- After his death, his friends--including Errol Flynn and Raoul Walsh--gathered at a bar to commiserate on his passing. Walsh, claiming he was too upset, pretended to go home. Instead, he and two friends went to the funeral home and bribed the caretaker to lend them Barrymore's body. Transporting it to Flynn's house, it was propped up in Errol's favorite living room chair. Flynn arrived and described his reaction in his autobiography: "As I opened the door I pressed the button. The lights went on and--I stared into the face of Barrymore . . . They hadn't embalmed him yet. I let out a delirious scream . . . I went back in, still shaking. I retired to my room upstairs shaken and sober. My heart pounded. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night.". However Gene Fowler, a close friend of Barrymore, stayed with the body all night and denied the story.
- Supported his brother Lionel Barrymore when Lionel's wife Irene Fenwick (a long-ago girlfriend of John's) died, and filled in for Lionel as Ebenezer Scrooge in an annual radio production of "A Christmas Carol" on the day after Irene's death (December 25, 1936).
- His sharp wit never left him, even when he was dying. A priest came to administer the last rites, accompanied by an exceedingly homely nurse. When the priest asked him if he had anything to confess, Barrymore replied, "Yes, Father. I am guilty, at this moment, of having carnal thoughts." "About whom?," replied the shocked priest. "About HER!," he replied, indicating the nurse.
- Was originally supposed to play Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), but because of the effects of his alcoholism, he could not remember his lines and was fired. The role went to Monty Woolley.
- One night, while drunk, he accidentally went into a women's restroom, instead of a men's room, and proceeded to relieve his bladder in a potted plant. A woman standing nearby reminded him that the room was "for ladies exclusively". Turning around, his penis still exposed, Barrymore responded, "So, madam, is this. But every now and again, I'm compelled to run a little water through it." This incident later made its way, verbatim, into My Favorite Year (1982), where the Barrymore-inspired character Alan Swann, played by Peter O'Toole, is involved in a similar situation.
- He left specific instructions that he be cremated and his ashes be buried next to his parents in the family cemetery in Philadelphia. However, as his brother Lionel Barrymore and sister Ethel Barrymore were Catholic and cremation was not sanctioned by the Church, the executors (Lionel and Mervyn LeRoy) had his remains entombed at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. In 1980 John Drew Barrymore decided to have his father cremated, and recruited his son John Blyth Barrymore to help. They removed the casket from its crypt, drove it to the Odd Fellows Cemetery and made the preparations. John Jr. insisted on having a look inside before they left. After viewing the body, he came out white as a sheet, got in the car and said to his son, "Thank God I'm drunk, I'll never remember it.".
- His birth certificate lists 14 February as his birth date, which conflicts with the family Bible that says 15 February. His World War I draft record and Social Security records state February 15.
- The only one of the three Barrymore siblings (John, Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore) to never win or even be nominated for an Academy Award; he is now considered the finest actor of the three. Most cinema historians believe this is because he never signed a long term Hollywood contract with any major studio and therefore never had the push and campaigns from any of them on his behalf.
- In May 1915 he served as a pallbearer at the funeral of Broadway stage producer 'Charles Frohman' after Frohman's body was recovered from the sinking of the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915. Frohman had at various times employed much of Barrymore's family, including his mother Georgie, sister 'Ethel Barrymore', brother 'Lionel Barrymore', uncle John Drew, cousin Georgie Mendum in addition to John himself.
- Courted Evelyn Nesbit as her involvement with architect Stanford White was waning. When she became pregnant, Barrymore proposed marriage, but White intervened and arranged for the teenage Nesbit to undergo an operation for "appendicitis". White was later murdered by Nesbit's vengeful husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw.
- He was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6667 Hollywood Blvd. on February 8, 1960.
- Had a daughter with Dolores Costello: Dolores Ethel Blyth Barrymore (born April 8, 1930).
- The three Barrymore siblings appeared in only one film together: Rasputin and the Empress (1932). Lionel Barrymore and John appeared without Ethel Barrymore in Arsène Lupin (1932), Night Flight (1933), Dinner at Eight (1933) and Grand Hotel (1932).
- His 1922 "Hamlet" was the longest-running Broadway production of the play, with 101 performances, until John Gielgud played the role for 132 performances in 1936.
- Was considered the greatest Hamlet and Richard III of his time, and is still considered the greatest American actor to play those roles.
- For his performance in Beau Brummel (1924), he was given a special self-created award from Rudolph Valentino.
- George Bernard Shaw considered his very highly regarded "Hamlet" one of the worst performances of the role he had ever seen, and in a blistering letter accused him of indulging his own ego at the expense of William Shakespeare.
- Was good friends with Errol Flynn, who subsequently played Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon (1958), a film about Barrymore's daughter Diana Barrymore.
- Rebaptized as a Roman Catholic after his mother's secret conversion, of the Barrymore siblings only Ethel Barrymore remained a devout Catholic.
- Regarding the costume romance films he starred in during the 1920s, he jokingly referred to them as "male impersonations of Lilyan Tashman".
- Son of Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Barrymore; grandson of Louisa Drew and John Drew (1827-1862); nephew of Sidney Drew; cousin of S. Rankin Drew; uncle of Samuel Colt, Ethel Colt and John Drew Colt.
- When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupted his national tour, the army pressed him into service helping remove the damage. It prompted his sister Ethel to say: It took an earthquake to get him out of bed and the army to put him to work.".
- On August 13, 2020, he was honored with a day of his filmography during the Turner Classic Movies Summer Under the Stars.
- Had appeared with Reginald Denny in five films: Sherlock Holmes (1922), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Bulldog Drummond's Revenge (1937), Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937) and Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938).
- He was, after John Gielgud, the most acclaimed Hamlet of the 20th century (his realization of the role in London influenced Laurence Olivier's own later interpretation of Hamlet, in 1937 on stage and in 1948 on film. Ironically, Ethel Barrymore denounced Olivier's film Hamlet (1948), which brought him an Academy Award as Best Actor). From 1922, when he staged his first Hamlet, until 1975, when Sam Waterston essayed the role, Barrymore and Walter Hampden were the only American actors to play Hamlet on Broadway. Barrymore put on a second production in 1923, while Hampden played the role three times on the Great White Way--in 1918, in 1925 (with 'Ethel Barrymore' as his Ophelia) and in 1929. Stephen Lang, who played the great Dane on the Great White Way in 1992, is the only other American in more than three-quarters of a century to star in "Hamlet" on Broadway. In that time, Hamlet was played mostly by British performers, particularly Maurice Evans, an English immigrant who became an American citizen and was the only actor other than Hampden since World War I to play Hamlet three times on the Broadway stage. The other British subjects to play the role on Broadway in that period other than Gielgud were Leslie Howard, Sir Donald Wolfit, future Canadian Stratford Festival founder John Neville, Neville's Old Vic co-star and rival Richard Burton, Nicol Williamson (the definitive portrayal of the late 1960s) and Ralph Fiennes, who won a Tony Award in the role. French actor Jean-Louis Barrault followed in his countrywoman Sarah Bernhardt's footsteps and played Hamlet on Broadway (he in 1952, she in 1900). Aside from Barrymore's acclaimed performance, the greatest Hamlet assayed by an American actor was that of Edwin Booth, who played the role three times on Broadway in the 19th century.
- Mentioned in 'The Three Stooges'' Movie Maniacs (1936).
- He has appeared in five films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), Grand Hotel (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Twentieth Century (1934) and Midnight (1939).
- He has played three different gentleman thieves: AJ Raffles, Arsene Lupin and the Baron.
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