Dolores Costello
And now for the goddess of the silent screen...
Dolores Costello was born on September 17, 1903, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to accomplished actors Maurice and Mae Costello. Coincidentally, her future husband, John Barrymore, also had an acting father of the same name. Dolores also had a younger sister, Helene, who was in show business. With the help of their father already in the acting industry, the sisters got their start at an early age, Dolores got a head start a little earlier than Helene since she was three years older. Her earliest role is credited as a little fairy in the 1909 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream when she was three years old. After her debut, roles followed in twelve more films at Vitagraph from 1911 to 1914.
Despite the mutual affection the family had for one another, Maurice would sometimes drink heavily and hit Mae. Dolores looked upon these incidents as her father's "angry temperaments." I tried to see if there was a strained relationship between Dolores and Helene, but I couldn't find anything. They probably had their little mismatches, but for some reason and I'm not sure why, I sense that Helene felt inferior compared to her sister. One because of her beauty, even though Helene was just as gorgeous, and because she had a luckier career and love life (Dolores married twice and Helene four times).
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| Dolores (L), Mother Mae (M), and Helene (R). |
For most of her childhood, Dolores attended private school. Once she had finished in her late teens, she moved to New York to look for work and got her first job at a modeling agency, where she posed for the famous James Montgomery Flagg who helped build her reputation. Within a year or two, Helene followed her along to New York and they danced as members of the chorus in George White's Scandals of 1924 — the off-brand Ziegfeld Follies. She and Helene did appear in the Ziegfeld Follies though around 1922-1924.
A year later, Dolores was signed to Warner Brothers where she met John Barrymore, who had just gotten out of a relationship with the then-teenaged Mary Astor. It is rumored that when John saw Dolores for the first time, his reaction was, "I have just seen the most beautiful woman in the world. I shall not eat or rest until I see her again." Despite his attraction to youthful, pretty girls, I believe she was the great love of his life as he was hers. Immediately after seeing her, he selected her to be cast in his new picture The Sea Beast (1926). John gave her the nickname "The goddess of the silent screen." After achieving screen success, she was chosen as one of the WAMPAS baby stars of 1926.
Dolores was not the reason for John's breakup with Mary, however. John had eventually given up on Mary due to the terms of her house arrest. He most likely still hadn't gotten over Mary when their relationship ended, but when once he had met Dolores, there was no going back. It was life or death.
In The Sea Beast, you can catch Dolores fainting in John's arms during their lengthy romantic scene. This particular scene captured a stimulating image of dramatic expression that the directors liked so much they kept it in the movie. There is also a bts video of them while they were filming The Sea Beast, in which they were shooting one of their love scenes, they could not stop caressing that the director (literally) had to pull them apart after yelling cut about 3 or 5 times. I’ll try and see if I can link it, it’s super cute!
They made another film the following year called When A Man Loves (1927) and boy, was their chemistry skyrocketing. Following a courtship, they married in 1928, but Dolores' parents did not approve of their daughter marring him and it eventually led to their separation. Their daughter, Dolores Ethel Mae "DeeDee" Barrymore, was born in 1930 and a son named John Drew Barrymore followed in 1932. A couple decades later, John Drew would become the father of modern day actress Drew Barrymore.
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| Dolores and John on the set of The Sea Beast (1926) |
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| A Barrymore family portrait |
Following the birth of her two children, Dolores retired from the screen for a little while to focus on her home life, but made a comeback a few years later in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936). She appeared in some extravagant films throughout her career like Noah's Ark (1928), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), When A Man Loves (1928), and Old San Francisco (1927).
When the new medium came, Dolores found it difficult to transition from silents to talkies because she spoke with a lisp. Albeit after two years of voice coaching, she improved enough to feel comfortable to make the transition. Unsurprisingly though, she did not make very many talkies, and most of her early sound pictures from 1929 are lost. Her last film before retiring from the screen for good was This Is The Army (1943). A year prior to that, she played Isabel in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). She would not appear on the screen until almost 40 years later for a few interviews in the Hollywood (1980) documentary. In one of the interviews she vocalizes about her experiences filming Noah's Ark. According to her testimony, it was so violent that six extras had drowned during filming and she, herself, contracted pneumonia after hours of wading in cold water. Not only that but in later years, the harsh makeup she wore in her earlier films ravaged her facial complexion, causing the skin on her cheeks to deteriorate. Makeup artists found her condition impossible to conceal so she was prompted to retire. If you look at some of the pictures of her when she got older it is noticeable that her facial skin aged a little rough, otherwise she remained a beauty.
After enduring her husband's alcoholism, Helene and her husband were able to finally convince her to leave him. She filed for divorce in 1934, citing mental cruelty, habitual intemperance, and desertion. The divorce was finalized on May 25, 1935. Dolores was now a single mom taking care of her kids. The last time she would ever hear from John would be in 1942 when John visited her on the set of The Magnificent Ambersons to say he was sorry. He died shortly after from pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver. 'Sorry' does sound a bit vague, but it is uncertain what he specifically apologized for. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
"The most preposterously lovely creature in the world, a charming child, slender and shy and golden-haired. Never saw such radiance. My God! I knew that she was the one I had been waiting for. Waiting all my life. Just for her." -- John Barrymore
Lamentably, in the 1970s a flash flood affected her house and destroyed a ton of her property and memorabilia. On March 1, 1979, Dolores passed away from emphysema, at the age of 73, after being ill for some time. She was interred to rest at Calvary Cemetry in Los Angeles.
Now about Drew, it's very unlikely Drew ever met her grandmother since she has been quiet about her famous family for pretty much her whole career (actually, I wouldn't know.) It wasn't too long ago when Drew broke the silence and made a comment about Dolores. She discovered beautiful pictures of her late grandmother on Instagram and reacted with "tears rolling down her face." If the two ever did meet, however, Drew probably wouldn't remember her since she was about 3 or 4, respectively, when Dolores passed away.
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| The great beauty of silent pictures |
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| Dolores and Helene photographed by Alfred Cheney Johnston during their ties with the Ziegfeld Follies, 1923. |
"Dolores Costello is not only the sweetheart of John Barrymore, she's his housekeeper -- the first who has ever featured his favorite dish at supper. And a nurse -- the first who has ever been able to shoo away bothersome "boogies" and tuck him into bed to sleep serenely. Dolores is dynamic in a quietly powerful manner."
-- The Modern Screen Magazine, 1931.
Lou Costello, the famed comedian of Abbott and Costello, changed his last name from Cristillo to Costello when he entered pictures because of how much he admired Dolores Costello.