O Eterno Don Juan

... 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.

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.

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.

Great Profile, The (1940)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly bizarre and rather sad comedy has John Barrymore playing himself but the comedy brings more frowns than laughs. In the film Barrymore plays an actor who's pretty much been kicked out of Hollywood due to his drinking habits but he's given another chance by a young playwrite who feels her latest play can bring the actor back to top. The play fails but the actor comes out on stage drunk, which causes huge laughter in the crowd and turns the play into a hit. However, the young playwrite would rather have a sober actor rather than a hit play but this doesn't sit well with the producer. Yes, this is a comedy about an alcoholic that people want to get drunk so that people will laugh at him. Knowing Barrymore's history with alcohol, I can't say that this film made me laugh. The humor doesn't sit or play well today but the strange thing is that the only successful part of the movie comes during the first play performance when Barrymore goes on stage drunk. The actors maniac style really makes for some hilarious moments but everything else here falls flat on its face. The film is pretty dull, lifeless and just not that interesting. The attempts at humor might have worked in 1940 but today they just come off as sad and its made even sadder that Barrymore has to do it. Mary Beth Hughes, Gregory Ratoff, John Payne, Anne Baxter and Lionel Atwill play support.

Some classic age actors, when seen today, appear hammy and using old-fashioned technique. And some are timeless. John Barrymore is timeless and, in one of his last films, "The Great Profile," he lampoons himself mercilessly - in the role of a ham with old-fashioned technique. The story is based on what really happened to the actor during a play called "My Own Children." The actor Evans Garrick (Barrymore) has been missing for three days. When he arrives home drunk, he's in costume and he's reciting Shakespeare, believing that he just left a film set an hour earlier. Infuriated, his wife Sylvia (Mary Beth Hughes) leaves him. Then pretty Mary Maxwell (17-year-old Anne Baxter) arrives with a play she is desperate for Garrick to do. He gets rid of her by saying he will meet her in his agent's office the next day. His agent (Gregory Ratoff) owes some mobsters $8200 and when he hears that Ms. Maxwell has a wealthy fiancée, Richard Lansing (John Payne) who will back the play, he's all for it. It's a complete disaster, but it gets Sylvia back from Reno as soon as she hears about it, and she wins back her role. Totally polluted by the second act, Garrick makes the play a hit by ad-libbing and finally rolling off of the stage in a wheelchair. Ms. Maxwell is finally convinced to take what she considered her serious drama into New York, where it's been booked for a six-month run, but she takes Garrick in hand to sober him up. Everyone's unhappy - her fiancée and Garrick's agent in particular, since the play is deathly if Garrick isn't drunk.

Strangely enough, most of this actually happened to Barrymore in real life, including his wife leaving him and returning to get her part back in New York. And she did hide in Barrymore's wardrobe as Garrick's wife does in the film, though in real life, Barrymore's daughter Diana tried to keep her from doing so.

Barrymore is extremely dissipated in "The Great Profile" and reads his lines off of cue cards, which toward the end, he did often. For people who say he's a ham, I say he was playing one. He does Hamlet with a quivering sing-song voice. Does anyone believe this is actually how he played his famous Hamlet? He was Olivier's inspiration for the role. Olivier first played Hamlet in 1937 and was known for speaking the dialogue instead of singing it.

There are some very funny moments in "The Great Profile" but in the end, it's a bizarre movie, enlivened by Barrymore's presence. If you want to see a non-hammy Barrymore, I suggest "The Great Man Votes" or "Bill of Divorcement." He was a great actor with a big personality - if that seems strange by today's standards, well, it's the pictures that got small.