"From Mrs. John Drew to Drew Barrymore, five generations of the Barrymores have fed Americans' insatiable appetite for extravagance and flair. Equally at home on stage and in the gossip column, they have entered the ranks of legend, tinged only faintly by reality. In Margot Peters' dissection of the famous family, the 'Great Profile' (Jack) is revealed as a presence without substance, his career destroyed by alcohol and abusiveness; Lionel as a crank, obsessed by right-wing political causes, addicted to alcohol and cocaine, yet a better actor than his more famous brother; Ethel as a woman of rather forbidding nature; and the younger generation haunted by the ghosts of the past. Yet something is missing in this collective biography—-the sense of the Barrymores as a family rather than as just another American dynasty." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 539-614) and index.