WE REMEMBER ETHEL BARRYMORE and we remember........ EDNA FERBER Well today we will recall a great actress and a great writer. Ethel Barrymore was part of the great Barrymore family legacy that branches down to actress Drew Barrymore today. Ethel Barrymore is known for her mindblowing portrayal of Nora in the 1916 Broadway production of Ibsen's "The Doll House" and the part of Julliet in the first Broadway production of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Julliet" in 1906. The above picture was taken when Ethel was sixteen years old in the year 1896. So Ethel was a mere twenty-two at the time! Drew Barrymore bears an incredible likeness to her great grandmother. Some amazing facts that I discovered doing a bit of research today is the fact the Ethel Barrymore was a devout Roman Catholic who was proposed to by the legendary Winston Churchill. She turned him down and married another and when that marriage failed, she never remarried because of rules in place by the Church-- same as toady, by the way! How might the course of history changed if she had said yes, maintained her career and faithful husband Churchill would have followed his wife into this country and NOT become England's Prime Minister during World War Tw0! It might have been a totally different world today if that had taken place. Ethel was in many ways a greater performer than her brother, Lionel. The other person we remember today is Edna Ferber. Now if the novel and the motion picture "So Big" and "Giant" (that big Texas oil drama that starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and the late great James Dean) does nothing to jar your memory or if you know absolutely nothing of her collaboration with the amazing playwright George S. Kaufman in great plays like "Dinner At Eight" than perhaps the title "Showboat" will shake your memory! . It was Ms. Ferber's classic novel that Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II adapted their classic Broadway musical "Showboat" to the world in 1925. All musicals before this time were frivilous, non plotted showcases for songs and songwriters. "Showboat" began to change all of that-- and this musical would lead later to the first great Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration in "Oklahoma" in 1943. Edna Ferber was a major writer of this period and this blog salutes both she and Ethel. I am starting to complete yet another musical. This time its "Young MacDonald" a very broad comedy- musical that I hope we can find an Broadweay audience for. It's a show business musical! And it will very much remind you of a comedy by Kaufman and Hart-- who together wrote some of the funniest Broadway comedies of all time! These plays include the classic "George Washington Slept Here" and the amazing "The Man Who Came To Dinner" -- two plays that are just as funny today as they were all those many years ago! Well that's it for now!