George O'Brien isn't particularly well known today, even among film buffs, but had an interesting career. A top athlete and World War One veteran (he was champion boxer for the fleet) he got his break as a stuntman and extra before becoming a star relatively quickly (in terms of progressing from bit parts to leads) in The Iron Horse. In the 1920s he was a decent enough box office draw for Fox but managed to appear in one classic - Sunrise - plus some John Ford movies and Michael Curtiz's Noah's Arc.
Sound didn't kill O'Brien's career but seemed to affect it in an odd way - he began appearing mostly in Westerns, then solely in them, and didn't really appear in anything else during the 30s. He re-enlisted during WW2 and saw hard service (in the navy), returned as a character actor (notably in some John Ford movies such as Fort Apache)... then went back to the navy. Plenty of film stars served in the military during the war -was he the only film star who went back to the navy deliberately when his film career wound down?
He was an odd kind of star, O'Brien - with his beefy build and not particularly memorable name or all American persona. Definitely not one of the great silent stars - no Valentino, no Fairbanks, no Tom Mix - but he had enough talent to impress Murnau, a young Howard Hawks, Allan Dwan and John Ford (with whom he had a long term falling out - which seems standard for people who worked for Ford). Hollywood executives liked him to a point but then seemed happier to shunt him off to Westerns.
The only career I can think that was like O'Brien's was Tim Holt, the actor who replaced him as RKO's B Western cowboy (Holt was cheaper) - mostly known for countless Westerns, but a surprising amount of classic movies on his resume (eg The Magnificent Ambersons, His Kind of Women), impressive war service. (I do admit though that Holt never had anything like O'Brien's success in the late 1920s).
He seems to have been a decent enough guy - sensible, hardworking, fit, held on to his money, didn't go insane or get hooked on drugs like so many of his contemporaries who met tragic ends (eg Olive Borden). Not a very good husband, running off to play soldiers whenever he good - World War Two I get but to do it in the 50s, I think he just liked the navy. He was married to Margeurite Churchill but from this biography didn't seem that interested in spending too much time with her - or with other women. And he appeared in a (very) large number of beefcake photos in the 20s some of which are downright homoerotic. Maybe it was all coincidental, but still... None of that is explored here.
This is still a pretty good book, benefiting from the fact that so much of it is unfamiliar to me so I was learning a lot. Occasionally the writer goes off on tangents with biographies of people connected to O'Brien - and I did feel that I wasn't entirely getting to know the real guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment