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From Broadway to Hollywood: How Douglas Fairbanks (1883-1939) Created the Modern Movie Star.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. helped create the modern movie star by transforming himself from a successful Broadway actor into Hollywood’s first great athletic screen hero, using charisma, physicality, and entrepreneurial ambition to become one of silent cinema’s most influential figures and a co-founder of United Artists.

Studio portrait of silent film megastar Douglas Fairbanks Sr., taken at the height of his rise as “The King of Hollywood.” The uncropped image preserves the raw edges of the original 8×10 glass plate negative, revealing the studio backdrop and the photographer’s reference numbers etched along the bottom edge. Photographed in Washington, D.C., in April 1918 by Harris & Ewing, one of the nation’s premier photographic firms, the image comes from a studio renowned for documenting U.S. presidents, visiting dignitaries, and leading cultural figures of the early twentieth century.

The sitting was part of a major publicity campaign connected to the World War I home-front effort. That spring, Fairbanks joined his close friends and future United Artists partners Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford on a widely publicized cross-country tour promoting Liberty Bonds and boosting public support for the war. Along the way, he became a headline attraction at patriotic rallies, including the famous Wall Street event where he hoisted Chaplin onto his shoulders before thousands of spectators.

The Washington studio session provided newspapers, magazines, and patriotic publications with fresh promotional photographs showcasing Fairbanks’s trademark energy and infectious smile, helping carry the Liberty Bond campaign to audiences across the country. Because the images were created as part of a government-associated wartime publicity effort, the original glass negative was ultimately preserved and is now held in the collections of the Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. Public Domain.

By John P. Walsh.

Early Life and Family Background

Born in Denver in 1883, Douglas Fairbanks’ mother had been married three times before she had him, the younger of two brothers with his father, an East Coast publisher and lawyer, who had relocated his family to the West. Douglas’s father abandoned the family when he was 5 years old, and the brothers were raised by their mother in Denver. Douglas also had two older half brothers by way of his mother’s previous marriages. With Douglas’s father’s departure, his mother gave her youngest sons her first husband’s surname—Fairbanks.

Stage Beginnings in Denver and New York

Douglas Fairbanks started acting as a youth in summer stock at the historic Elitch Theatre in Denver so that by 1899 Fairbanks was touring with the acting troupe of English Shakespearean actor Frederick Warde (1851-1935). For two seasons Fairbanks was an actor and assistant stage manager with the group.¹Fairbanks moved to New York where he debuted on Broadway in Her Lord and Master in February 1902. The year before, from February 1901 to July 1901, Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) of the legendary Barrymore acting family became a Broadway star in a new romantic comedy play, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, at the Garrick Theatre in New York City. Barrymore’s production ran on Broadway for 168 performances in 1901 and made the 22-year-old actress a star. The turn of 20^th century was a time when the theatre was king of the arts – and where, in the new century’s first decade, the nation’s celebrities were born to be made. Her Lord and Master by Martha Morton was first produced in New York, during the spring of 1902. The play, in which Douglas Fairbanks had his first role, met with success, and ran for 69 performances at the Manhattan Theatre (demolished) at 102 W. 33^rd Street in New York City.²The opening night cast for A Case of Frenzied Finance in April 1905 included Douglas Fairbanks playing Bennie Tucker at third-billing. The play, set in the Vanbillon Hotel, ran for less than a month at the Savoy Theatre at 112 W. 34th Street. That theatre opened in 1900 and closed in 1933 and was demolished in 1952.³

A dapper and svelte 22-year-old Douglas Fairbanks played third-bill Bennie Tucker in A Case of Frenzied Finance at the Savoy Theatre in April 1905. It closed after 8 performances. Public Domain.

Broadway Success and Marriage

Fairbanks appeared in A Gentleman from Mississippi from September 1908 to September 1909. On September 22, 1908 (datelined September 21, 1908) The New York Times wrote a blurb regarding a preview that stated: “A Gentleman from Mississippi received its initial performance to-night at the New national Theatre. The play deals with Congressional riots and social life in the National capital. Thomas A. Wise, Douglas Fairbanks, Sue Van Duser, Harriet Worthington and Lola May were in the cast. Mr Wise [1865-1928] and Harrison Rhodes [1871-1929] are the authors of the play.”

