October 8, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode, I discuss with author Jennifer Ann Redmond about her book "Too Fast, Too Short: The Life of Diana Barrymore". American actress and socialite Diana Barrymore (1921–1960) was a figure often overshadowed by her famous lineage and tragic narrative. In Too Fast, Too Short: The Life of Diana Barrymore, author Jennifer Ann Redmond illuminates Barrymore’s complex world, revealing a woman caught between the glittering facade of Hollywood and the dark shadows of her personal struggles.
Doug Hess is the Producer and host!
Forgotten Hollywood is on Facebook and the books are on Amazon.
Doug Hess is the Producer and host!
Forgotten Hollywood is on Facebook and the books are on Amazon.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Let's go. Hello everyone, and welcome and Forgotten Hollywood, your
podcast and memories of Yesteryear. My name is doug Hess
and if you're tuning in Forgotten Hollywood for the first time,
what I do on this podcast is take you on
a journey back in time and share with you pieces
of Hollywood that you may or may not know about.
(00:23):
And in this episode, we have very special guest with
us today, Jennifer Ann Redmond, and she is here to
talk about her book, Too Fast, Too Short, The Life
of Diana Barrymore. Jennifer, Welcome and Forgotten Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you so much, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, well, thank you and thank you for coming on.
It's been in a few minutes with us to talk
about your book, Too Fast, Too Short. One thing that
we always like to do is kind of ask the
author to start us off by giving us an overview
of what the book's about in their own words.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, well, I think most of your listeners are familiar
with the famous Barrymore family, I mean, John Ethel Lionel.
There's not too much out there about Diana. You hear
about her brother, John Barrymore Junior, but Diana kind of
got lost in the shuffle, and at one point she
was considered like the great hope of the Barrymore clan.
That here she was. She was John's first child, and
(01:21):
she was born to both him and to a poet
who was very famous society lady, and they just had
wonderful hopes for her and they were like, you know,
from the time she was a child, Oh, she's going
to show such promise and she's going to have such talent.
And as you'll see if you read the book, it
didn't quite go was planned. And I think unfortunately with Diana,
(01:42):
a lot of she's been relegated a lot to like
the dumpster. They kind of just think of her as
the cautionary tale, the child that, you know, failure to
launch sort of thing, and there's so much more to
her than that, and I think it was about time
that somebody really delved into her story.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
In Jennifer, is that why you kind of wrote the book,
is that you just kind of felt like she was
being overlooked, overshadowed, and you got the attention.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Absolutely. I mean, it's not a spoiler to say that
she was an alcoholic. Unfortunately, it affected most of the family,
as your listeners will well know. But she's, like I said,
she's been kind of written off over the years as Yeah,
she was the talentless drunk that didn't make it. She
was the one Mary Moore that didn't go anywhere. And
if you read you'll find out she actually was liked
(02:30):
by critics and they thought she did excellent work. Unfortunately,
her behavior off screen kind of damaged her chances on screen,
and so that's what people remember. But yeah, she deserved
an objective look. She incredibly talented woman.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, and as you said earlier in the podcast, is
there's a lot of Baramois out there, and it was
easy to kind of get overshadowed by her relatives.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh absolutely. And what happened early on with Diana was
because she was kind of the first child. And you
know about the Barrymore was John Barrymore was always kind
of like the lovable little brother like everyone, especially towards
the end of his life when you started getting a
little sketchy. People kind of forgave him for that. They
thought of him as like the dotty older uncle, and
(03:20):
so this was his child and so they figured, okay,
well she's going to take up the reins and here's
her first project and she's going to be amazing out
of the gate, and you know, you can't put that
kind of pressure on someone. And what happened was, you know, again,
as you will see, she did well. She I don't
think there would have been anything that she could have
done that would have pleased everybody because they put so
(03:42):
much pressure on her. There was so they took her
potential and just launched it into the stratosphere. And when
people got disappointed, they were kind of like, h guess
we were wrong, and that's it. And then they moved
on to her brother and they started looking into other things.
But yeah, she really she you know, there's a quote
in the book where she says, my life would have
been much different if I had been named Brown, and
(04:05):
I think that's very true. I don't think we'd be
sitting here talking about her as they called her has
been right well.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And you see this not only in film, but you
also see this in sports and business and everything else.
