drawn there chiefly by the
not yet departed vogue of the once great actor and in part by the stories
of his ardent advocacy of the cause of the White Rats, the organization of
vaudeville artists that is warring upon the theatrical trust.
Barrymore looked strange in spite of his make-up. His eyes were large and
staring. He looked unkempt and his hands twitched nervously. He stepped to
the front of the stage, and, instead of speaking the lines, his monologue,
began a wild harangue against the Theatrical Trust. He talked so fast and
so indistinctly that only those in the front rows heard the words.
Down with the trust! Death to the syndicate! Charles Frohman is doomed!
The stage manager ordered him off the stage, but he either did not hear
or would not obey. He went on haranguing, tossing his arms above his head
and striding from one side of the stage to the other.
At first the audience stared; then it tittered. At last a woman screamed,
and the curtain was rung down.
The actor raved about the White Rats and George Fuller Golden and Charlie Frohman,
but seemed to know nothing of the fiasco of his act. He hurried from the
theater, and almost ran to the Ft. Lee ferry, at the foot of One Hundred
and Thirtieth street, followed by his son John.
Barrymore was hospitalized at a sanatorium in New York but never really
recovered. It is said that the mind of the once famous actor is almost a
blank, another reporter wrote during his last days. A large part of his
waking hours is spent in reacting the scenes of his former successes, and
he repeats the lines in some of the plays which brought thunderous
applause from an appreciative audience.