A Gentleman from Mississippi ran for 407 performances moving to the Bijou Theatre in NYC.⁴In July 1907, 24-year-old Douglas Fairbanks married wealthy Anna Beth Sully (1886-1967) of Rhode Island. The couple had one son who followed his father into the acting business—Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1909-2000).

Douglas Fairbanks, c. 1910. Before 1915 Fairbanks established his character type on Broadway of the athletic all-American hero which followed him into films. By 1920 it was this full-blooded romanticism of Douglas Fairbanks that drew the biggest movie-going audiences in the country ⁵ https://www.loc.gov/resource/hec.16616/ Harris & Ewing, photographer. Public Domain.

Creating the All-American Hero

It was in November 1912, on opening night of Hawthorne of the USA, a play by J.B. Fagan, that Fairbanks established his character type for stage and screen: the athletic all-American hero.⁶With Fairbanks in the starring role as Anthony Hamilton Hawthorne, the play set in Oberon, the small capital of Borrovina, a small independent state somewhere in the mess of Southeastern Europe, ran for 72 performances at the Astor Theatre at 1537 Broadway (45th St.) in New York.⁷ It was made into a silent film in 1919 starring Wallace Reid (1891-1923) as the American hero.

Athleticism and acrobatic stunts characterized Douglas Fairbanks’ roles on stage since 1912 were translated to his films. They are on full display in A Modern Musketeer, a 1917 silent adventure comedy film produced by and starring Douglas Fairbanks.

Fairbanks family, c. 1916. Public Domain. https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Sully-110-1

Hollywood Beckons: The Move to Los Angeles

In 1915 the Fairbanks moved to Los Angeles – Douglas Fairbanks Sr. had received a lucrative offer from the nascent film industry. It was a three-year contract for $104,000 per year (over $3 million in today’s dollars) to join Triangle films. Exorbitant sums were dangled, often over-ambitiously by producers, to coax legitimate theatre actors to work on the West Coast in film – and under sometimes multi-year contracts. The strategy usually worked but came at a high cost later to a company’s survival and the star’s future. Again, Ethel Barrymore who became a Broadway star in 1901 and national celebrity at 22 years old began to appear in major silent films starting in 1914. Her brothers John and Lionel were already making films and though absolutely devoted to the stage from her youth, Ethel made at least 14 films before returning to the stage full time in 1920. The trend to capitalize on the talents of the stage in film was already underway when Triangle company was formed in 1915 to do just that on a spectacular scale.

Harry Aitken, c. 1910. Public Domain.

Harry Aitken, Triangle Film Corporation, and the Broadway-to-Hollywood Strategy

Harry Aitken (1877-1956) and his brother Roy Aitken (1882-1978) co-founded a film distribution business in Milwaukee in 1906. There had also been a relationship with a Chicago film distributor who established American Film Manufacturing Company production company in 1910. The Aitken brothers relocated to California in 1908 and in 1912, with others, formed the Mutual Film Corporation. One of Mutual’s many subsidiary production and auxiliary units was Keystone Studios, where 24-year-old Charlie Chaplin got his start in films in 1913 at $150 per week (Chaplin was making more than $20,000 a week 5 years later). In 1914 Harry Aitken went into partnership with D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) and, in 1914, founded Reliance-Majestic Studios at 4516 Sunset Boulevard which is today a strip mall.

Following the tremendous success of The Birth of Nation in 1915 with which Harry Aitken was involved so to reap some of its incredible profits, the Aitken brothers and various other companies, such as Reliance-Majestic Studio, departed from Mutual to form a conglomerate of Triangle Film Corporation. The company served as a distributor to other studios in California and Aitken’s plans included sweeping into the fold the best and the brightest of Broadway theatre – which included 32-year-old Douglas Fairbanks. A leading artistic objective for these Hollywood producers was to bring these stage actors’ greatest plays to the screen. Believed to be a worthwhile goal in 1915, before the end of the 1920’s such published plays and other literature while fine for the boudoir reader were problematic to simply translate to the silver screen. The movement towards self-censorship had developed in reaction to the fear the industry would be regulated or outright banned by states. In 1915 there were fewer worries about this as such theatrical artistic fare was expected to attract a better educated movie-goer as well as the Wall Street big-money-type investors who invested in Broadway plays. In one fell swoop Aitken contracted over 60 actors and actresses including Billy Burke (1884-1970), recently married to Florenz Ziegfeld; soon-to-be Western star Dustin Farnum (1874-1929); Shakespearean actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) who played Macbeth in D.W. Griffith’s lost 1916 film of the same name; and, “Casey At the Bat” DeWolf Hopper (1858-1935).

Douglas Fairbanks, 1916. Public Domain.

The Lamb and the Birth of a Screen Idol

The debut feature from Triangle starred Douglas Fairbanks in The Lamb, a film based on a 1913 stage play that was expanded to have Western cinematic elements. It premiered with two more features on September 23, 1915 at The Knickerbocker Hotel in Fairbanks’ old stomping ground of New York City. Triangle had in-house three master directors – D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, and Thomas Ince. D.W. Griffith had a hand in The Lamb, though its directing and screenplay credits went to 27-year-old W. Christy Cabanne (1888-1950). The Lamb was a hit with audiences, and critics praised Fairbanks’ performance marked by his celebrated physicality.⁸ The film had a nationwide release that November 1915. Although not yet a movie star, Fairbanks saw his weekly salary doubled. By His Picture in the Papers, a 1916 silent comedy film for Triangle that provided stunts for Fairbanks to wrap his athleticism around, Fairbanks became a popular screen idol. Fairbanks made 13 films for Triangle and when his contract expired, Harry Aitken was paying him $10,000 per week.⁹ Yet, excepting Douglas Fairbanks, Aitken had over bought his stable of stage stars in relation to their poor return so that in 1916 Triangle was known in the industry to be on the verge of collapse.

Paramount Pictures’ co-founder Adolph Zukor (1873-1976) was one of the innovators of the motion picture business. In 1916 Zukor convinced Douglas Fairbanks to become the independent producer of his own films. From the May 1922 issue of Motion Picture Classic. Public Domain. https://archive.org/details/MotionPictureClassicMay1922/mode/1up?view=theater

Independent Producer and the Douglas Fairbanks Picture Corporation

Douglas Fairbanks, Triangle’s star, was convinced by Paramount Pictures’ co-founder Adolph Zukor (1873-1976), believed to be “the business brains of the motion picture industry,”¹⁰ to become the independent producer of his own films. This became reality at the end of 1916 with the creation of the Douglas Fairbanks Picture Corporation. Zukor had already worked to do something similar for Mary Pickford’s films.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford around 1919. Both movie stars already had established independent productions companies for their own films which still required their distribution – a key aspect of making money in movies – by others. These stars along with comedy star Charlie Chaplin and master director D.W. Griffith founded United Artists in 1919 largely to establish control of the distribution arm of the movie making business for their independently produced films. In 1919, Douglas Fairbanks divorced his wife, Anita. The following year, Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart,” divorced her husband, Owen Moore, and married Douglas Fairbanks, her paramour since 1916. The American public, which took tremendous interest in these personal affairs, were shocked but hardly surprised by the country’s changing values. Even Douglas Fairbanks’ films between 1915 and 1919 had demonstrated those changing values by way of his athletic, likeable characters drawn to display a comical, good-natured, brash overambitious hero with a popular philosophy of avoiding both boring convention and conventional boredom. While Fairbanks’ dramatis personae would change dramatically in the 1920s from comedies to swashbucklers his already fantastic, attractive and likeable character type was being merely reinforced.¹¹Glass negative, Harris & Ewing photographer. https://www.loc.gov/resource/hec.30098/ Public Domain.