Is a lot of times you have a family member,
whether it's a father, mother, uncle, whoever it may be,
and you're trying to live up to an expectation that
is just unreal, you know, absolutely, and so a lot
(04:33):
of times we set these individuals up to fail ourselves
because we have such high expectations for a lot of
these actress and actresses, and a lot of it is
just too high to overcome if you will and achieve
what we think should be out there and achievable.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's true, and quite honestly, no one put more pressure
on Diana than Diana did. Her father. Yea, her father
was almost like a mythical figure to her because for
reasons that you'll find out when you read, she was
kind of kept out of his life and so he,
like I said, he became a mythical figure, and so
she thought of him as like he's the greatest actor
in the entire world, and I'm going to be just
(05:13):
like him. And when she couldn't do that, she didn't.
You know, she was talented, but she had to work
a little harder. Maybe maybe she didn't have as much
inherent talent per se, right, But again she wound up.
There was a lot of self sabotage going on with
her that I think people were all too willing to
kind of jump on the bandwagon with. And it's a shame,
but yeah, she was the hardest of all on herself.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, you know, and you've already kind of alluded to
this as well. There was there was others. She had
some brothers and they struggled as well, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
She had one brother, well half brother really it's John's
child with actress Dolores Costello. That was John Barrymore Junior,
John Drew Barrymore as he was known later in life,
and he had his own issues with substance abuse, with
mental health issues and quite honestly, the pressures of the family.
I don't think anyone in the Barrymore family, including all
(06:07):
the way up to Drew, kind of got away from
that hanging over their head. It was difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, absolutely, and almost you could say a curse to that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
There's a section, Yeah, you'll see there's a section where
almost all of them talk about the Barrymore curse, like
as it's happening. Someone was definitely something that they said
a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, maybe talk a little bit about her early years
as she was growing up, and obviously she was had
a pathway into films if you will, because of her
famous father. But was that something that she wanted to
from an early childhood or was that something that she
kind of grew into later in life.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Diana was blessed with a vivid imagination and she loved
she was acting when she wasn't acting, you know what
I mean. This was something that I don't think she
could have ever gone to any other path in life.
The main block was her mother. Her mother, Michael Strange,
was a poet, and like I said before, she was
well known in society. She was also well known as
(07:15):
in New York, especially as an eccentric. And she was
convinced that there's no way in hell she was going
to let her daughter become an actor, because she lived
through it, and you know, she was very mellow dramatic.
She lived through it, and she saw what happened with Jack,
and she's not going to let this happen to her daughter.
And so of course that only made Diana want to
do it more. And they had several scuffles about it
(07:37):
over the years, and eventually Diana got her way and
wound up going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
But yeah, it was a struggle from the time she
was a little girl. Her mother liked to call it,
what do you call I'm blanking out on the word now.
She was a compulsive liar, That's what she used to
call her. But it wasn't lying. It was where she
(07:58):
would take something and she would with that imagination, she
would spin it into this whole event, and it was
her way of She liked to kind of step into
other people's shoes and pretend to be other people. She
was left on her own a lot in her childhood
and mother very very focused on her art, and so
she thought nothing of like allowing her and her older
(08:19):
brother Leonard he did not become an actor, and her
younger brother Robin, who is quite the characters you'll see
when you read the book. He's delightful. But she thought
nothing of basically just leaving them to their own devices
while she worked on her poems, because those were the
most important thing.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, well, wow, you know the cover of your book.
I mean, Diana is a beautiful woman. Plus she had
the talent there, and I'm sure that did not hurt
her in her pursuit of a film career. As either.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
You say she's beautiful, I think she's beautiful. Obviously, beauty
is subjective, absolutely, but she from the time she was younger,
she was constantly cut down for her looks, she was
not considered pretty. She was not that. There's a section
in the book where you learn about what Walter Wanger
said about her on the set of her first film
(09:15):
and the way she was treated on the set of
her first film, And yeah, they did. It's funny. She
actually she was good friends with Cobina Wright Junior, and
she inscribed her copy of her memoirs to Cobina from
the Ugly One, because that's how they referred to her
among all the society girls and everything. She was not
considered the beauty that was Brenda Frasier.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, I have to disagree. Beauty is subjective in terms
of that, But I thought it was a very beautiful
picture of her on the cover of your book.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yes, that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, and I would just have to respectfully disagree with
some of the others.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Good, Yes, I do too.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah. So when she got into the film, what was
she like as an actress? I mean, did did a
lot of the directors and her co actors and actresses
think she had the talent? Or do they think she
was kind of getting in on a family name? What
was kind of dynamics?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
They absolutely thought she was getting in on the family name.
