Donald O'Connor

Donald O'Connor
File:DonaldO'Connor.jpg
Birth name:	Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor
Date of birth:	August 28, 1925
Birth location:	Chicago, Illinois  United States
Date of death:	September 27, 2003 aged 78
Death location:	Calabasas, California

Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was a dancer, singer and actor who was discovered at the age of 11 and debuted in the 1938 film Sing, You Sinners. His early roles came playing "the star as a child" — the younger version of the film's leading man for prologue and flashback sequences.

His fame peaked in the 1950s in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule. His performance in the musical Singin’ in the Rain (1952), featured a vaudeville-inspired comedy solo Make 'Em Laugh, that allowed him to show off his multi-faceted virtuosity and became a film classic.

"I'm an illusionist - a trickster who quick-changes before your eyes. I capture your attention without giving you time to think about it. I move fast, I keep changing my hats. And the more pleased an audience is, the more energy I get from it and give back to the audience." - Donald O'Connor 1992

Childhood and Vaudeville

Donald O’Connor was born on August 28, 1925 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the seventh child born to John Edward "Chuck" O'Connor and Effie Irene Crane O'Connor. Three of the children born to the O'Connor's died in infancy and Donald was the last child the couple had. Both Chuck and Effie began their careers in the circus, where they met and fell in love. Effie was a trapeze performer and only 15 years old when she married the 28 year old Chuck. In describing his father, Donald said, My father started out as a circus 'leaper'. He'd run down a ramp, jump over an elephant and land on a mat. He was a singer, a dancer, an acrobat, a trapeze artist, a clown, a comedian, and also a strong man. He did a little bit of everything, because the more you did the more you made. He was 5'5" and weighed 220 pounds. He was very light on his feet, though: he was known as the Njinsky of acrobats. The height he could get was incredible. Together, the couple decided to leave the circus and use their original talents to start their own traveling act for vaudeville.

O'Connor appeared on stage when he was only three days old, at his mother's side as she played the piano. By thirteen months O'Connor was being balanced in the hands of his elder brothers, doing acrobatic tricks and dancing around on stage. O'Connor's father loved when another member of the family could perform because it meant an extra twenty-five dollars a week. Each of the surviving O'Connor children worked in the family act.

At thirteen months, tragedy struck the O'Connor family. O'Connor's six year old sister, Arlene, and O'Connor himself were hit by a car when they were crossing the street. Arlene was killed instantly. Only thirteen short weeks later, Chuck O'Connor collapsed on stage and died from a heart attack. He was only 47 years old. In 1997, O'Connor was quoted in the magazine, Irish America as saying that having such a short time with his father deeply affected him. My father could do everything, and so I grew up with this phantom character, hearing all these stories about all the things he could do, and so I tried to emulate him.

Even after the tragic events, the O'Connor family went on performing. The group consisted of O'Connor, his brother Billy (including his wife and child), his brother Jack, and his mother. The family lived by the credo that the "show must go on". On one occasion O'Connor fell and hurt his arm between acts, but went out and performed as usual, doing all the handstands and dancing that the number called for. After the show his mother realized how sick he looked and took him to the hospital where the doctor discovered that he had broken his arm in the fall.

O'Connor always described his vaudeville years as an exciting and happy time: It was a great time for me, a time of wonderful memories. We traveled the country and worked with all of the big names of the period. George Burns and Gracie Allen were just getting started then. And I used to love working with the Marx Brothers. After they entered motion pictures they would go on the vaudeville circuits and try out new material, keeping the best stuff for their movies. The Three Stooges did that, too.

From backstage I watched them all, the greats of the business: Abbott and Costello, Olsen and Johnson, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Al Jolson, Thurston, tops in their fields. I loved magic. I loved magicians. I just loved being a part of show business. It was wonderful. We did two shows a day and we worked 52 weeks a year on the old Fanchon and Marco Circuit. We traveled everywhere by train. I was such a happy kid. All of this came naturally to me: the singing, the dancing, everything.

Film and Television Career

Donald O'Connor and his brothers started doing a few films where they remained uncredited. They would do acts from their vaudeville shows. But, at age 11, a talent scout noticed O'Connor and decided to cast him in films. He was very excited by this prospect, as he had a crush on the unknown Judy Garland at the time, he thought his film career would be impressive to her.

His first credited role in a film was playing next to Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners. When Mr. Crosby referred to O'Connor, he was heard saying, "Is there anything that kid can't do?" When interviewed by Irish America, O'Connor recalled his first film experience, "Bing Crosby was wonderful to me. The one thing he kept reminding me was that I didn't have to yell. I was always working to the balcony, and he told me the microphone would pick everything up, so I could calm my voice down. He was a tremendous help, very encouraging, always patting me on the back." His friendship with Bing Crosby and Judy Garland would last the rest of his life.

As a child actor, O'Connor usually played the young orphan or the troublesome kid. He gained rolls as Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer, Detective and played the young various of Beau in Beau Geste. But Donald O'Connor's film career faded in 1939 when his mother called him back to the family vaudeville show, the show had lost O'Connor's elder brother Billy to scarlet fever and O'Connor felt a responsibility to see the show through.

In 1942, O'Connor was rediscovered as an agent for Universal Pictures saw the vaudeville show and signed him up to perform with a group of young and talented teenagers known as the 'Jivin' Jacks and Jills'. During the dance numbers, O'Connor was paired with Peggy Ryan and the couple became a hit. Both went on to receive larger screen rolls. O'Connor's famed started to mount with Mister Big in 1943. But O'Connor took another leave of absence from the film world when he joined the armed forces in 1944, he gave over 3,000 performances for the troops he was with, and earned a wonderful reputation as a person and performer. Right before he left for the army, O'Connor married Gwen Carter (who was only 17 years old) on February 7th 1944. The marriage lasted ten years and resulted in one daughter, Donna.