Fairbanks Productions and the Road to United Artists

As Fairbanks had been lured away by a better offer, so the actor hired his team at Triangle for his own company. Director John Emerson (1874-1956) and screenwriter Anita Loos (1888-1981) – to be husband and wife in 1919 – had successfully collaborated on Fairbanks’ movie hits at Triangle and even D.W. Griffith valued the pair as among the best film editors in the business after working on Intolerance in 1916. Emerson had directed important films at Triangle in 1916 featuring Douglas Fairbanks including His Picture in the Papers, The Americano, and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish. These Emerson-directed films were followed in 1917 by In Again, Out Again, Wild and Woolly, Down to Earth, and Reaching for the Moon, all for Douglas Fairbanks Productions. In 1918 Fairbanks made 5 more romantic comedies and one melodrama called Arizona, a film now lost. Despite a film receiving perhaps a mixed review from critics or being subject to local censorship, Douglas Fairbanks’ films proved box office gold due to his star power. In 1918 and moving into 1919 Fairbanks had become a millionaire, screen idol and soon to be co-founder of his own movie studio, United Artists.

John Emerson and Anita Loos in 1918. These two creative individuals who married in 1919 worked closely as director, screenwriter, and film editor with Douglas Fairbanks as well as D.W. Griffith at Triangle films and later at Douglas Fairbanks Picture Corporation. They helped make some of the most popular and critically-acclaimed films in the industry at that time. Public Domain.

Down to Earth is a 1917 American comedy romance film produced by and starring Douglas Fairbanks with Irish-born actress Elaine Percy. Directed by John Emerson with a screenplay co-written by Anita Loos, the film features Fairbanks as Bill Gaynor who sets out to prove the outdoors and self-reliant manual labor are better for health than any modern medical treatment. He does this by kidnapping a group of hypochondriacs from a clinic that includes a girl, Ethel Forsythe (Percy). Bill is interested in her, but she refuses his proposals. Finally, after proving his point on a “deserted island” that is next to a California freeway, Bill bids farewell to the revived group of patients and escapes with his awaiting love interest, Ethel, into the sunset by rowboat. The film is in the Public Domain.

The most popular silent film stars on the road selling Liberty bonds in 1918 were Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and before a massive crowd on Wall Street in New York City, Douglas Fairbanks. In 1918 Fairbanks and Chaplin decided to hire private detectives to spy on their respective studios, Paramount Pictures and First National. They were told that the studios were going to put a stop to their exorbitant salaries and not renew their contracts.¹² The positive audience response from the Liberty drives and a fear of a corporate merger that would end star leveraging power, led directly to Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and master director D.W. Griffith, to found United Artists in January 1919. Public Domain.

Conclusion

As the curtain fell on the theater-dominated nineteenth century and rose on the age of motion pictures, Douglas Fairbanks emerged as a defining titan of the new medium. At a pivotal moment when the art and business of film were still being invented from scratch, Fairbanks helped construct the very blueprint of modern movie stardom. He achieved this through a potent combination of infectious optimism, explosive athletic vigor, and an instinctive, unparalleled screen charisma.

More than just a box-office darling, Fairbanks became the ultimate symbol of silent-era ambition and untamed possibility. He radically disrupted the industry by challenging rigid studio monopolies, pioneering artist-led production as a co-founder of United Artists. In doing so, Fairbanks established a revolutionary model of creative freedom, global celebrity, and entrepreneurial control that reshaped the landscape of Hollywood and the business of filmmaking for generations. Ultimately, his career mirrored Hollywood’s own meteoric rise, ensuring his towering influence would endure long after the silent era that made him famous had passed into history.

NOTES:

1. Goessel, Tracey. The First King of Hollywood; The Life of Douglas Fairbanks. Chicago Review Press, 2016.

2. https://playbill.com/production/her-lord-and-masterbroadway-manhattan-theatre-1902 – retrieved August 28, 2023.

