Margaret O'Brien
Encyclopedia
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and stage actress. Although her film career as a leading character was brief, she was one of the most popular child actors in cinema history. In her later career, she appeared on stage and in supporting film roles.
Life and career
She was born Angela Maxine O'Brien; her name was later changed to Margaret following the success of the film Journey for MargaretJourney for Margaret
Journey for Margaret is a 1942 drama film set in London in World War II. It stars Robert Young and Laraine Day as a couple who have to deal with the loss of their unborn child due to a bombing raid. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by William Lindsay White.-Plot:John Davis is a...
, in which she played the title role. Her father Lawrence O'Brien, a circus performer, died before she was born. O'Brien's mother, Gladys Flores, was a well-known flamenco
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
dancer who often performed with her sister Marissa, also a dancer. O'Brien is of half-Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
and half-Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
ancestry.
She made her first film appearance in Babes on Broadway
Babes on Broadway
Babes on Broadway is a 1941 musical film starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and directed by Busby Berkeley, with Vincente Minnelli directing Garland's big solo numbers. The film, which features Fay Bainter and Virginia Weidler, was the third in the "Backyard Musical" series about kids who put...
(1941) at the age of four, but it was the following year that her first major role brought her widespread attention. As a five-year-old in Journey for Margaret
Journey for Margaret
Journey for Margaret is a 1942 drama film set in London in World War II. It stars Robert Young and Laraine Day as a couple who have to deal with the loss of their unborn child due to a bombing raid. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by William Lindsay White.-Plot:John Davis is a...
(1942), O'Brien won wide praise for her convincing acting style. By 1943, she was considered a big enough star to have a cameo appearance in the all-star military show finale of Thousands Cheer
Thousands Cheer
Thousands Cheer is a 1943 American comedy musical film released by MGM. Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families.-Plot:The film is essentially a two-part program...
.
She played a young French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
girl, and spoke and sang all her dialogue with a French accent, in Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (1944 film)
Jane Eyre is a classic film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name, made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by William Goetz, Kenneth Macgowan, and Orson Welles . The screenplay was by John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Henry Koster, and Robert...
(1944). Arguably her most memorable role was as "Tootie" in Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904...
(1944), opposite Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
. O'Brien had by this time added singing and dancing to her achievements and was rewarded with an Academy Juvenile Award
Academy Juvenile Award
The Academy Juvenile Award, also known as the Juvenile Oscar, was a Special Honorary Academy Award bestowed at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to specifically recognize juvenile performers under the age of eighteen for their "outstanding...
the following year as the "outstanding child actress of 1944." Her other successes included The Canterville Ghost
The Canterville Ghost (1944 film)
The Canterville Ghost is a 1944 fantasy/comedy film directed by Jules Dassin, loosely based on the short story of the same title by Oscar Wilde...
(1944), Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes is an American drama film released in 1945, directed by Roy Rowland and starring Edward G. Robinson and Margaret O'Brien.-Background:...
(1945), and the first sound version of The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden (1949 film)
The Secret Garden is a 1949 US drama film. It is the second screen adaptation of the classic 1909 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett . The screenplay by Robert Ardrey was directed by Fred M. Wilcox...
(1949), but she was unable to make the transition to adult roles.
A 1946 Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
short, Book Revue
Book Revue
Book Revue is a 1945 Looney Tunes cartoon short featuring Daffy Duck, released in 1946, with a plotline essentially similar to 1938's Have You Got Any Castles?. It is directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster and scored by Carl Stalling. An uncredited Mel Blanc and Sara Berner provided...
, placed a caricature of O'Brien in the role of Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Little Red Cap, is a French fairy tale about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf. The story has been changed considerably in its history and subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings....
.
O'Brien later shed her child star image in 1958 by appearing on the cover of Life Magazine with the caption "The Girl's Grown", and was a mystery guest on the TV panel show What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
. O'Brien's acting roles as an adult have been few and far between, mostly in small independent films. However, she does do occasional interviews, mostly for the Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
cable network. She played the role of Betsy Stauffer, a small town nurse, in "The Incident of the Town in Terror" on television's Rawhide
Rawhide (TV series)
Rawhide is an American Western series that aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights, from January 9, 1959 to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965 until January 4, 1966, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes...
. Another rare television outing was as a guest star on the popular Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television program that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, and was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell...
in the early 1970s, reuniting O'Brien with her Journey For Margaret and The Canterville Ghost co-star Robert Young
Robert Young (actor)
Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...
.
