THE BIG NIGHT: a big name in need of a big talent

Choosing to go into acting with a name like John Barrymore jr is just asking for trouble, especially when you decide to jump into leading roles without first taking the time to learn your craft.
But that's what the 18 year old son and namesake of the legendary Broadway and Hollywood star chose to do in 1950 and, by all reports, he made a considerable hash it.

But by the time he came to make his fourth film, THE BIG NIGHT in 1951, he had developed at least a rudimentary understanding of the basics of acting although he still wasn't anywhere close to being bona fide leading man material. Luckily for him the film's production values are so low that they help mask his inadequacies. 

As a teenage boy who comes of age on the night he witnesses his father being beaten and humiliated by a local gangster, he certainly looks the part (even down to the acne) but he struggles to convincingly convey the appropriate emotions.
His preferred approach is to do everything at half speed or less. Barrymore jr acts in slow motion with every gaze held for several moments too long and every reaction played out as if in a drug-induced haze. It's as if he were acting out the story for a series of still photographs rather than a movie.
What's surprising is that director Joseph Losey settled for so little from his leading man. By 1951 Losey was an established director and came to this project off the back of the superb film noir thriller "The Prowler." 
But possibly his mind was on other things. He'd recently refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was facing the prospect of an open-ended self imposed exile in Europe. Perhaps, given these circumstances, he was just happy to be able to work and was willing to overlook the cheap sets, inadequate acting and thin storyline.
In the 53 years that were left to him Barrymore jr never succeeded in living up to his father's illustrious reputation as an actor. Sadly he had much more success in emulating John Sr's tumultuous off-screen life, and today if he's remembered at all, it's as the father of Drew Barrymore. THE BIG NIGHT  does nothing to change that legacy.