And I think that was part of the problem, where
when she would show what talent she had, it was
almost like you're damned if you do, when you're damned
if you don't. You know, she did not get along
well with fellow actors. She said some interesting things to
Robert Stack on the set of their first film. She
(10:37):
came to blows with Robert Cummings on another film. She
just she did not get along well with anybody. That's
the best way to say it. And what happened was
they wound up calling her affected and they wound up
I mean, I don't know if I can swear. Can
I swear on this podcast? Absolutely, They basically called her
the bitch, and she did just because what happened and
(11:00):
was then they didn't like her, so she put up
a wall and she basically, you know, self sabotage. She
became the self fulfilling prophecy you're gonna call me a bit,
You'll be a bitch then, right to summarize, No, she
did not get along well with the people she worked with.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, which is you know you said she she had
kind of that anger, which I would probably argue that
fit right into the rest of the family. With the
very right. You know, I don't know how if I
would say they had like a chip on her shoulder
or what, but it wasn't she got honestly, as my
(11:39):
grandmother would say.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I mean you can call it a chip, you
can call it a boulder. They all were definitely affected
by the same albatross around their neck, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Absolutely. Now did let me ask you, kind of twofold,
did you have a favorite home that she was in
or And then I'll say, did she have one that
she thought she was really good in that maybe others
didn't care for.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
My favorite film of her is It probably goes along
with Although I can't recall if she ever named a
favorite project of hers, one of the ones that she
worked the hardest on was called Between Us Girls, and
this was meant to be a showcase for her ability.
They actually panted out the part it was. It was
based on a French film where a very quick synopsis essentially,
(12:32):
Diana comes home. Diana's a grown woman, but she's in
her twenties and her mom is now dating someone, and
she's told that someone that she has a child, but
in an effort to conceal her age, mom made it
sound like her daughter was twelve, So her daughter decides, Okay,
I'm going to pretend to be a twelve year old
to help mommy. So that's the general. That's the gist.
(12:54):
But they also added other parts, like they made her
a stage actress, and they allowed her to play Queen Victoria.
They let her play Say Thompson from Rain. All of
these were thrown in to show what Diana could do,
and she worked very hard. And although the film is uneven,
they are a part of it where you really can
see her brilliance shine through. I think she would have
been marvelous. I do say this in the book. I
(13:15):
could see her if she had continued on with her
career doing almost I love Lucy type stuff because she
was that good with light comedy, she was that good
with slapstick. A definitely, definitely talented actress, and you can
see it. I mean there are times when she gets
a little historyonic and she's a bit much, but she
had what it takes. She definitely did, and I love
(13:36):
that film. It's something that I hope that someday it
can get a restoration and be released because people deserve
to meet her through that.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Absolutely. Now, what did her family think about her acting
with her father and the rest of her relatives.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Mom, as you know, was not thrilled with it, but
eventually she came to terms with it. Jack, her father,
was delighted. He did. The sad part about their life
is they didn't really get close until right before his death.
But in that short time that they had together, he
took her under his wing and he enjoyed working with her.
They would run lines together, they would read scripts. They
(14:14):
told he he just was thrilled that she was carrying
on the family name and used to compare her to
Ethel all the time, and so he thought it was phenomenal.
As for Lionel and Ethel, she didn't really have a
relationship with them. So I don't know what they thought.
I couldn't. I couldn't hazard a guess. They seemed to
tolerate her for the most part. Sure, Yeah, But like
(14:36):
I said, the one that was really the most thrilled
was her father. And it did you know, in those
last year of his life, those last months of his life,
you know, kind of frazzled as they were, it brought
him a lot of joy.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah. Interesting, So the others kind of tolerated for lack
of a better.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Word, Yeah, there's no I mean, as you'll see in
the book, she had a couple of encounters her aunt Ethel,
and she had like one or two encounters with Lionel,
and you know, as you can tell from the stories,
they just were not they were kind of lackluster and generic. Yeah,
so you know, no one was you know, and said
like welcome to the family business kind of thing, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Jared, anything surprised you during the writing and the research
of this book.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Probably, And I mean I'm not saying that I didn't
think she was intelligent, but you know, while reading her correspondence,
I got to read a lot of her letters to
her friends, and particularly towards the end of her life,
and she was involved with Tennessee Williams and his family.
I was surprised at how emotionally intelligent she was. Also,
(15:44):
she just came across that she was a woman that
had so much you know, they like to say, yeah,
you know, she needed love. She didn't get enough love,
that's true, but she also had so much love to
give that I don't think she ever found the proper
outlet for I mean, she was very close with her
brother Robin and again in the book you find out
what happens with him. But yeah, I was surprised at
(16:07):
really what a kind, gentle, compassionate, loving person she was,
especially when you know, the research I had previously done
was like, well, we made a movie with the bitch,
and I'm like, okay, right, No, she definitely did not
deserve that name because she was just she was a
good person that you kind of had to scratch through
(16:28):
this shell that she built around herself to get to well.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And like I said, she had the very born name
and I'm not sure any of them were actually easy
to get along with so to work. So again, she
got it honestly in terms of that as well. And
I know we're getting close here on time at Jennifer.
But obviously, you know, Diana didn't live very long. I
(16:54):
think she was what forty one if my memory, she.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Was thirty eight when she died.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Okay, Yeah, so she didn't have a big career in
terms of longevity like some of the others. But she
had kind of a tragic in there.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
She you know, That's the other thing I think when
people do remember her, aside from being an alcoholic, they
say the tragic end. She yeah, I mean, she did
die young, she did die of an overdose. I do
not believe it was suicide because right at the end
of her life, she was actually getting the critical acclaim
that she had wanted, and she was doing Tennessee Williams
(17:36):
work almost exclusively at that point, and people were going
to see her and the critics were saying how brilliant
she was, and she was excited. She was looking forward
to this new chapter of her life. She was finally
becoming the actress that she wanted to become. And so,
you know, I think what happened was unfortunate, but I
don't want to relegate her to, like, you know, yet
(17:56):
another person who took their life because it was such
a disaster. I really don't see it that way. That's
one of the reasons I wrote this book too. I
wanted people to realize that, you know, she wasn't just
kind of dumped somewhere. She was coming back at the end.
There she was really getting the accolades that she deserved
and always craved.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
But I guess, you know, it's tragic that her life
came to an end. I guess we'd say, based on
as you just described that things seem to be looking up,
and you know, who knows what the future would have
fold for she.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Had so much more to give, for certain, so much more.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, which is you know, I guess we'll never know,
but it is a shame that she is kind of forgotten.
And that's why we do this podcast is to reconnect
our listeners with some of the forgotten stars that are
out there, and she's definitely one of them.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes. And another thing about her that I was delighted
by inquitibly funny, super funny. She liked to call herself
the poor the poor man's Tallulah bankhead. She just if
you remember her father and his bon mots all the time,
and how witty he was, she was just like hysterical,
(19:16):
just a really warm, funny, intelligent, interesting woman that really
had so much more to share.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
With the world, and sounds like she was just getting
ready to go into her prime. I think she was, yeah,
in terms of interesting. Well, Jennifer, thank you for coming on.
We also wanted to think the University Press of Mississippi.
They had the book, but you can also purchase it
(19:43):
on Amazon or wherever you purchase your books, in.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
The bookstores, wherever, fine books are sold.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Absolutely go out and get a copy. Like Jennifer has
been teasing throughout this whole episode, and I totally agree
with her. We just hit the tip of the iceberg.
There's a lot more here, and you know, as we said,
this is kind of a forgotten Barrymore, a forgotten star,
and she too deserves her credit and her her chance
(20:10):
at fame. And so please go out and get a
copy of Jennifer's book, Too Fast, Too Short, The Life
of Diane Diana Barrymore. Jennifer, thank you so much for
coming on and spending some time with us today.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Thank you so much, Doug. I really enjoyed myself. I
appreciate it well.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Thank you, and thank you for listening to this episode
of Forgotten Hollywood. You just search for dougst or Forgotten Hollywood.
You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram at hes
Doug fourteen. If you listen to this podcast on iTunes
or another podcast service, please subscribe or rate and review
this episode and tune in next time for the latest
episode of Forgotten Hollywood. Thank you for listening and we
will see you then.
Let's go. Hello everyone, and welcome and Forgotten Hollywood, your
podcast and memories of Yesteryear. My name is doug Hess
and if you're tuning in Forgotten Hollywood for the first time,
what I do on this podcast is take you on
a journey back in time and share with you pieces
of Hollywood that you may or may not know about.
(00:23):
And in this episode, we have very special guest with
us today, Jennifer Ann Redmond, and she is here to
talk about her book, Too Fast, Too Short, The Life
of Diana Barrymore. Jennifer, Welcome and Forgotten Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you so much, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, well, thank you and thank you for coming on.
It's been in a few minutes with us to talk
about your book, Too Fast, Too Short. One thing that
we always like to do is kind of ask the
author to start us off by giving us an overview
of what the book's about in their own words.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, well, I think most of your listeners are familiar
with the famous Barrymore family, I mean, John Ethel Lionel.
There's not too much out there about Diana. You hear
about her brother, John Barrymore Junior, but Diana kind of
got lost in the shuffle, and at one point she
was considered like the great hope of the Barrymore clan.
That here she was. She was John's first child, and
(01:21):
she was born to both him and to a poet
who was very famous society lady, and they just had
wonderful hopes for her and they were like, you know,
from the time she was a child, Oh, she's going
to show such promise and she's going to have such talent.
And as you'll see if you read the book, it
didn't quite go was planned. And I think unfortunately with Diana,
(01:42):
a lot of she's been relegated a lot to like
the dumpster. They kind of just think of her as
the cautionary tale, the child that, you know, failure to
launch sort of thing, and there's so much more to
her than that, and I think it was about time
that somebody really delved into her story.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
In Jennifer, is that why you kind of wrote the book,
is that you just kind of felt like she was
being overlooked, overshadowed, and you got the attention.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Absolutely. I mean, it's not a spoiler to say that
she was an alcoholic. Unfortunately, it affected most of the family,
as your listeners will well know. But she's, like I said,
she's been kind of written off over the years as Yeah,
she was the talentless drunk that didn't make it. She
was the one Mary Moore that didn't go anywhere. And
if you read you'll find out she actually was liked
(02:30):
by critics and they thought she did excellent work. Unfortunately,
her behavior off screen kind of damaged her chances on screen,
and so that's what people remember. But yeah, she deserved
an objective look. She incredibly talented woman.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, and as you said earlier in the podcast, is
there's a lot of Baramois out there, and it was
easy to kind of get overshadowed by her relatives.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh absolutely. And what happened early on with Diana was
because she was kind of the first child. And you
know about the Barrymore was John Barrymore was always kind
of like the lovable little brother like everyone, especially towards
the end of his life when you started getting a
little sketchy. People kind of forgave him for that. They
thought of him as like the dotty older uncle, and
(03:20):
so this was his child and so they figured, okay,
well she's going to take up the reins and here's
her first project and she's going to be amazing out
of the gate, and you know, you can't put that
kind of pressure on someone. And what happened was, you know, again,
as you will see, she did well. She I don't
think there would have been anything that she could have
done that would have pleased everybody because they put so
(03:42):
much pressure on her. There was so they took her
potential and just launched it into the stratosphere. And when
people got disappointed, they were kind of like, h guess
we were wrong, and that's it. And then they moved
on to her brother and they started looking into other things.
But yeah, she really she you know, there's a quote
in the book where she says, my life would have
been much different if I had been named Brown, and
(04:05):
I think that's very true. I don't think we'd be
sitting here talking about her as they called her has
been right well.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And you see this not only in film, but you
also see this in sports and business and everything else.
Is a lot of times you have a family member,
whether it's a father, mother, uncle, whoever it may be,
and you're trying to live up to an expectation that
is just unreal, you know, absolutely, and so a lot
(04:33):
of times we set these individuals up to fail ourselves
because we have such high expectations for a lot of
these actress and actresses, and a lot of it is
just too high to overcome if you will and achieve
what we think should be out there and achievable.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's true, and quite honestly, no one put more pressure
on Diana than Diana did. Her father. Yea, her father
was almost like a mythical figure to her because for
reasons that you'll find out when you read, she was
kind of kept out of his life and so he,
like I said, he became a mythical figure, and so
she thought of him as like he's the greatest actor
in the entire world, and I'm going to be just
(05:13):
like him. And when she couldn't do that, she didn't.
You know, she was talented, but she had to work
a little harder. Maybe maybe she didn't have as much
inherent talent per se, right, But again she wound up.
There was a lot of self sabotage going on with
her that I think people were all too willing to
kind of jump on the bandwagon with. And it's a shame,
but yeah, she was the hardest of all on herself.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, you know, and you've already kind of alluded to
this as well. There was there was others. She had
some brothers and they struggled as well, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
She had one brother, well half brother really it's John's
child with actress Dolores Costello. That was John Barrymore Junior,
John Drew Barrymore as he was known later in life,
and he had his own issues with substance abuse, with
mental health issues and quite honestly, the pressures of the family.
I don't think anyone in the Barrymore family, including all
(06:07):
the way up to Drew, kind of got away from
that hanging over their head. It was difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, absolutely, and almost you could say a curse to that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
There's a section, Yeah, you'll see there's a section where
almost all of them talk about the Barrymore curse, like
as it's happening. Someone was definitely something that they said
a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, maybe talk a little bit about her early years
as she was growing up, and obviously she was had
a pathway into films if you will, because of her
famous father. But was that something that she wanted to
from an early childhood or was that something that she
kind of grew into later in life.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Diana was blessed with a vivid imagination and she loved
she was acting when she wasn't acting, you know what
I mean. This was something that I don't think she
could have ever gone to any other path in life.
The main block was her mother. Her mother, Michael Strange,
was a poet, and like I said before, she was
well known in society. She was also well known as
(07:15):
in New York, especially as an eccentric. And she was
convinced that there's no way in hell she was going
to let her daughter become an actor, because she lived
through it, and you know, she was very mellow dramatic.
She lived through it, and she saw what happened with Jack,
and she's not going to let this happen to her daughter.
And so of course that only made Diana want to
do it more. And they had several scuffles about it
(07:37):
over the years, and eventually Diana got her way and
wound up going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
But yeah, it was a struggle from the time she
was a little girl. Her mother liked to call it,
what do you call I'm blanking out on the word now.
She was a compulsive liar, That's what she used to
call her. But it wasn't lying. It was where she
(07:58):
would take something and she would with that imagination, she
would spin it into this whole event, and it was
her way of She liked to kind of step into
other people's shoes and pretend to be other people. She
was left on her own a lot in her childhood
and mother very very focused on her art, and so
she thought nothing of like allowing her and her older
(08:19):
brother Leonard he did not become an actor, and her
younger brother Robin, who is quite the characters you'll see
when you read the book. He's delightful. But she thought
nothing of basically just leaving them to their own devices
while she worked on her poems, because those were the
most important thing.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, well, wow, you know the cover of your book.
I mean, Diana is a beautiful woman. Plus she had
the talent there, and I'm sure that did not hurt
her in her pursuit of a film career. As either.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
You say she's beautiful, I think she's beautiful. Obviously, beauty
is subjective, absolutely, but she from the time she was younger,
she was constantly cut down for her looks, she was
not considered pretty. She was not that. There's a section
in the book where you learn about what Walter Wanger
said about her on the set of her first film
(09:15):
and the way she was treated on the set of
her first film, And yeah, they did. It's funny. She
actually she was good friends with Cobina Wright Junior, and
she inscribed her copy of her memoirs to Cobina from
the Ugly One, because that's how they referred to her
among all the society girls and everything. She was not
considered the beauty that was Brenda Frasier.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, I have to disagree. Beauty is subjective in terms
of that, But I thought it was a very beautiful
picture of her on the cover of your book.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yes, that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, and I would just have to respectfully disagree with
some of the others.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Good, Yes, I do too.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah. So when she got into the film, what was
she like as an actress? I mean, did did a
lot of the directors and her co actors and actresses
think she had the talent? Or do they think she
was kind of getting in on a family name? What
was kind of dynamics?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
They absolutely thought she was getting in on the family name.
