Philip Barry was born on June 18, 1896, in Rochester, New York to James Corbett Barry and Mary Agnes Quinn Barry. James died from appendicitis a year after Philip's birth, and the family's marble-and-tile business faltered from then on. His oldest brother, Edmund, who was 16 at the time, left school to take over the business and became a father figure for Philip.
Barry's play The Youngest, written when he was 28, is an autobiographical account of his family history following his father's death. In 1910, at the age of 14, Barry discovered that a New York State interpretation of his father's will entitled him to a share of his father's estate that eventually left him the entire business. Family conflicts ensued; he later claimed he never intended to keep the money, and he eventually signed over the estate to his mother and brothers.
Because of his poor eyesight, Barry was rejected for military service during World War I; but, he eventually found a wartime job deciphering cables at the U.S. Embassy in London and left Yale to assume his duties. At the end of the war, he returned to college, where he studied writing with Henry Seidel Canby, and earned his B.A. His mother and two elder brothers strongly demanded that he return to the family in Rochester after college and take a place in the family business. He was, however, determined to strike out on his own and, knowing that he wanted to be a writer, enrolled in George Pierce Baker's renowned playwriting course "47 Workshop" at Harvard University. (Other alumni of Baker's course include Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, S.N. Behrman, and Thomas Wolfe, as well as numerous critics, directors, and designers.)

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