The Seventh of Lionel: 100 years and two months of Milt Shanks

This film of Mr. B's is among my very favorites, though it is not without flaws. I highly recommend it; I've even got a copy of the play it derives from. Read on to find out more about The Copperhead!

The Copperhead (Released January 25,1920) In this fantastic, sweeping film, Lionel Barrymore returned from a long time away on stage, where he performed in Peter Ibbetson and The Jest with his brother John, to play Milt Shanks, a northern farmer recruited by Lincoln at the start of the American Civil War to infiltrate the Confederate sympathizer organization whose members were known as “copperheads”. The film was based on Augustus Thomas’ play which Mr. B also appeared in before making the film. The play opened February 18, 1918 (hence the 100years in the title of this post), at the Schubert theater and ran for 120 performances. It was a spectacular success on stage, and though adapted heavily for the screen, was a resounding success on Mr. B’s return to film.

Doris Rankin, then Mr. B’s wife, appears as his wife in the film and Arthur Rankin, her brother, appears as their son Joey. Doris also appeared as the wife and the daughter [in the second half] in the play—a review of the play from February 19, 1918 was not totally complimentary of its length, but admiring of the lead players: “Mr. Barrymore, whose work hitherto had seemed rather externally studied, even mechanical [edit: The Jest?!?], sustained the [climactic] scene with a really memorable force and fervor. With equally dramatic material throughout, his performance would have deserved to rank very high among modern achievements”.

Here are some play images pulled from the published version:

Note the mention of Mr. B by the playwright on the left

With then-wife Doris Rankin

This is a scene from the "Second Epoch" of the play

A pic from brother Jack's Confessions of an Actor

I would very much have liked to seen the 1914-1918 Barrymore plays, especially The Copperhead and the Jest. Alas, no film was made of The Jest (it would have been rather hard!) but fortunately, a film version of Milt Shanks survives and is brilliant. Now on to the film!

We are treated to wonderful camerawork indoor and especially outdoors, where it is clear early Milt Shanks is honorable--he wants to join up to fight a pre-Civil War fight, but is restrained from doing so by friend Tom Hardy, who notes he has a newborn son at home. Our tall, reticent Milt is also convinced not to go by his wife and their friend Abraham Lincoln, who stops for some water. So Milt stays, his bravery established.

Later, when the Civil War breaks out, everyone (including Milt) presumes he's going off to fight. His son is 15, 16 a happy boy with a newborn baby sister now. Milt set sup to go and is instead told to visit now-President Lincoln instead, where, not to spoil things, he is asked to do something braver than pick up a gun.

Mr. B is brilliantly sensitive with his physical acting here, his brief, shy tenderness with his real-life wife and earlier while holding his new son wonderful to behold. Later, when he has the worst day of his entire existence, it's a traumatically effecting job of acting, small motions of his hands, his head, tears filling his eyes--I showed the scene to my students and they could not believe how painful it was to see the character react to everything.  

While the film ends very differently from the play, it's a good ending, solid acting, and actually exciting to behold. Mr. B has gone from a young man of about 28, 30, to an ancient of 75 or so. He did an interview about how he acted old, aging parts, and I kept thinking when seeing this that he and his wife had also already lost three baby daughters. Painful moments the actor himself understood very deeply, and he confessed to acting mainly by modeling his parts on things he observed--perhaps the thrice-traumatizing loss of a child informed his performance in the film and play.

Here are a few scenes from the film and ads:

Mr B makes good use of his burly size and height in this film--here near the opening of the movie.

A grab and partial color edit by me

Glass slide, h/t Bob Fells of SFT on FB

From Kotsilibas-Davis' book

This is a great performance, a great comeback to film, and the last stage role Mr. B ever performed--he did it once more on stage in 1926 or so when he finally moved to California permanently for movies.

There are also radio versions of this, and you can listen along: 

Audio of The Copperhead, 1938 radio performance

Happy Seventh of Lionel to you all! Hope you're enjoying :)