- Margaret O'Brien
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Margaret O'Brien 
Margaret O'Brien, age 11, at Los Angeles Union Station, 1948Born Angela Maxine O'Brien
January 15, 1937
San Diego, California, U.S.Occupation Actress Years active 1941–present Spouse Harold Allen, Jr. (1959–1968) (divorced)
Roy Thorsen (1974–present) 1 daughter
Margaret O'Brien from the trailer for Journey for Margaret (1942)
Margaret O'Brien (born January 15, 1937) is an American film 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.
Contents
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 Margaret, in which she played the title role. Her father Lawrence O'Brien, a circus performer, died before she was born.[1] O'Brien's mother, Gladys Flores, was a well-known flamenco dancer who often performed with her sister Marissa, also a dancer. O'Brien is of half-Irish and half-Spanish ancestry.
She made her first film appearance in Babes on Broadway (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 (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.
She played a young French girl, and spoke and sang all her dialogue with a French accent, in Jane Eyre (1944). Arguably her most memorable role was as "Tootie" in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), opposite Judy Garland. O'Brien had by this time added singing and dancing to her achievements and was rewarded with an Academy Juvenile Award the following year as the "outstanding child actress of 1944." Her other successes included The Canterville Ghost (1944), Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), and the first sound version of The Secret Garden (1949), but she was unable to make the transition to adult roles.
A 1946 Looney Tunes short, Book Revue, placed a caricature of O'Brien in the role of Little Red Riding Hood.
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?. 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 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. Another rare television outing was as a guest star on the popular Marcus Welby, M.D. in the early 1970s, reuniting O'Brien with her Journey For Margaret and The Canterville Ghost co-star Robert Young.
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.[2] After three days, the maid failed to return to work, prompting O'Brien's mother to discharge her, requesting that the awards be returned.[3] Not long after, O'Brien's mother, who had been sick with a heart condition, suffered a relapse and died.[2] 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.[3][2]
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.[2][3] 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, was alerted that a miniature statuette bearing O'Brien's name had surfaced in a catalogue for an upcoming memorabilia auction.[2] 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.[3][2]
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.[4] 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[2][4] Upon being reunited with her Juvenile Oscar, Margaret O'Brien told the attending journalists:
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- “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.”[5]
Hollywood Walk of Fame
O'Brien has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 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.
Filmography
Circa 1952.Year Film Role Other notes 1941 Babes on Broadway Maxine, Little Girl at Audition uncredited 1942 Journey for Margaret Margaret White 1943 You, John Jones! Their daughter short subject Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case Margaret Thousands Cheer Customer in Red Skelton Skit Madame Curie Irene Curie (at age 5) Lost Angel Alpha 1944 Jane Eyre Adele Varens The Canterville Ghost Lady Jessica de Canterville Meet Me in St. Louis 'Tootie' Smith Academy Juvenile Award Music for Millions Mike 1945 Our Vines Have Tender Grapes Selma Jacobson 1946 Bad Bascomb Emmy Three Wise Fools Sheila O'Monahan 1947 The Unfinished Dance 'Meg' Merlin 1948 Big City Midge Tenth Avenue Angel Flavia Mills 1949 Little Women Beth March The Secret Garden Mary Lennox 1951 Her First Romance Betty Foster 1952 Futari no hitomi Katherine McDermott Girls Hand in Hand US title 1956 Glory Clarabel Tilbee 1960 Heller in Pink Tights Della Southby 1965 Agente S 3 S operazione Uranio 1968 Annabel Lee 1974 Diabolique Wedding aka Diabolic Wedding That's Entertainment! 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 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
References
- ^ TCM.com - "Biography for Margaret O'Brien", Mar 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Fairy Tale End for Stolen Oscar". LATimes.com. http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-07/news/mn-39699_1_oscar-statuette. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
- ^ a b c d "An Interview with Margaret O'Brien". Hollywoodland. http://allanellenberger.com/book-flm-news/an-interview-with-margaret-obrien-part-two/. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
- ^ a b "Actress Gets Stolen Oscar Back". SFGate.com. http://articles.sfgate.com/1995-02-09/entertainment/17795084_1_oscar-outstanding-child-actress-steve-neimand. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
- ^ "Margaret O'Brien's Stolen Oscar". Hollywoodland. http://allanellenberger.com/book-flm-news/margaret-obriens-stolen-oscar/. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
External links
Categories:- 1937 births
- Living people
- Academy Juvenile Award winners
- American film actors
- American child actors
- American people of Irish descent
- American people of Spanish descent
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