Maurice Barrymore
Encyclopedia
Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blythe (September 21, 1849 – March 26, 1905) —stage name Maurice Barrymore — was the patriarch
of the Barrymore acting family
and great-grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore
.
, Punjab
or more precisely Fort Agra
, India
, he was the son of William Edward Blythe, a surveyor for the British East India Company
and his wife Matilda Chamberlayne. Herbert had an older brother named Will and a sister named Evelin. Matilda, after a difficult pregnancy died shortly after giving birth to Herbert on September 21, 1849. In his formative years Herbert was raised by his Aunt Amelia Blythe, his mother's sister. Amelia, a Chamberlayne by birth, had married a brother of Herbert's father and was a Blythe by marriage. Herbert was sent back to England for education at Harrow School
, England
and studied Law at Oxford University where he was Captain of his class football team in 1868. Herbert also became enamored of the sport of boxing. The Marquess of Queensberry rules
were firmly established at this time but it wasn't unusual to see bare knuckle
fights. On March 21, 1872 Herbert won the middleweight
boxing championship of England
. Years later many of Herbert's friends would be sports figures of the day particularly boxers and wrestlers such as William Muldoon
, John L. Sullivan
, James J. Corbett
and a young actor named Hobart Bosworth
, the latter of whom Herbert would stage in an amateur bout with his son Lionel. Herbert's father expected him to become a barrister
, but Herbert fell in with a group of actors, which scandalized the elder Blythe. That same year 1872 Herbert sat for his first posed theatrical photographic portrait by noted photographer Oliver Sarony, an older brother of the better remembered Napoleon Sarony
. In order to spare his father the "shame" of having a son in such a "dissolute" vocation, he took the stage name Maurice Barrymore (though he never legally changed from "Blythe"), inspired by a conversation he had with fellow actor Charles Vandenhoff about William Barrymore, an early 19th-century English thespian, after seeing a poster depicting Barrymore in the Haymarket Theatre
. He wanted his first name to be pronounced in the French manner (môr-ĒS) instead of the English (MÔR-is). His friends avoided that altogether by simply calling him "Barry".
, and joined Augustin Daly
's troupe, making his debut in Under the Gaslight.
He made his Broadway
debut in December 1875 in Pique; in the cast was a young actress, Georgiana Drew
, known as Georgie. Maurice and Georgiana had been introduced earlier by her brother John Drew Jr.
who had befriended Maurice when he first arrived in America. After a brief courtship, Barrymore and Georgie married on December 31, 1876, and had three children: Lionel
(b. 1878), Ethel
(b. 1879), and John
(b. 1882). While on tour, the children lived with Georgiana's mother in Philadelphia. Maurice also owned a farm on Staten Island to keep his collection of exotic animals. Georgiana died July 2, 1893, from consumption
. For a summer in 1896, Lionel and John were left on the farm in the care of the man who fed the animals. Barrymore re-married exactly one year after Georgie's death to Mamie Floyd, much to Ethel's consternation. During his career, Maurice Barrymore played opposite many of the reigning female stars of the time including Helena Modjeska
, Mrs. Fiske
, Mrs. Leslie Carter
, Olga Nethersole
, Lillian Russell
, and Lily Langtry.
, Texas, Barrymore and fellow actor Ben Porter were shot by an intoxicated Texas and Pacific Railway
engineer named Jim Currie (who shared a cell with the accused killer of Diamond Bessie
). Porter was killed; doctors spent the night operating on Barrymore to save his life. He made a full recovery, and returned to Marshall for the legal procedures that followed. Currie's brother was mayor of Shreveport
, Louisiana and apparently used his influence to secure a not guilty verdict (after a 10 minute deliberation). An enraged Barrymore vowed never to return to Texas.
