John Drew Barrymore: Full obit
Posted: Tuesday, November 30th, 2004 5:42 amLOS ANGELES — John Drew Barrymore, the sometimes troubled heir to an acting dynasty and absent father of movie star Drew Barrymore, died Monday. He was 72.
“He was a cool cat. Please smile when you think of him,” Drew Barrymore said in a statement issued by her publicist’s office.
No information was released about the cause of death or where in Los Angeles he died.
John D. Barrymore was part of an acting clan that included his father, the famed stage and early film actor John Barrymore, and his father’s siblings, Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Drew Barrymore was his daughter by his third wife, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore.
John D. Barrymore was born in Beverly Hills on June 4, 1932. His mother was actress Dolores Costello.
He started his career while a teenager, appearing professionally first as John Barrymore Jr. and then as John Drew Barrymore. He had movie roles in the 1950s in “The Sundowners,” “High Lonesome,” “Quebec,” “The Big Night,” “Thunderbirds” and “While the City Sleeps.”
But along the way there were problems with drugs, drunken driving and violence, domestic and otherwise. By the early 1960s he had left Hollywood for Italy to work in European movies. … Read full obituary