And I think that was part of the problem, where
when she would show what talent she had, it was
almost like you're damned if you do, when you're damned
if you don't. You know, she did not get along
well with fellow actors. She said some interesting things to
Robert Stack on the set of their first film. She
(10:37):
came to blows with Robert Cummings on another film. She
just she did not get along well with anybody. That's
the best way to say it. And what happened was
they wound up calling her affected and they wound up
I mean, I don't know if I can swear. Can
I swear on this podcast? Absolutely, They basically called her
the bitch, and she did just because what happened and
(11:00):
was then they didn't like her, so she put up
a wall and she basically, you know, self sabotage. She
became the self fulfilling prophecy you're gonna call me a bit,
You'll be a bitch then, right to summarize, No, she
did not get along well with the people she worked with.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, which is you know you said she she had
kind of that anger, which I would probably argue that
fit right into the rest of the family. With the
very right. You know, I don't know how if I
would say they had like a chip on her shoulder
or what, but it wasn't she got honestly, as my
(11:39):
grandmother would say.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I mean you can call it a chip, you
can call it a boulder. They all were definitely affected
by the same albatross around their neck, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Absolutely. Now did let me ask you, kind of twofold,
did you have a favorite home that she was in
or And then I'll say, did she have one that
she thought she was really good in that maybe others
didn't care for.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
My favorite film of her is It probably goes along
with Although I can't recall if she ever named a
favorite project of hers, one of the ones that she
worked the hardest on was called Between Us Girls, and
this was meant to be a showcase for her ability.
They actually panted out the part it was. It was
based on a French film where a very quick synopsis essentially,
(12:32):
Diana comes home. Diana's a grown woman, but she's in
her twenties and her mom is now dating someone, and
she's told that someone that she has a child, but
in an effort to conceal her age, mom made it
sound like her daughter was twelve, So her daughter decides, Okay,
I'm going to pretend to be a twelve year old
to help mommy. So that's the general. That's the gist.
(12:54):
But they also added other parts, like they made her
a stage actress, and they allowed her to play Queen Victoria.
They let her play Say Thompson from Rain. All of
these were thrown in to show what Diana could do,
and she worked very hard. And although the film is uneven,
they are a part of it where you really can
see her brilliance shine through. I think she would have
been marvelous. I do say this in the book. I
(13:15):
could see her if she had continued on with her
career doing almost I love Lucy type stuff because she
was that good with light comedy, she was that good
with slapstick. A definitely, definitely talented actress, and you can
see it. I mean there are times when she gets
a little historyonic and she's a bit much, but she
had what it takes. She definitely did, and I love
(13:36):
that film. It's something that I hope that someday it
can get a restoration and be released because people deserve
to meet her through that.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Absolutely. Now, what did her family think about her acting
with her father and the rest of her relatives.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Mom, as you know, was not thrilled with it, but
eventually she came to terms with it. Jack, her father,
was delighted. He did. The sad part about their life
is they didn't really get close until right before his death.
But in that short time that they had together, he
took her under his wing and he enjoyed working with her.
They would run lines together, they would read scripts. They
(14:14):
told he he just was thrilled that she was carrying
on the family name and used to compare her to
Ethel all the time, and so he thought it was phenomenal.
As for Lionel and Ethel, she didn't really have a
relationship with them. So I don't know what they thought.
I couldn't. I couldn't hazard a guess. They seemed to
tolerate her for the most part. Sure, Yeah, But like
(14:36):
I said, the one that was really the most thrilled
was her father. And it did you know, in those
last year of his life, those last months of his life,
you know, kind of frazzled as they were, it brought
him a lot of joy.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah. Interesting, So the others kind of tolerated for lack
of a better.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Word, Yeah, there's no I mean, as you'll see in
the book, she had a couple of encounters her aunt Ethel,
and she had like one or two encounters with Lionel,
and you know, as you can tell from the stories,
they just were not they were kind of lackluster and generic. Yeah,
so you know, no one was you know, and said
like welcome to the family business kind of thing, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Jared, anything surprised you during the writing and the research
of this book.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Probably, And I mean I'm not saying that I didn't
think she was intelligent, but you know, while reading her correspondence,
I got to read a lot of her letters to
her friends, and particularly towards the end of her life,
and she was involved with Tennessee Williams and his family.