According to a 2004 A&E
Biography piece, after the Ben Porter tragedy, Barrymore asked Georgiana to tour with him and Helena Modjeska
in a play he had written. Georgiana and the children had converted to Roman Catholicism under Helena's influence. Learning that he and Helena had resumed their romance, Georgiana, who had been given ownership of the play by Barrymore, forced his hand by closing it. Helena's husband, its producer, sued
her. The real reason for Georgiana's actions never got into the press. However, Barrymore's many dalliances did make the tabloids.
. Without copyrighting his play, he gave a copy of the manuscript to Bernhardt. Between 1885 and 1887, Bernhardt had the copy in her possession and allegedly had given it to playwright Victorien Sardou
to review. Sardou, in 1886, wrote his famous play La Tosca
, which later achieved great fame as an opera. Barrymore, upon the creation of Sardou's play, realized that La Tosca was a plagiarization of his story Nadjezda.
. In the 1899 season on Broadway he had a success playing opposite Mrs. Fiske in the part of Rawdon Crawley in Becky Sharp. This play was based on a character from William Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp was Barrymore's last Broadway success. In 1900, Barrymore toured the U.S. with a play called The Battle of the Strong. In the company of this play was a five year old child actress, Blanche Sweet, who grew up to be a silent movie actress and acted with Lionel in his first film. When the Battle of the Strong company stopped in Louisville, Kentucky
Barrymore sat for his last posed photograph. Also during this time he got to spend time with his son John, who was now in his late teens. Lionel and Ethel were on the road in theater companies having already started their careers.
engagement [in 1901] at a Harlem
theatre when he suddenly dropped his lines and began to rave, (to the horror of his son John). The following day he became violent and was taken to Bellevue insane ward by John. No easy task as John had to lure his father away at the pretense of starring in a new play. At Bellevue and later Amityville
he was diagnosed with the lingering effects of syphilis, an incurable disease in his day. Nothing could be done for him. During his stay at Bellevue he nearly strangled his daughter Ethel when she paid a visit to him. Ethel, through her early success on the stage, would pick up the tab for her father's stay in the institutions. A trained boxer, Barrymore's strength remained as in a scuffle with one of the Bellevue attendants, he picked the man up over his head and threw him into a corner. He died at Amityville in his sleep, and Ethel had him buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia. Barrymore had lived long enough to see all three of his children grow to adulthood and enter the family business of acting
. There are no photographs that survive of Barrymore taken with any of his three children.
Patriarch
Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...
of the Barrymore acting family
Barrymore family
The Barrymore family is an American acting family.The Barrymores are also the inspiration of a Broadway and West End play called The Royal Family....
and great-grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore
Drew Blyth Barrymore is an American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer and model. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American actors and granddaughter of John Barrymore. She first appeared in an advertisement when she was 11 months old. Barrymore made her film debut in Altered...
.
Early life
Born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blythe in the Sikh holy city, AmritsarAmritsar
Amritsar is a city in the northern part of India and is the administrative headquarters of Amritsar district in the state of Punjab, India. The 2001 Indian census reported the population of the city to be over 1,500,000, with that of the entire district numbering 3,695,077...
, Punjab
Punjab (British India)
Punjab was a province of British India, it was one of the last areas of the Indian subcontinent to fall under British rule. With the end of British rule in 1947 the province was split between West Punjab, which went to Pakistan, and East Punjab, which went to India...
or more precisely Fort Agra
Agra Fort
Agra Fort, is a monument situated at Agra, is a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is about 2.5 km northwest of its more famous sister monument, the Taj Mahal...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, he was the son of William Edward Blythe, a surveyor for the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
and his wife Matilda Chamberlayne. Herbert had an older brother named Will and a sister named Evelin. Matilda, after a difficult pregnancy died shortly after giving birth to Herbert on September 21, 1849. In his formative years Herbert was raised by his Aunt Amelia Blythe, his mother's sister. Amelia, a Chamberlayne by birth, had married a brother of Herbert's father and was a Blythe by marriage. Herbert was sent back to England for education at Harrow School
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and studied Law at Oxford University where he was Captain of his class football team in 1868. Herbert also became enamored of the sport of boxing. The Marquess of Queensberry rules
Marquess of Queensberry rules
The Marquess of Queensberry rules is a code of generally accepted rules in the sport of boxing. They were named so because John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry publicly endorsed the code, although they were written by a sportsman named John Graham Chambers. The code of rules on which modern...
