20 Famous Families That Prove Hollywood Was Always A Family Business

In 1923, Walt Disney co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with his brother Roy O. Disney. While Walt became the creative face of the company, Roy handled much of the business and financial side. Roy’s financial expertise helped the brothers expand their studio and later secure the funding for projects like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disneyland.

After years on the vaudeville circuit, Minnie Marx guided her five sons, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo to stardom. However, only Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo hit Broadway with I’ll Say She Is (1924) and The Cocoanuts (1925), later taking their satire to Hollywood with Animal Crackers and Duck Soup. Gummo left the act to serve in World War I and never appeared in a movie. Zeppo exited films in 1933 and found work as a talent agent.

Years before anyone had ever heard of Judy Garland, her parents, Frank and Ethel Gumm, entered their three girls, Mary Jane, Dorothy, and Frances, into a vaudeville sister act. In 1934, the comedian George Jessel proposed that they change the family name from Gumm to Garland when he booked them into Chicago. The youngest sister, Frances, adopted the new name and signed with MGM in 1935. She later starred in The Wizard of Oz in 1939.

Charlotte Smith brought her children Gladys, Lottie, and Jack into acting. Gladys then became silent film’s biggest star, Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart.” In June of 1916, Pickford contracted with Adolph Zukor’s company, Famous Players, for $10,000 a week plus half the profits, guaranteeing her more than a million dollars in salary. In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith.

In 1923, Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner formed Warner Bros. Pictures. Sam was a proponent of the use of Vitaphone, an early process that synchronized recorded sound with film, and urged his brothers to produce The Jazz Singer, the 1927 feature film credited with popularizing talking pictures. Sam died of a brain abscess on October 5, 1927, the day prior to the film’s New York premiere, and his brothers were absent from the opening because they attended Sam’s funeral instead.

Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas,” recorded in May 1942, sold more than 50 million physical copies and remains the best-selling physical single of all time according to Guinness World Records. He also found success in radio and film, including in movies like Going My Way. However, he wasn’t the only successful Crosby. His brother Bob led Bob Crosby and the Bob-Cats, one of the most popular Dixieland swing bands of the 1930s. Two brothers, two different sounds!

The couple Joe and Myra Keaton incorporated their four-year-old son Joseph, later known as Buster, into their vaudeville routine in 1899. For several years, Buster learned the art of body control and the deadpan expression that came to define his character, performing with his mother and father until 1917. Then he transitioned to becoming one of the most famous actors in early silent film, including roles in films like The General.

Playwright Henry Churchill DeMille’s sons Cecil B. and William C. DeMille were also involved in the film industry. Cecil co-directed The Squaw Man, frequently called the first movie made in Hollywood, in 1914 with Oscar Apfel. He later made the epic The Ten Commandments in 1923 and 1956. Another fun fact? William’s daughter Agnes de Mille (spelled ‘de Mille’ by that branch of the family) was one of the most important dancers and choreographers of the 20th century, designing dances for the 1943 musical Oklahoma! One family managed to cover plays, movies, and Broadway choreography across three generations.

The Andrews Sisters, LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty, burst onto the scene with their 1937 hit “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” to become the best-selling female vocal group of the 20th century. Patty sang the melody, with Maxene and LaVerne singing harmony. The three of them were responsible for an estimated 75–100 million records sold, alongside appearing in 18 motion pictures.

Walter Huston, the Broadway actor who was in Dodsworth (1936), appeared in a 1948 movie directed by his son, writer-director John Huston, called The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In March 1949 at the Academy Awards, they were the first father-son duo to win awards for the same film. John won Best Director and Best Screenplay. Walter won Best Supporting Actor. That’s one productive family night at the Oscars.

