Oscar Profile #362: Richard Barthelmess

Born May 9, 1895 in New York New York, Richard Barthelmess was the son of stage actress Caroline Harris (1866-1937) and her husband, Alfred Barthelmess who died when Richard was just a year old. He had walk-ons in his mother’s plays from an early age. Educated at Hudson River Military Academy and Trinity College, he began acting in college and other venues. By 1919 he had five years of stock experience. Encouraged by stage and film star Nazimova, a friend of his mother’s, he made his screen debut as an extra in one of her films.

Barthelmess’s rise to screen stardom was meteoric. In 1919, he became a major star opposite Lillian Gish in D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, followed a year later by Griffith’s equally popular Way Down East also opposite Gish. Also in 1920, Barthelmess married first wife, actress Mary Hay with whom they had a daughter, future actress Mary Barthelmess.

Now a major star, Barthelmess formed Inspiration Pictures in partnership with Charles Duell and director Henry King. Their 1921 film, Tol’able David was a huge success, making Barthelmess an instant heartthrob. Among his many other popular silent films was the first screen version of The Enchanted Cottage in 1924.

Barthelmess was divorced from Mary Hay in 1927, the year he married second wife, Jessica Stewart Sargent, with whom he would remain married until his death.

One of the 38 founding members of AMPAS, Barthelmess was himself nominated for Best Actor for two roles at the first Academy Awards for 1927/28 for 1927’s The Patent Leather Kid and 1928’s The Noose. Ironically, he was the only one of the three nominees in his category who didn’t win. Emil Jannings won Best Actor for The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Charlie Chaplin, who was nominated for The Circus in three categories was given a special award and his three nominations withdrawn.

Barthelmess won praise for later performances in 1929’s Weary River, 1930’s Son of the Gods and The Dawn Patrol, 1931’s The Last Flight and Alias the Doctor, 1932’s The Cabin in the Cotton, 1933’s Central Airport and Heroes for Sale, 1934’s Massacre and Midnight Alibi. On Broadway in 1936’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, he created the role later played on screen by John Garfield in 1946 and Jack Nicholson in 1981.

The actor’s last screen role of note was in 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings. His last role was in 1942’s The Mayor of 44th Street, after which he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. He never returned to acting, preferring to live off his investments until his death of throat cancer on August 17, 1963 at the age of 68.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919), directed by D.W. Griffith

The film that made Barthelmess a major star was his 25th. Taken from a novel with the title The Chink and the Child, the film’s full title is Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl, neither of which be tolerated today. Barthelmess’s character isn’t even given a name. He’s referred to as the Yellow Man while Lillian Gish’s white girl has a name, Lucy. Despite all that, “American cinema’s first tragedy” is an unforgettable masterpiece that showcases the talents of both Barthelmess and Gish with Donald Crisp in a standout role as Gish’s ignorant bully of a father.

THE PATENT LEATHER KID (1927), directed by Alfred Santell

Having become one of the biggest stars of the 1920s, Barthelmess was one of the 38 founding members of AMPAS and one of its first nominees, having been nominated for Best Actor for both 1927’s The Patent Leather Kid and 1928’s The Noose which exists only in an archive print at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The rare, but better known The Patent Leather Kid, which was a tour-de-force for Barthelmess as a cocky prizefighter turned war hero during the First World War, shows up occasionally on TMC. Plucky Molly O’Day co-stars in her first film.

THE DAWN PATROL (1930), directed by Howard Hawks

One of the great war/anti-war films of the early 1930s, The Dawn Patrol won an Oscar for John Monk Saunders’ original story. The film, which was released late in the cycle that also included All Quiet on the Western Front, Journey’s End and Hell’s Angels, failed to score any other Oscar nods, but should have, especially for the performances of Barthelmess as the squadron commander and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as his best friend. Neil Hamilton plays his superior officer. The 1938 remake with Errol Flynn, David Niven and Basil Rathbone was even more successful.

HEROES FOR SALE (1933), directed by William A. Wellman

This pre-code masterwork was Wellman’s last for Warner Bros. as well as Barthelmess’s last great star performance as a hero in the Great War who wins a medal for another soldier but not himself, then becomes addicted to morphine, endures an unjust prison turn and suffers through the early days of the Great Depression. The film ends with a hopeful note on the election of Franklin Roosevelt. Barthelmess gets strong support from Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Gordon Westcott, Charley Grapewin, Berton Churchill, Grant Mitchell, Robert Barrat and the tragic James Murray in one of his last credited roles as a blind soldier.

ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939), directed by Howard Hawks

Third billed Barthelmess gives another outstanding performance as a pilot with a bad reputation who must redeem himself in this Hawks classic about an air freight company in a remote South American outpost. It’s quite an achievement considering that he is up against a charismatic cast that includes Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Thomas Mitchell at their best and Rita Hayworth in a star-making turn as his wife, who also happens to be Grant’s former girlfriend. This was Barthelmess’s 77th film. He would make only three more over the course of the next three years, all of which would find the once enigmatic star in supporting roles.