3.https://www.ibdb.com/theatre/savoy-theatre-1494; https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/a-case-of-frenzied-finance-6075#OpeningNightCast).

4. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.), Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak, 2004 and https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095848181).

5. The United Artists Story, Ronald Bergan, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1986, p.9.

6. Ibid., p. 8.

7. https://www.playbill.com/production/hawthorne-of-the-usa-astor-theatre-vault-0000001318 – retrieved August 30, 2023; https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/hawthorne-of-the-usa-4786 – retrieved August 30, 2023.

8. Lombardi, Frederic (2013). Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios. McFarland. pp. 53–54.

9. United Artists, Volume 1, 1919–1950: The Company Built by the Stars, Tino Balio, University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. p. 143.

10. Quoted in the May 1922 issue of Movie Picture Classic, p. 26.

11. A Short History of the Movies, Gerald Mast, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1976, pp. 124; 127 and The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of The Movies, Arthur Knight, New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1978, p 107.

12. Chaplin: His Life and Art, David Robinson, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1985, p. 267.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

A Short History of The Movies, Gerald Mast, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis, 1977.

David Robinson, Chaplin: His Life and Art. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1985.

Hollywood: The Pioneers. Kevin Brownlow and John Kobal, New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. A Borzoi Book,1979.

History of the American Cinema, Volume 5, 1930-1939, Charles Harpole, General Editor, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.

The American Film Industry, ed. Tino Balio, University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.

The Hollywood Story, Joel W. Finler, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1988.

The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of The Movies, Arthur Knight, New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1978

The United Artists Story, Ronald Bergan, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1986.

United Artists, Volume 1, 1919–1950: The Company Built by the Stars, Tino Balio, University of Wisconsin Press, 2009

An iconic production still showing Douglas Fairbanks Sr. flashing his famous smile as his character, Ahmed, in the 1924 landmark silent film fantasy epic, The Thief of Bagdad. In the promotional shot distributed by United Artists in 1924 he famously paired a patterned, wrapped head scarf with prominent matching hoop earrings as the movie star starred in what is universally classified as an epic swashbuckler. Public Domain.

Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines at the Garrick Theatre: The 1901 Broadway Breakthrough That Made Ethel Barrymore a Star.

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FEATURE image: Ethel Barrymore on the cover of The Theatre in August 1901 following the close of the successful Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines which ran on Broadway for 168 performances from February to July 1901 and made 22-year-old Ethel Barrymore a star. Public Domain.

Ethel Barrymore’s breakout performance as Madame Trentoni in the 1901 Broadway romantic comedy Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines at the Garrick Theatre transformed her into a major theatrical celebrity, launching a legendary 60-year career across the American stage and cinema.

22-year-old Ethel Barrymore on stage at the Garrick Theatre on West 35th Street in New York City in Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines in 1901. Dramatist Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) wrote over 60 plays in his career that ranged from comedies and farces to melodramas. Fitch was the most popular writer for the Broadway stage in his time and specialized in writing important dramatic parts for women. Fitch’s new play was a romantic comedy set in the States years after the Civil War. Ethel Barrymore played Madame Trentoni, the female lead and the play’s love interest. The 1901 Broadway production made Barrymore a star. The public domain photograph is in the archive of the Museum of the City of New York.

By John P. Walsh

Stage and screen actress Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) was the sister to older brother Lionel (1878-1954) and younger brother John (1882-1942) Barrymore. Though Ethel Barrymore was absolutely devoted to the stage from her youth, she began to appear in major silent films starting in 1914. Much later, in the 1940’s, the veteran stage actress was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She won the golden statuette in 1944 for her role as Ma Mott in the film None but the Lonely Heart starring Cary Grant who used a Cockney accent for his part.

By the time Barrymore appeared in her first feature motion picture, The Nightingale, in 1914, she was a celebrated stage actress on both sides of the Atlantic. Coming from the famous American acting family of Drews and Barrymores, the just 16-year-old Ethel Barrymore made her Broadway stage debut in 1895 alongside her uncle, John Drew, Jr. (1853-1927).