Brothers John Jr., Herbert, Harry, and Donald Mills created the sounds of trumpets, trombones, and saxophones with just their voices and a single acoustic guitar. Brunswick Records even printed a disclaimer on record sleeves confirming that no instruments other than guitar were used. Yes, listeners actually needed to be told those horns weren’t horns. When John Jr. passed away in 1936, their father, John Sr., took his place. In 1943, they scored a No. 1 pop single with “Paper Doll,” which stayed atop the charts for 12 weeks.

Louisa Lane Drew managed Philadelphia’s Arch Street Theatre from 1861 to 1892, making her one of the very first women in American history to run a major theatrical enterprise. Louisa’s children, John Drew Jr. and Georgiana Drew, were both successful stage performers. Georgiana later married the actor Maurice Barrymore, cementing the Drew family line as part of the famous Barrymore lineage.

Tyrone Power I had established himself as a traveling dramatic actor, but he died in March of 1841, when the steamship SS President went down in a storm. His grandson, Frederick Tyrone Power, was a well-known Shakespearean actor. He carried on the family line, which ended up with Tyrone Power Jr., the classic Hollywood film star.

The silent-film maker Lewis J. Selznick had two sons, David O. Selznick and Myron Selznick. David became Hollywood’s premier independent producer after the success of Gone with the Wind in 1939 and Rebecca in 1940. He had substantially reworked the Gone with the Wind screenplay despite the fact that writer Sidney Howard was given the only official screenplay credit. Myron struck out in a different direction, starting up one of Hollywood’s premier talent agencies and redefining the way actors were managed.

In August 1927, A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle Carter took part in the historic Bristol Sessions in Virginia, a series of recording sessions often considered a starting point for commercial country music. A.P. traveled throughout Appalachia collecting traditional folk ballads, with help from African-American musician Lesley Riddle, and later arranged, recorded, and copyrighted those songs under the family name. Maybelle perfected the “Carter Scratch,” a guitar technique where she simultaneously picked the melody and a steady, driving rhythm.

Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore were born into one of America’s most famous acting families. Their father, Maurice Barrymore, was born Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blythe and adopted the stage name Barrymore because acting had a social stigma attached to it during the 1800s. Their mother, Georgiana Drew, was also an actress. All three siblings went on to rule the stage and screen for decades, creating a dynasty that eventually produced some of the most famous screen actors in Hollywood history.

Ira Gershwin, the lyricist, along with his composer brother George Gershwin, wrote landmark American musicals, though George alone composed instrumental works like Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. In 1932, Ira shared the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Of Thee I Sing with the show’s other writers, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. George, however, was left out of it entirely because the rules of the 1932 Pulitzer simply didn’t consider musical composition eligible. Writing the music, in this case, wasn’t enough to get your name on the prize.

Bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his wife, singer Harriet Hilliard, introduced their family to radio in 1944, but their sons David and Ricky were originally played by professional child actors. In 1949, the brothers finally assumed their own roles, making the family act truly a family affair. That success carried over to television with The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which aired for 435 episodes between 1952 and 1966 and provided the platform for Ricky Nelson’s career. In 1957, his song “I’m Walkin’” made him an immediate rock and roll teen idol.

Adele Astaire and her younger brother Fred Astaire starred together in vaudeville and on stage in Broadway and London musicals during the 1920s, such as Lady, Be Good (1924) and Funny Face (1927). Contemporary critics regularly hailed Adele as the superior comedienne and the real star of the pair. She retired from performing in 1932 when she married Lord Charles Cavendish. It was after that, when Fred began his film career, that he became famous. For a while, being “Adele Astaire’s younger brother” was Fred Astaire’s part in the family act.

Audiences at Harlem’s Cotton Club and in films such as Stormy Weather (1943) adored brothers Fayard and Harold Nicholas’s highly stylized, acrobatic “flash tap” dances. Fred Astaire called their famous leapfrog routine down a staircase into full splits one of his favorites. In order to accommodate Southern segregation laws, films of the era often shot these numbers as free-standing scenes so that regional distributors could edit them out entirely.

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