Edmond O'Brien was born September 10, 1915 (108 years ago) in Brooklyn, New York. An aunt who taught high school English and speech took him to the theatre from an early age and he developed an interest in acting. He began performing in plays at school.
O'Brien studied for two years under such teachers as Sanford Meisner. He began working in summer stock in Yonkers, NY. O'Brien made his first Broadway appearance at age 21.
His theatre work drew the attention of Hollywood. In 1939, O'Brien made his first film as the romantic lead opposite Maureen O'Hara in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Over the next 35 years O'Brien appeared in over eighty films. Among the most memorable to me were The Killers with Ava Gardner (1946), White Heat with James Cagney (1949), The Barefoot Contessa again with Ava Gardner (1954), The Man Who Shot Liberty with James Stewart (1962) and Seven Days in May with Frederick March (1964).
Edmond O'Brien won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Barefoot Contessa.
To me, his finest work was in The Killers. In 1927, Ernest Hemingway had written a short story of the same name about a gas station attendant who was killed by professional assassins who came to his small town in New Jersey. Why did they want to kill him? He said, "I did something wrong...once."
Screenwriter Anthony Veiller concocted a story for the film about what was that something wrong: The gas station attendant had been tricked into double crossing his fellow-thieves after they had committed a massive robbery. O'Brien portrayed an insurance investigator who solves the mystery of that something wrong...once.
In the late 1970s, O'Brien fell ill with Alzheimer's disease. He died from it on May 9, 1985 at the age of 69.
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