Ethel Barrymore at 17 years old in 1896. In 1895, a 16-year-old Barrymore made her Broadway stage debut alongside her uncle, Jack Drew, Jr., a famous and well-liked actor.

John Drew, Jr. in 1896. A versatile actor, Drew was so highly esteemed by his fellow actors that they elected him the lifetime president of New York City’s Players’ Club. The private social club for actors founded in the 1840’s at 16 Gramercy Park remains active today.

Before she was 20 years old, Ethel appeared several times on the London stage. Her first role was that of Miss Kittridge in William Gillette’s new play, Secret Service (1895). After that show closed, she was offered and played other roles on the London circuit. By the turn of the 20th century, a vibrant and talented Ethel Barrymore gained the especial attentions of several male admirers that included dukes, actors, writers and politicians.

As a young, vibrant actress touring the London circuit, she caught the attention of many high-society suitors, famously refusing a marriage proposal from a young Winston Churchill, who became a lifelong friend.

Winston Churchill in 1900. A public domain photograph in the Imperial War Museum.

One such admirer of Ethel Barrymore was eligible bachelor, enthusiastic theater hound, and nascent politician Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Though Ethel had many propositions and proposals in this period—she was even briefly engaged to a man until Ethel broke it off—any marriage proposal made to her by Churchill was refused. Churchill and Barrymore, however, became lifelong friends.

Poster for William Hooker Gillette’s 1895 play, Secret Service, on the London stage which featured young American actress Ethel Barrymore in its cast. The poster promotion depicts the play as a royal entertainment which attracts princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses. William Gillette (1853-1937) wrote melodramas and spy plays that were very popular with audiences. In 1899, Gillette first created the role of Sherlock Holmes for the stage, a role which he himself played for over 30 years.

Ethel Barrymore at 19 years old in 1898.

Young Ethel Barrymore. From a famous American acting family, she was was devoted to the stage at an early age.

At 20 years old Ethel Barrymore gained the attention of many male admirers, including dukes, actors, writers and politicians. Though briefly engaged around the turn of the century, Ethel broke it off. Ethel finally married in 1909. She met her husband, Russell Griswold Colt (1882–1960), at Sherry’s restaurant at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City while having lunch with her uncle, John Drew, Jr. The marriage produced three children, though it ended in divorce in 1923.

When Ethel returned to the United States, she began to appear in various stage productions. It was in 1901 when the 22-year-old actress was cast in the role of Mrs. Trentoni in Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines on Broadway that Ethel Barrymore became a star.

Ethel Barrymore dressed in one of the Edwardian costumes as Madame Trentoni in the 1901 Broadway play, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines.

The plot of Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines—in which her character Madame Trentoni falls in love with a man who initially bets he can win her affection—ran for 168 performances from February to July 1901 and cemented Ethel Barrymore’s celebrity status.

Act 1.

Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines introduces Robert Carrolton Jinks and his friends who form a club to boost the presidential campaign for General U.S. Grant in 1868. Calling themselves “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,” they think to try out their marching abilities by greeting the arrival of a steamer carrying Madame Trentoni, a famous opera singer. Though sight unseen, Jinks bets money that he can make Madame Trentoni fall in love with him. The boat is late and everyone leaves the dock except for a gaggle of reporters who wait to greet the opera singer. When Jinks returns, after he lays eyes on Madame Trentoni (played by Ethel Barrymore) he falls in love with her. After Captain Jinks sees she is having trouble at customs, he pulls out money which the customs official mistakes for a bribe and Jinks is promptly arrested.

When Jinks is released on bail he calls on Madame Trentoni who has stopped to visit her foster father. She is as much in love with him as he is with her and their courtship progresses rapidly. When Jinks tries to call off the bet he made with his friends, they refuse until he finally agrees to pay off the bet with an I.O.U.

