Irene Fenwick
Irene Fenwick was an American stage and silent film actress. She was married to Lionel Barrymore from 1923 until her death in 1936. Fenwick has several surviving features, mainly because she worked for the Kleine-Edison Feature Film Service, which has numerous surviving shorts in the Library of Congress.
Years before marrying Lionel, Irene had dated Lionel's brother, John.
Life
Frizell was born in Chicago and began acting in local theatre. She had a few chorus roles in London, including one in a musical comedy that won critics praise for her "nearly natural performance". In New York she met Broadway producer Charles Frohman who gave her the stage name Fenwick and the ingénue role in The Brass Bottle. A vivacious redhead, adept at both drama and comedy, she had a forceful stage presence that belied her tiny stature of 4'11". She continued on stage opposite Douglas Fairbanks in Hawthorne of the U.S.A. and was touted as a young actress with "the tact and intelligence of a veteran player" in The Family Cupboard.While on Broadway she started working in silent films with film maker George Kleine. Fenwick often played wronged women and vamps in such films as The Sentimental Lady, The Woman Next Door, A Coney Island Princess, with her performance as Princess Zim-Zim highlighted as the films "chief force", and The Sin Woman, but she felt restricted by them and returned to the stage. In the hit plays The Claw and Laugh, Clown, Laugh she co-starred with Lionel Barrymore, whom she married on June 14, 1923,after a brief engagement. It was his second marriage and her third. She retired in 1926 after her husband chose a Hollywood career.
Death
Fenwick died on Christmas Eve in 1936, at age 49 from complications of anorexia nervosa. Barrymore was replaced by her brother John in his famous annual radio broadcast as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol for that year. He never remarried.Filmography
| Year | Film | Costar |
| 1915 | The Commuters | |
| 1915 | The Spendthrift | |
| 1915 | The Woman Next Door | |
| 1915 | The Green Cloak | |
| 1915 | The Sentimental Lady | |
| 1916 | The Child of Destiny | |
| 1916 | A Coney Island Princess | Owen Moore |
| 1917 | A Girl Like That | |
| 1917 | The Sin Woman | |
| 1917 | National Red Cross Pageant |