were firmly established at this time but it wasn't unusual to see bare knuckle
Bare-knuckle boxing
Bare-knuckle boxing is the original form of boxing, closely related to ancient combat sports...
fights. On March 21, 1872 Herbert won the middleweight
Middleweight
Middleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1897...
boxing championship of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Years later many of Herbert's friends would be sports figures of the day particularly boxers and wrestlers such as William Muldoon
William Muldoon
William A. Muldoon was the Greco-Roman Wrestling Champion, physical culturist and the first chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission. He once wrestled a match that lasted over seven hours...
, John L. Sullivan
John L. Sullivan
John Lawrence Sullivan , also known as the Boston Strong Boy, was recognized as the first heavyweight champion of gloved boxing from February 7, 1881 to 1892, and is generally recognized as the last heavyweight champion of bare-knuckle boxing under the London Prize Ring rules...
, James J. Corbett
James J. Corbett
James John "Gentleman Jim" Corbett was an Irish-American heavyweight boxing champion, best known as the man who defeated the great John L. Sullivan. He also coached boxing at the Olympic Club in San Francisco...
and a young actor named Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.-Early life:Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New...
, the latter of whom Herbert would stage in an amateur bout with his son Lionel. Herbert's father expected him to become a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
, but Herbert fell in with a group of actors, which scandalized the elder Blythe. That same year 1872 Herbert sat for his first posed theatrical photographic portrait by noted photographer Oliver Sarony, an older brother of the better remembered Napoleon Sarony
Napoleon Sarony
Napoleon Sarony was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular and prolific portrait photographer, most known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater....
. In order to spare his father the "shame" of having a son in such a "dissolute" vocation, he took the stage name Maurice Barrymore (though he never legally changed from "Blythe"), inspired by a conversation he had with fellow actor Charles Vandenhoff about William Barrymore, an early 19th-century English thespian, after seeing a poster depicting Barrymore in the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
. He wanted his first name to be pronounced in the French manner (môr-ĒS) instead of the English (MÔR-is). His friends avoided that altogether by simply calling him "Barry".
Career and Marriage to Georgiana Drew
On December 29, 1874, Barrymore emigrated to the United States, sailing aboard the SS America to BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, and joined Augustin Daly
Augustin Daly
John Augustin Daly was an American theatrical manager and playwright active in both the US and UK.-Biography:Daly was born in Plymouth, North Carolina and educated at Norfolk, Va...
's troupe, making his debut in Under the Gaslight.
He made his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in December 1875 in Pique; in the cast was a young actress, Georgiana Drew
Georgiana Drew
Georgiana Emma Drew , aka Georgie Drew Barrymore, was an American stage actress and a member of the Barrymore acting family....
, known as Georgie. Maurice and Georgiana had been introduced earlier by her brother John Drew Jr.
John Drew Jr.
John Drew, Jr. was an American stage actor noted for his roles in Shakespearean comedy, society drama, and light comedies. He was the eldest son of John Drew, who had given up a blossoming career in whaling for acting, and Louisa Lane Drew, and the brother of Louisa Drew, Georgiana Drew & Sidney...
who had befriended Maurice when he first arrived in America. After a brief courtship, Barrymore and Georgie married on December 31, 1876, and had three children: Lionel
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
(b. 1878), Ethel
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.-Early life:Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew...
