Still and moving images, diaries, correspondence, and film and stage memorabilia trace the professional and private lives of the quintessential acting dynasty.
For more than 200 years, members of the Barrymore clan have shared their acting talents on the stage, in film, and on television. Branches of the impressively pedigreed Barrymore family tree — the Drews, the Costellos, the Lanes, the Colts and the Blyths — are all represented in the exhibition.
The majority of the items in the exhibition — many of them previously unseen — come from the Barrymore family’s private archives, which were the basis for the book The Barrymores: Hollywood’s First Family (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), by family archivist and biographer Carol Hoffman.
Supplementing the exhibition will be items culled from USC’s Performing Arts Archive, the Samuel Colt Archive, and other collections curated by the USC Libraries.
Just prior to his death in 1954, Academy Award-winning actor Lionel Barrymore visited USC and donated his collection of movie scripts to the university. Pictured from left to right are Barrymore; Maynard Smith from the university’s cinema department; Hazel Rea, acting university librarian; and Fred D. Fagg Jr., USC’s sixth president. Courtesy USC Archives.