The Great Profile

... it were not so close to the sad truth of the final years of John Barrymore's life - Barrymore disappearing from the set and going off on a bender, an on-again-off-again relationship with a a much younger fourth wife that was out for what she could get for herself, Barrymore addicted to the drink and unable to get work in his final days unless he was parodying himself.

As the film opens Evan Garrick (John Barrymore) has run out on his studio for the last time. The studio fires him from his current film role and tears up his contract, and his wife and agent leave him. In true Barrymore fashion he says good riddance to both. Into his life appears aspiring playwright Mary Maxwell (Anne Baxter), who tries to recruit him to play the lead in the script she has just finished. At first Garrick is going to throw her out, but when he learns that Mary's fiancé already has decided to back the play he quickly reconsiders, given that he is 12,000 dollars overdrawn on his bank account.

The play turns out to be horribly hammy and boring, and looks like it is headed for failure when Garrick decides to relieve his tension after the first act with a little alcohol. When he comes out drunk for the second act his antics have the audience in stitches. However, author Mary Maxwell is not amused and wants to close the play. When the critics judge the play a success - not realizing it is just a drunk Garrick carrying on - everyone involved convinces Mary that Garrick just needs reforming, and that she shouldn't turn her back on him. They never realize she'll take them seriously and actually reform him. A sober Garrick gets them back where they were - a bad play, an unresponsive audience, and a greatly diminished box office. What's worse, Garrick is now stealing Mary away from her fiancé (John Payne). How can this thing end happily? I'll let you watch and find out.

What makes this work is that Anne Baxter is out-hamming Barrymore throughout so that his self-parody does not seem so over-reaching. Gregory Ratoff is hilarious as Garrick's agent who is on the run from the mob over an eight thousand dollar gambling debt and needs to make the play a success if he doesn't want to wind up in a cement overcoat. A young John Payne has the role of Mary's fiancé.

Like I said in the beginning, the less you know about the truth of John Barrymore's final days the funnier this will be to you. It really is a good comedy.

THE GREAT PROFILE is not much more than JOHN BARRYMORE spoofing himself as an actor who can only inspire an audience when he's drunk. Otherwise, the feeble play he's in doesn't do anything to keep the audience awake.

What makes the film a point of curious interest more than anything else, is watching Barrymore reading his lines from cue cards off screen--something he did in many a film made before and after this one. By this time, it became a necessity if the director wanted to get the film in on budget.

MARY BETH HUGHES is his sassy blonde wife, one of those actresses from the '40s who was always cast as "the beautiful blonde with attitude" and ANNE BAXTER makes an early appearance at seventeen, already a capable enough actress as a woman who has faith in promoting the actor when her play is successful, but only when he's in the cups. Barrymore's only reason for agreeing to perform in her play is based purely on the money she offers to back it. And that, essentially, is the plot, with Barrymore insisting that his wife play opposite him.

I was never a John Barrymore fan and all I can say is that he confirms his "ham" status with his role here. It's hard to discern any difference between his acting when he's playing "Hamlet" (in true ham fashion) or acting as himself. And unfortunately, his is not the only weary performance it's a strain to watch. GREGORY RATOFF, as his fast-talking manager, seems to have been struck by the same bug.

As the young playwright, ANNE BAXTER gives the only calmly underplayed performance, although her patience with the overwhelming Barrymore is hard to find credible. And to his credit, JOHN PAYNE shows a flair for comedy in a thankless supporting role.

The plot is a silly one with Barrymore making a complete burlesque of his role--and the others not far behind. It's hard to take any of this seriously enough to warrant more than casual attention.

Tedium sets in after the first fifteen minutes and it never lets up.

Summing up: Easy to skip. Between Ratoff and Barrymore, too much ham.

This is an excellent comedy about an actor on his last legs hamming it up for his own amusement. I reject any of the evaluations here that rely on Mr. Barrymore's real life or condition at the time of making of this film. I don't see the logical connection. It's a funny movie, with Barrymore skillfully playing his part. I understand our English and arts departments in universities are infested with an irresistible need to analyze and judge everything not by what it is, but the conditions, times, politics, and philosophies of the people who produced them. If that makes sense to you, then you can't enjoy the Marx Brothers without bearing in mind Groucho's unhappy marriages, Chico's gambling mania, Zeppo's desire to leave performing and become a Hollywood agent, etc. Barrymore is a terrific comic actor in this film. Do you really care about his life off-screen to decide whether to enjoy it? Read about Barrymore all you want (including Ben Hecht's memoirs, A Child of the Century) and try to catch Christopher Plummer's one-man show, recently on PBS. But for heaven's sake, leave off the higher criticism or whatever the hell you call referencing stuff that's not in the work itself.

I almost couldn't make it through the whole film, but I stuck it out for JB. He breaks my heart in a way that almost no one else can. For those of you who are using this one performance as a yardstick to judge his talent by, you're selling him and yourselves short. This was a phenomenally gifted man with a finger constantly pressing his self-destruct button for reasons only he knew. You have to see his other films, silent and sound, that show his true range. "Twentieth Century," "Don Juan," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Svengali," - these are a few of the performances that are worth seeing. He was more than astonishingly handsome and sexy. He had guts and fire, and just couldn't overcome his fatal thirst. I would sell my soul to go back in time to see his "Hamlet" or "Richard III". All of his private and public sins aside, he was one of the greats, unjustly ignored by the Academy and forgotten by viewers. How sad. He deserved so much better.

Even in his last days John Barrymore always retained a healthy sense of humor about himself. He knew himself inside and out and in these last films like The Great Profile the last ounces of his talent he's giving to film audiences. Soon there would be nothing left.

Watching The Great Profile and seeing Barrymore has all the fascination of a train wreck. Knowing his history you seem compelled to watch it and make no mistake it's a funny film, but there's an underlying sadness to it.

There's a pale reflection of his performance as Oscar Jaffe in Twentieth Century. Barrymore is married to Mary Beth Hughes and she's ready to ditch him. So's just about everybody else in town. But Anne Baxter in her second film plays an Eve Harrington like fan. She's written a play and she wants The Great Profile to star. He goes into his usual shtick with her about how great art is a reward unto itself, but when he hears she comes with financing through her rich boyfriend John Payne, he more than relents. After all offers aren't piling up with him.

When Barrymore during out of town tryouts comes on blasted to the gills, Hughes walks out refusing to be humiliated by him any more, but the thing which Baxter wrote as a romantic drama is turned into a comedy smash. Kind of like a dipsomaniac version of Olsen&Johnson's Hellzapoppin'. No two performances were ever the same, but they were all good. Then Baxter takes it into her head to reform him and it nearly kills the goose that's laying all their golden eggs.

Reading here that this was originally intended for Adolph Menjou, I almost wish Menjou did it. Menjou certainly could do broad comedic performances, look at him in Golddiggers of 1935 for instance. Barrymore's dissipation because he was such a public figure was carried out in all the media.

As I said Barrymore was a man who had a sense of humor. He loved what Fredric March did in The Royal Family Of Broadway as Tony Cavendish which was based on him. But now it was real and no satire.

The Great Profile is funny, but if Menjou had done it the experience would not feel like a guilty pleasure.