Jinks’ friends are also smitten with Madame Trentoni but she is totally uninterested in them. This gets them angry and they decide to ruin it for Jinks. They tell Madame Trentoni’s foster father that jinks intends to marry Madame Trentoni solely for her money — and as proof pull out the signed I.O.U. that says “I.O.U. $1,000 for the bet regarding Madame Trentoni.” The foster father flies into a rage, tells Madame Trentoni about the I.O.U, and she decides to never see Jinks again.

ACT 2.

Jinks has no idea why Madame Trentoni is so angry at him. When he finally discovers what his friends have falsely told her, he tries to gain admittance to her apartment to tell her the truth. When she learns the real facts of the matter, Madame Trentoni throws her arms around her Captain Jinks.

In that intimate position, a detective suddenly bursts into the room to arrest Jinks. In all the tumult surrounding the loss of his love interest, Jinks forgot to appear in court for his bribery case. It appeared Jinks had skipped bail. Madame Trentoni tells the detective that she and her sweetheart have had a misunderstanding and only now are having the chance to make up. Her plea and the promise that Captain Jinks will appear in court tomorrow for his case is approved by the detective, who departs. Captain Jinks and Madame Trentoni embrace, and the curtain goes down on the couple living happily ever after.

Act 3.

The public domain photographs above are in the archive of the Museum of the City of New York.

Cultural Phenomenon: The play soon triggered an insatiable public demand for Ethel Barrymore’s style, photos, and postcards.

Color promotional poster for Captain Jinks and the Horse Marines starring Elizabeth Kennedy. After the Broadway show starring Ethel Barrymore closed in July 1901, a new production and cast appeared in 1902. The theatrical poster highlights New York’s Garrick Theatre run. (Library of Congress collection)

Ethel Barrymore as Madame Trentoni in 1901.

**Ethel Barrymore on the cover of The Theatre in August 1901 following the close of her successful Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines run which made 22-year-old Ethel Barrymore a star.**

Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines was produced in 1901 at the Garrick Theatre. The 910-seat theatre was built in 1890 by Francis Hatch Kimball (1845-1919) and located at 67 W. 35th Street in New York City.

The Garrick opened as Harrigan’s Theatre and became the Garrick in 1895. It was sold to the Schubert brothers in 1916 and leased to Otto Kahn who renamed it the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1917.

Management reverted to the Schuberts in 1925 when the theatre featured popular burlesque until the onset of the Great Depression. The building was demolished in 1932.

Screenshot, October 2019, site of GARRICK THEATRE (1890-1932), 67 W. 35th Street, New York City. The Garrick Theatre was where Ethel Barrymore starred as Madame Trentoni in Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. A smash hit, the Broadway production made Ethel Barrymore one of the 20th century’s major theatrical and film stars. In 2006 the site had a multi-level parking garage which was later replaced by a hotel devlopment. The brownstone building in the middle distance appears to have survived from the late 19th-century period.

Following her 1901 success, Ethel Barrymore became a cultural style icon. She went on to headline numerous top-rated Broadway plays throughout the early 1900s.

Both photographs above, Ethel Barrymore in 1901. As a new theatrical celebrity Barrymore’s image, style, and fashion were in demand by the public.

Ethel Barrymore in 1901.

Barrymore with a fur muf and feather hat in a hairstyle à la mode. The demand by the public for images of theatrical celebrities was insatiable.

In the 20^th century’s first decade, Ethel Barrymore became a theatrical celebrity. Her image was in demand in photographs and picture post cards of the time. Throughout the first third of the twentieth century, Barrymore continually appeared in popular stage productions. Following the success of Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Barrymore appeared in the next years in many top-rated popular Broadway productions.

A few highlights included in 1903 Barrymore appearing for 60 performances in the title role in Cousin Kate at the brand-new Hudson Theatre at 139–141 West 44th Street. In 1905 Barrymore played Norma Helmer in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House for 23 performances at The Lyceum Theatre at 149 West 45^th Street. Also in 1905 Barrymore appeared in Alice Sit-by-the-Fire at the Empire Theatre. In 1908 Barrymore played the title role in Lady Frederick for 96 performances, again at the Hudson Theatre. There were a dozen more productions Barrymore was involved in before 1910.