Personal life
She has been married twice, to Harold Allen, Jr. from 1959 to 1968, and later to Roy Thorsen. The latter marriage produced her only child, Mara Tolene Thorsen, born in 1977.Lost Academy Award
Growing up, O'Brien's awards were always kept in a special room. One day in 1954, the family's maid asked to take O'Brien's Juvenile Oscar and two other awards home with her to polish, as she had done in the past. After three days, the maid failed to return to work, prompting O'Brien's mother to discharge her, requesting that the awards be returned. Not long after, O'Brien's mother, who had been sick with a heart condition, suffered a relapse and died. In mourning, 17 year-old O'Brien forgot about the maid and the Oscar until several months later when she tried to contact her, only to find that the maid had moved and had left no forwarding address.Several years later, upon learning that the original had been stolen, the Academy promptly supplied O'Brien with a replacement Oscar, but O'Brien still held onto hope that she might one day recover her original Award. In the years that followed, O'Brien attended memorabilia shows and searched antique shops, hoping she might find the original statuette, until one day in 1995 when Bruce Davis, then executive director of the Academy
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
, was alerted that a miniature statuette bearing O'Brien's name had surfaced in a catalogue for an upcoming memorabilia auction. Davis contacted a mutual friend of his and O'Brien's, who in turn phoned O'Brien to tell her the long-lost Oscar had been found.
Memorabilia collectors Steve Neimand and Mark Nash were attending a flea market in 1995 when Neimand spotted a small Oscar with Margaret O'Brien's name inscribed upon it. The two men decided to split the $500 asking price hoping to resell it at a profit and lent it to a photographer to shoot for an upcoming auction catalogue. This led to Bruce Davis' discovery that the statuette had resurfaced and, upon learning of the award's history, Nash and Neimand agreed to return the Oscar to O'Brien. On February 7, 1995, almost fifty years after she'd first received it, the Academy held a special ceremony in Beverly Hills to return the stolen award to O’Brien. Upon being reunited with her Juvenile Oscar, Margaret O'Brien told the attending journalists:
-
- “For all those people who have lost or misplaced something that was dear to them, as I have, never give up the dream of searching – never let go of the hope that you’ll find it because after all these many years, at last, my Oscar has been returned to me.”
Hollywood Walk of Fame
O'Brien has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of FameHollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
for Motion Pictures at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard, and for television at 1620 Vine St. In 2006, she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the SunDeis Film Festival at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
.
Filmography
| Year | Film | Role | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1941 | Babes on Broadway Babes on Broadway Babes on Broadway is a 1941 musical film starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and directed by Busby Berkeley, with Vincente Minnelli directing Garland's big solo numbers. The film, which features Fay Bainter and Virginia Weidler, was the third in the "Backyard Musical" series about kids who put... |
Maxine, Little Girl at Audition | uncredited |
| 1942 | Journey for Margaret Journey for Margaret Journey for Margaret is a 1942 drama film set in London in World War II. It stars Robert Young and Laraine Day as a couple who have to deal with the loss of their unborn child due to a bombing raid. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by William Lindsay White.-Plot:John Davis is a... |
Margaret White | |
| 1943 | You, John Jones! You, John Jones! You, John Jones! is a short film directed by Mervyn LeRoy, written by Carey Wilson and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starring James Cagney, Ann Sothern, and Margaret O'Brien... |
Their daughter | short subject |
| Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case | Margaret | ||
| Thousands Cheer Thousands Cheer Thousands Cheer is a 1943 American comedy musical film released by MGM. Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families.-Plot:The film is essentially a two-part program... |
Customer in Red Skelton Skit | ||
| Madame Curie Madame Curie (film) Madame Curie is a 1943 biographical film made by MGM. It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and produced by Sidney Franklin from a screenplay by Paul Osborn, Paul H. Rameau, and Aldous Huxley , adapted from the biography by Eve Curie.... |
Irene Curie (at age 5) | ||
| Lost Angel Lost Angel (film) Lost Angel is a 1943 film starring Margaret O'Brien as a little orphan girl raised to be a genius. James Craig plays a reporter who shows her the world outside the Institute of Child Psychology.-Plot:... |
Alpha | ||
| 1944 | Jane Eyre Jane Eyre (1944 film) Jane Eyre is a classic film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name, made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by William Goetz, Kenneth Macgowan, and Orson Welles . The screenplay was by John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Henry Koster, and Robert... |
Adele Varens | |