O'Connor worked non-stop in movies and television upon his return to show business. In 1949 he was given the leading role in Francis and it proved so successful that Universal made six more of the films, all starring O'Connor. It was from working on these films that O'Connor contracted Q Fever, a disease spread by ticks living on cattle and other animals. He became so sick with Q Fever, that he had to pass on playing Bing Crosby's sidekick in White Christmas. O'Connor was devastated, all of the dance numbers had been written for him, and the part eventually went to Danny Kaye. O'Connor garnered the most acclaim for his role in the 1951 blockbuster, Singin' in the Rain, as well as a place in film history. His character didn't have a solo, and when someone suggested the newly written song, Make 'Em Laugh, O'Connor took it and made it his own. Gene Kelly was responsible for all of the choreography of the film, except that number, which he said was all Donald's doing. The filming was exhausting, and after performing it, O'Connor needed three days of bed rest. When he came back to work, he learned that the camera had been out of focus and that he would have to do it all over again. Although it was well known that Gene Kelly was a tyrant on set, O'Connor never said anything unkind about him, simply stating, "It's not easy working with a genius - but Gene was very patient with me."

O'Connor continued to make movies, appearances, and work in television. He received an Emmy nomination for his work as host on NBC's popular Colgate Comedy Hour in the 1950s. He also had a short-lived television series during the late 1960s. In 1956, two years after his divorce, he married again to Gloria Noble, the couple had three children together and were married for the rest of O'Connor's life. During the 1970s, O'Connor worked on overcoming his alcoholism, and with his recovery he made a brilliant and notable comeback as a gaslight-era entertainer in the 1981 film Ragtime. O'Connor also appeared in the short-lived Bring Back Birdie on Broadway in 1981, and continued to make film and television appearances into the 1990s.

Donald O'Connor's last feature film was the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau comedy Out to Sea. In the film, O'Connor played an aged dance host on the cruise ship. He continued to make public appearance well into 2003, and had his last interview shortly before his death.

Death

On September 27, 2003, Donald O'Connor died from congestive heart failure at the age of 78. Besides his widow, Gloria (whom he married in 1956), and daughter Alicia (born in 1957), O'Connor is survived by another daughter, Donna (born in 1945 to O'Connor and his first wife, Gwen Carter, to whom he was married from 1944-54), and two sons, Donald (born in 1960) and Kevin (born in 1961). His family reported that some of his last words he jokingly said was to have expressed tongue-in-cheek thanks for the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement that he expected to win at some future date.

Donald O’Connor was cremated at the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

• It Can't Last Forever (1937)
• Men with Wings (1938)
• Sing You Sinners (film)|Sing You Sinners]] (1938)
• Sons of the Legion (1938)
• Tom Sawyer, Detective (1938)
• Boy Trouble (1939)
• Unmarried (1939)
• Million Dollar Legs (1939)
• Beau Geste (1939)
• Night Work (1939)
• Death of a Champion (1939)
• On Your Toes (1939)
• What's Cookin'? (1942)
• Private Buckaroo (1942)
• Give Out, Sisters (1942)
• Get Hep to Love (1942)
• When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1942)
• It Comes Up Love (1943)
• Mister Big (1943)
• Top Man (1943)
• Chip Off the Old Block (1944)
• Follow the Boys (1944)
• This Is the Life (1944)
• The Merry Monahans (1944)
• Bowery to Broadway (1944)
• Patrick the Great (1945)
• Something in the Wind (1947)
• Are You with It? (1948)
• Feudin', Fussin', and A-Fightin' (1948)
• Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc. (1949) (short subject)
• Yes Sir That's My Baby (1949)
• Francis the Talking Mule (1950)
• Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950)
• The Milkman (1950)
• Double Crossbones (1951)
• Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
• Singin' in the Rain (1952)
• Francis Goes to West Point (1952)
• I Love Melvin (1953)
• Call Me Madam (1953)
• Francis Covers the Big Town (1953)
• Walking My Baby Back Home (1953)
• Francis Joins the WACs (1954)
• There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
• Francis in the Navy (1955)
• Anything Goes (1956)
• The Buster Keaton Story (1957)
• Cry for Happy (1961)
• The Wonders of Aladdin (1961)
• That Funny Feeling (1965)
• Just One More Time (1974) (short subject)
• That's Entertainment! (1974)
• Ragtime (1981)
• Pandemonium (1982)
• A Time to Remember (1987)
• Toys (1992)
• Father Frost (1996)
• Out to Sea (1997)

TV Work

• as a Producer - Milton Berle Show - 1948
• as a director - one episode of Petticoat Junction - 1964
• as an actor
  • Colgate Comedy Hour - 1953-54
  • Bell Telephone Hour - 1964-66
  • Donald O'Connor Show - 1968
  • Love Boat - 1981-84 :)
  • Many single episodes from 1966 to 1996

External links

• "Home Page", Donald O'Connor, Retrieved May 31, 2007.
• "Donald O'Connor", IMDb, Retrieved May 31, 2007.
• "An Interview with Donald O'Connor", The DanceView Times, Retrieved May 31, 2007.
• Murray, Tracy and Teresa. 2004. Donald O'Connor: The Man, The Myth, The Legend Eviltwinltd.com. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
• "Donald O'Connor", Find a Grave, Retrieved May 31, 2007.
• "Film-shots", Reel Classics, Retrieved May 31, 2007.

Preceded by: Bob Hope and Conrad Nagel 25th Academy Awards

Oscars host 26th Academy Awards (with Fredric March)

Succeeded by: Bob Hope and Thelma Ritter 27th Academy Awards

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Donald O'Connor  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Donald O'Connor"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.