Another side of Ethel Barrymore, at the piano in 1903. Before she took to a career on the stage, Ethel Barrymore aspired to be a concert pianist as a youth.

Ethel Barrymore, 1904, by photographer Arnold Genthe. The actress was starring in several plays that year including in the title role of Kate Curtis in My Cousin Kate at the Empire Theatre. Barrymore would reprise the role briefly in 1907.

Ethel Barrymore in a photograph by William Morrison of Chicago in 1907. In the 1900’s Ethel Barrymore was a theatrical celebrity whose image displayed the latest fashion, make-up, and hairstyles that helped express the style of the times.

Ethel Barrymore in 1908. She was starring in the title role of Lady Frederick at the Hudson Theatre that year. The Broadway play ran for 96 performances.

**Ethel Barrymore made her silent film debut in 1914 with The Nightingale and balanced stage work with cinema, later winning an Oscar in 1944.**

With her film debut in 1914 in The Nightingale, a film written especially for her by playwright Augustus Thomas (1857-1934), Ethel Barrymore began in the new silent flickering medium of cinema in the footsteps of her brothers Lionel and John, who made their film debuts a couple of years earlier.

While Ethel made at least 14 films between 1914 and 1919 (some films are lost) she continued with her stage work and appeared in a dozen more Broadway productions throughout the 1910’s. When she decided to interrupt her film work in 1920 –and did not return to the movies until 1932 in the M-G-M film Rasputin and the Empress starring with her brothers (Ethel played Czarina Alexandra) – she appeared in a dozen more plays in the 1920’s, all in prominent Broadway theatres.

In 1922 she starred as Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for 23 performances at the Longacre Theatre at 220 West 48th Street as well as her celebrated role as Constance Middleton in Somerset Maugham’s new comedy play, The Constant Wife, in 1927. It ran for 296 performances at Maxime Elliot’s Theatre at 109 West 39th Street (it was demolished in 1960). The play had previewed in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Ohio Theatre in early November 1926 with Ethel Barrymore in the title role. It opened on Broadway at the end of November 1926 and ran until August 1927. After the Broadway show closed, Ethel Barrymore toured the production. Maugham dedicated his play to Ethel Barrymore and later said her performance was by far the best of any he had seen given for any of his plays.

Barrymore’s extensive stage work in this period also included, in 1928, appearing in the role of Sister Gracia in The Kingdom of God. The play was selected by Ethel Barrymore herself as the premier production in the Schubert Theatre chain’s newly-built 1,058-seat venue at 243 W. 47^th Street in New York City. The new Broadway venue was named the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Since its opening on December 20, 1928, the Ethel Barrymore Theatre has, without exception, presented legitimate Broadway productions continuously from that time to the present day.

Ethel Barrymore died on June 18, 1959, two months shy of her 80th birthday, at her home in Hollywood. She is buried in the Main Mausoleum in Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California. (see – https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/59/Ethel-Barrymore – retrieved June 18, 2024). The middle sister of Lionel and John Barrymore, Ethel is great aunt of Drew Barrymore. A screen legend and New York and London stage celebrity for more than 60 years Ethel Barrymore is a First Lady of the American Theatre.

Ultimate Honor: Ethel Barrymore had a permanent 1,058-seat Broadway theatre named after her in 1928.

The Ethel Barrymore Theatre on West 47th street in New York City opened on December 20, 1928. It has been in continuous operation as a legitimate theatre since its first production, The Kingdom of God, a play Barrymore selected and starred in. Photo Credit: “Barrymore Theatre” by ensign_beedrill is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Three famous actors, Philadelphia-born, in 1904. They were the third generation of the Royal Family of the American stage. From left: John (1882–1942), Ethel (1879–1959), and Lionel (1878–1954) BARRYMORE, performed on stage, screen, and radio. Their grandparents, the Drews, managed the Arch St. Theatre in Philadelphia.