| The Canterville Ghost The Canterville Ghost (1944 film) The Canterville Ghost is a 1944 fantasy/comedy film directed by Jules Dassin, loosely based on the short story of the same title by Oscar Wilde... |
Lady Jessica de Canterville | ||
| Meet Me in St. Louis Meet Me in St. Louis Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904... |
'Tootie' Smith | Academy Juvenile Award Academy Juvenile Award The Academy Juvenile Award, also known as the Juvenile Oscar, was a Special Honorary Academy Award bestowed at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to specifically recognize juvenile performers under the age of eighteen for their "outstanding... |
|
| Music for Millions Music for Millions Music for Millions is a 1944 musical comedy film directed by Henry Koster. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1946.-Plot:"Mike" , age 6, arrives in New York to stay with her sister Barbara Ainsworth , who lived together with a group of girls, her co-players in a symphony orchestra... |
Mike | ||
| 1945 | Our Vines Have Tender Grapes Our Vines Have Tender Grapes Our Vines Have Tender Grapes is an American drama film released in 1945, directed by Roy Rowland and starring Edward G. Robinson and Margaret O'Brien.-Background:... |
Selma Jacobson | |
| 1946 | Bad Bascomb Bad Bascomb (1946 film) Bad Bascomb is a 1946 western film starring Wallace Beery and Margaret O'Brien. The movie was directed by S. Sylvan Simon.-Plot:"Bad" Bascomb is a notorious outlaw wanted by federal marshals after outwitting every group sent to capture him. He and fellow bandit Bart Ramsay , a cold-blooded... |
Emmy | |
| Three Wise Fools Three Wise Fools (1946 film) Three Wise Fools is a 1946 film adaptation of Austin Strong's Broadway play of the same name. A young Irish orphan girl softens the hearts of three hardened old bachelors who were once unsuccessful suitors of her grandmother many years before.-Cast:*Margaret O'Brien as Sheila... |
Sheila O'Monahan | ||
| 1947 | The Unfinished Dance The Unfinished Dance The Unfinished Dance is a 1947 drama film directed by Henry Koster. It is set in a ballet company, and is a remake of the 1937 French film La mort du cygne . It won two awards at the 1948 Locarno International Film Festival.... |
'Meg' Merlin | |
| 1948 | Big City | Midge | |
| Tenth Avenue Angel Tenth Avenue Angel Tenth Avenue Angel chronicles the life and family of Flavia Mills in the late 1930s. Based on a story by Angna Enters and a sketch by Craig Rice, the film took 18 months before release to U.S... |
Flavia Mills | ||
| 1949 | Little Women Little Women (1949 film) Little Women directed by Mervyn LeRoy is based on Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Sally Benson, Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, and Andrew Solt... |
Beth March | |
| The Secret Garden The Secret Garden (1949 film) The Secret Garden is a 1949 US drama film. It is the second screen adaptation of the classic 1909 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett . The screenplay by Robert Ardrey was directed by Fred M. Wilcox... |
Mary Lennox | ||
| 1951 | Her First Romance Her First Romance Her First Romance is a 1940 American musical comedy film directed by Edward Dmytryk.-Cast:* Edith Fellows as Linda Strong* Wilbur Evans as Philip Niles* Julie Bishop as Eileen Strong * Alan Ladd as John Gilman... |
Betty Foster | |
| 1952 | Futari no hitomi Futari no hitomi aka Girls Hand in Hand is a 1952 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Shigeo Nakaki.- Plot :A girl visits her dad in Japan, and she makes friends with an orphan from the war... |
Katherine McDermott | Girls Hand in Hand US title |
| 1956 | Glory Glory (1956 film) Glory is a 1956 film directed by David Butler. It stars Margaret O'Brien and Walter Brennan.-Cast:*Margaret O'Brien as Clarabell Tilbee*Walter Brennan as Ned Otis*Charlotte Greenwood as Miz Agness Tilbee*John Lupton as Chad Chadburn... |
Clarabel Tilbee | |
| 1960 | Heller in Pink Tights Heller in Pink Tights Heller In Pink Tights is a 1960 Technicolor western film adapted from Louis L'Amour's novel, Heller with a Gun. It stars Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn and was directed by George Cukor.... |
Della Southby | |
| 1965 | Agente S 3 S operazione Uranio | ||
| 1968 | Annabel Lee Annabel Lee "Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He... |
||
| 1974 | Diabolique Wedding | aka Diabolic Wedding | |
| That's Entertainment! That's Entertainment! That's Entertainment! is a 1974 compilation film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It was followed by two sequels and a related film called That's Dancing!.... |
Herself and archive footage | ||
| 1981 | Amy | Hazel Johnson | aka Amy on the Lips |
| 1996 | Sunset After Dark | ||
| 1998 | Creaturealm: From the Dead | Herself | segment Hollywood Mortuary |
| 2000 | Child Stars: Their Story | Herself | aka Child Stars |
| 2002 | Dead Season | Friendly Looking Lady | |
| 2004 | The Mystery of Natalie Wood | Herself | |
| 2005 | Boxes Boxes (film) Boxes is a 2007 French film and the directorial debut of Jane Birkin. Birkin also stars alongside Geraldine Chaplin and Michel Piccoli. The film is based on Birkin's own family life, chronicling three marriages and the three children she bore from these marriages. The title alludes to the way in... |
Herself | short subject |
| 2006 | Store | Herself | |
| 2009 | Dead in Love | Cris |
"Project Lodestar Sagas " 2009-2011
Science Fiction Feature and Cable Series-
Lead role of Livia Wells
source www.myspace.com/project_lodestar_sagas