(b. 1879), and John
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
(b. 1882). While on tour, the children lived with Georgiana's mother in Philadelphia. Maurice also owned a farm on Staten Island to keep his collection of exotic animals. Georgiana died July 2, 1893, from consumption
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. For a summer in 1896, Lionel and John were left on the farm in the care of the man who fed the animals. Barrymore re-married exactly one year after Georgie's death to Mamie Floyd, much to Ethel's consternation. During his career, Maurice Barrymore played opposite many of the reigning female stars of the time including Helena Modjeska
Helena Modjeska
Helena Modjeska Helena Modjeska Helena Modjeska (October 12, 1840 – April 8, 1909, whose actual Polish surname was Modrzejewska , was a renowned actress who specialized in Shakespearean and tragic roles.Modjeska was the mother of Polish-American bridge engineer Ralph Modjeski....
, Mrs. Fiske
Mrs. Fiske
Minnie Maddern Fiske , born as Marie Augusta Davey, but often billed simply as Mrs. Fiske, was one of the leading American actresses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She also spearheaded the fight against the Theatrical Syndicate for the sake of artistic freedom...
, Mrs. Leslie Carter
Mrs. Leslie Carter
Caroline Louise Dudley was an American silent film and stage actress who used her married name, Mrs. Leslie Carter, as her stage name to spite her former husband. She was called "The American Sarah Bernhardt"....
, Olga Nethersole
Olga Nethersole
Olga Isabella Nethersole, CBE, RRC was an English actress, theatre producer, and wartime nurse/health educator.-Biography:...
, Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.Russell was born in Iowa but raised in Chicago...
, and Lily Langtry.
Marshall, Texas Incident
On March 19, 1879, in MarshallMarshall, Texas
Marshall is a city in Harrison County in the northeastern corner of Texas. Marshall is a major cultural and educational center in East Texas and the tri-state area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Marshall was about 23,523...
, Texas, Barrymore and fellow actor Ben Porter were shot by an intoxicated Texas and Pacific Railway
Texas and Pacific Railway
The Texas and Pacific Railway Company was created by federal charter in 1871 with the purpose of building a southern transcontinental railroad between Marshall, Texas, and San Diego, California....
engineer named Jim Currie (who shared a cell with the accused killer of Diamond Bessie
Diamond Bessie
Diamond Bessie was the popular name given to Bessie Moore, née Annie Stone, a prostitute whose murder in the woods outside of Jefferson, Texas propelled her to the level of local legend. She was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head in the early afternoon of Sunday, January 21, 1877...
). Porter was killed; doctors spent the night operating on Barrymore to save his life. He made a full recovery, and returned to Marshall for the legal procedures that followed. Currie's brother was mayor of Shreveport
Shreveport, Louisiana
Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana. It is the principal city of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana and is the 109th-largest city in the United States....
, Louisiana and apparently used his influence to secure a not guilty verdict (after a 10 minute deliberation). An enraged Barrymore vowed never to return to Texas.
According to a 2004 A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
Biography piece, after the Ben Porter tragedy, Barrymore asked Georgiana to tour with him and Helena Modjeska
Helena Modjeska
Helena Modjeska Helena Modjeska Helena Modjeska (October 12, 1840 – April 8, 1909, whose actual Polish surname was Modrzejewska , was a renowned actress who specialized in Shakespearean and tragic roles.Modjeska was the mother of Polish-American bridge engineer Ralph Modjeski....
in a play he had written. Georgiana and the children had converted to Roman Catholicism under Helena's influence. Learning that he and Helena had resumed their romance, Georgiana, who had been given ownership of the play by Barrymore, forced his hand by closing it. Helena's husband, its producer, sued
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
her. The real reason for Georgiana's actions never got into the press. However, Barrymore's many dalliances did make the tabloids.
Nadjezda
Around 1884 and 1885, Barrymore wrote a play titled Nadjezda. During this period he sailed with his wife Georgiana and their children Lionel, Ethel and John, then respectively 6, 5 and 2, to England to visit relatives he hadn't seen since migrating to America. He had previously come into some money left to him by his now deceased aunt Amelia, the woman who raised him. During the trip to Europe in 1885, Barrymore came into contact with the great French actress and star Sarah BernhardtSarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...
