At last--I can now understand all the hoopla about John Barrymore as the Adonis of the Jazz Age! In this l928 extravaganza, he portrays a "peasant" who is obsessed in becoming an officer of the Russian military. In the early part of the movie, he's shown swimming, although he wears pants. For a man in is forties, and even then maintaining a torturous lifestyle of relentless drinking, Barrymore looks amazingly buff and beautiful. In that era, male stars rarely displayed musculature torsos. Valentino and George O'Brien were the exceptions--but Barrymore also possessed that profile of surreal beauty. No wonder his moniker was The Great Profile. Ten years later, he would be a mental and physical wreck, lampooning himself in such movie travesties as Universals' "The Great Profile." Study him in "The Tempest" and be spellbound.
Review of Tempest