I was surprised at how emotionally intelligent she was. Also,
(15:44):
she just came across that she was a woman that
had so much you know, they like to say, yeah,
you know, she needed love. She didn't get enough love,
that's true, but she also had so much love to
give that I don't think she ever found the proper
outlet for I mean, she was very close with her
brother Robin and again in the book you find out
what happens with him. But yeah, I was surprised at
(16:07):
really what a kind, gentle, compassionate, loving person she was,
especially when you know, the research I had previously done
was like, well, we made a movie with the bitch,
and I'm like, okay, right, No, she definitely did not
deserve that name because she was just she was a
good person that you kind of had to scratch through
(16:28):
this shell that she built around herself to get to well.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And like I said, she had the very born name
and I'm not sure any of them were actually easy
to get along with so to work. So again, she
got it honestly in terms of that as well. And
I know we're getting close here on time at Jennifer.
But obviously, you know, Diana didn't live very long. I
(16:54):
think she was what forty one if my memory, she.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Was thirty eight when she died.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Okay, Yeah, so she didn't have a big career in
terms of longevity like some of the others. But she
had kind of a tragic in there.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
She you know, That's the other thing I think when
people do remember her, aside from being an alcoholic, they
say the tragic end. She yeah, I mean, she did
die young, she did die of an overdose. I do
not believe it was suicide because right at the end
of her life, she was actually getting the critical acclaim
that she had wanted, and she was doing Tennessee Williams
(17:36):
work almost exclusively at that point, and people were going
to see her and the critics were saying how brilliant
she was, and she was excited. She was looking forward
to this new chapter of her life. She was finally
becoming the actress that she wanted to become. And so,
you know, I think what happened was unfortunate, but I
don't want to relegate her to, like, you know, yet
(17:56):
another person who took their life because it was such
a disaster. I really don't see it that way. That's
one of the reasons I wrote this book too. I
wanted people to realize that, you know, she wasn't just
kind of dumped somewhere. She was coming back at the end.
There she was really getting the accolades that she deserved
and always craved.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
But I guess, you know, it's tragic that her life
came to an end. I guess we'd say, based on
as you just described that things seem to be looking up,
and you know, who knows what the future would have
fold for she.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Had so much more to give, for certain, so much more.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, which is you know, I guess we'll never know,
but it is a shame that she is kind of forgotten.
And that's why we do this podcast is to reconnect
our listeners with some of the forgotten stars that are
out there, and she's definitely one of them.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes. And another thing about her that I was delighted
by inquitibly funny, super funny. She liked to call herself
the poor the poor man's Tallulah bankhead. She just if
you remember her father and his bon mots all the time,
and how witty he was, she was just like hysterical,
(19:16):
just a really warm, funny, intelligent, interesting woman that really
had so much more to share.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
With the world, and sounds like she was just getting
ready to go into her prime. I think she was, yeah,
in terms of interesting. Well, Jennifer, thank you for coming on.
We also wanted to think the University Press of Mississippi.
They had the book, but you can also purchase it
(19:43):
on Amazon or wherever you purchase your books, in.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
The bookstores, wherever, fine books are sold.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Absolutely go out and get a copy. Like Jennifer has
been teasing throughout this whole episode, and I totally agree
with her. We just hit the tip of the iceberg.
There's a lot more here, and you know, as we said,
this is kind of a forgotten Barrymore, a forgotten star,
and she too deserves her credit and her her chance
(20:10):
at fame. And so please go out and get a
copy of Jennifer's book, Too Fast, Too Short, The Life
of Diane Diana Barrymore. Jennifer, thank you so much for
coming on and spending some time with us today.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Thank you so much, Doug. I really enjoyed myself. I
appreciate it well.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Thank you, and thank you for listening to this episode
of Forgotten Hollywood. You just search for dougst or Forgotten Hollywood.
You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram at hes
Doug fourteen. If you listen to this podcast on iTunes
or another podcast service, please subscribe or rate and review
this episode and tune in next time for the latest
episode of Forgotten Hollywood. Thank you for listening and we
will see you then.
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