. Without copyrighting his play, he gave a copy of the manuscript to Bernhardt. Between 1885 and 1887, Bernhardt had the copy in her possession and allegedly had given it to playwright Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
to review. Sardou, in 1886, wrote his famous play La Tosca
La Tosca
La Tosca is a five-act drama by the 19th-century French playwright Victorien Sardou. It was first performed on 24 November 1887 at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role...
, which later achieved great fame as an opera. Barrymore, upon the creation of Sardou's play, realized that La Tosca was a plagiarization of his story Nadjezda.
Last Years
In 1896, Barrymore became the first major Broadway star to headline in vaudeville—a brave foray at the time that he speculatively would have later made into motion pictures had he lived. In the 1895 theater season on Broadway he co-starred with Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Heart of MarylandThe Heart of Maryland
The Heart of Maryland is a silent 1927 costume drama produced and distributed by Warner Brothers and directed by Lloyd Bacon. The film stars Dolores Costello in the title character. This film is the last silent version of the oft filmed Victorian story with versions having been produced in 1915 and...
. In the 1899 season on Broadway he had a success playing opposite Mrs. Fiske in the part of Rawdon Crawley in Becky Sharp. This play was based on a character from William Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp was Barrymore's last Broadway success. In 1900, Barrymore toured the U.S. with a play called The Battle of the Strong. In the company of this play was a five year old child actress, Blanche Sweet, who grew up to be a silent movie actress and acted with Lionel in his first film. When the Battle of the Strong company stopped in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
Barrymore sat for his last posed photograph. Also during this time he got to spend time with his son John, who was now in his late teens. Lionel and Ethel were on the road in theater companies having already started their careers.
Mental breakdown and death
The March 25, 1905, the New York Times reported: "He was playing a vaudevilleVaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
engagement [in 1901] at a Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
theatre when he suddenly dropped his lines and began to rave, (to the horror of his son John). The following day he became violent and was taken to Bellevue insane ward by John. No easy task as John had to lure his father away at the pretense of starring in a new play. At Bellevue and later Amityville
Amityville, New York
Amityville is a village in the town of Babylon in Suffolk County, New York, in the United States. The population was 9,441 at the 2000 census.-History:...
he was diagnosed with the lingering effects of syphilis, an incurable disease in his day. Nothing could be done for him. During his stay at Bellevue he nearly strangled his daughter Ethel when she paid a visit to him. Ethel, through her early success on the stage, would pick up the tab for her father's stay in the institutions. A trained boxer, Barrymore's strength remained as in a scuffle with one of the Bellevue attendants, he picked the man up over his head and threw him into a corner. He died at Amityville in his sleep, and Ethel had him buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia. Barrymore had lived long enough to see all three of his children grow to adulthood and enter the family business of acting
Acting
Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play....
. There are no photographs that survive of Barrymore taken with any of his three children.
In memoriam
In honor of his life, Michael J. Farrand penned the memorial narrative poem "The Man Who Brought Royalty to America" in 2000; based on the definitive biography Great Times, Good Times: The Odyssey of Maurice Barrymore by James Kotsilibas Davis (Doubleday, 1977).External links
- "Bullets for Barrymore"
- photo galleries of Maurice Barrymore throughout his Broadway & Vaudeville career in the Billy Rose collection of the New York Public Library
- Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew upon their wedding in 1876
- Maurice Barrymore in a play titled The Chovans, a play he never did, but probably the play The ShaughraunThe ShaughraunThe Shaughraun is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. It was first performed at Wallack's Theatre, New York, on 14 November 1874. Boucicault played Con in the original production...
by Dion BoucicaultDion BoucicaultDionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
which has a near pronunciation - Maurice Barrymore, North American Theater Online biography and photo
- Maurice Barrymore in Prussian style costume with Iron Cross circa 1870s