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The Barrymore saga begins in the middle of the 19th century with the distinguished actors, Mr. and Mrs. John Drew. Their daughter Georgiana married Herbert Blythe, who adopted the name "Maurice Barrymore." The three children of that union were born as "Barrymores": Lionel (1878-1954), Ethel (1879-1959) and John (1882-1944). Each at an early age followed in the family acting tradition. Lionel was a Broadway star at age 22 and a movie actor eight years later in 1909, when he began appearing in many biographic films directed by D. W. Griffith. Ethel was a smash hit on Broadway in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1900) and began movie acting after 1914. Handsome, rambunctious John, who was a sensation on Broadway and in London with the record-breaking Hamlet (1922–25), had the brightest success of the three in silent film, where he was a top star for Warner Bros. in the 1920s, his appearance eliciting the memorable remark from Heywood Broun: "He now edges into pictures like a beautiful paper knife."

All three siblings made successful talking pictures. Lionel won an Oscar in A Free Soul (1931) and, after an accident that confined him to a wheelchair, played the crusty "Dr. Gillespie" in the Dr. Kildare series. Ethel won an Oscar for None but the Lonely Heart (1944) and appeared as a character actress in many subsequent films and television shows. John never got an Oscar but left a proud gallery of characters: the evil hypnotist in Svengali (1931), the disturbed father in Bill of Divorcement, the gentle teacher in Topaze (1933). Surprisingly, the three never appeared together on stage. Lionel and John costarred in the plays Peter Ibbetson (1917) and The Jest (1919) and on film in Night Flight (1933). John and Ethel occasionally appeared together on stage, most notably in Clair de Lune (1920). But the three were destined to appear together only once, on film, in MGM's Rasputin and the Empress (1932).

It was a brilliant, if unstable, family, full of eccentricities and temperament. For all their glitter, the Barrymores lived under a shadow. As Ethel put it, "I think that both my brothers and I were born under a dark star so that there was no such thing for us as enduring happiness." Later generations of Barrymores fared little better. John's children, John Jr. and Diana, pursued unsuccessful film careers. Drew Barrymore (1975- ), daughter of John Jr., was a successful child prodigy in films like Bogie (1980), E.T. (1982) and Irreconcilable Differences (1985) but struggled through her teenage years, obliging her mother to commit her to a drug rehabilitation clinic, from which she escaped and attempted to commit suicide before being recommitted. In her early 20s she returned to films as a leading lady, appearing in The Wedding Singer, Ever After, and Home Fries in 1998. She formed her own production company in the same year and acted and produced in a number of films, including Never Been Kissed (1999), Donnie Darko (2001), and A Confederacy of Dunces (2004).

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