Background
O’Brien, Edmond was born on September 10, 1915 in New York City. Son of James Alfred and Agnes (Baldwin) O’B.
O’Brien, Edmond was born on September 10, 1915 in New York City. Son of James Alfred and Agnes (Baldwin) O’B.
After attending Fordham University for six months, he went to Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre on a scholarship.
Twice in his career, he ventured into direction: Shield for Murder (54, codirected with Howard W. Koch) and Mantrap (61), emphatic, tabloid movies, with actors chased by boom shadows.
A stage actor, he had played with the Mercury Theater before his debut in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (39, William Dieterle). He made a few- more films and then went into the seniee. But on emerging he soon became a regular character actor: Winged Victory (44, George Cukor); the investigator in The Killers (46, Robert Siodmak); The Web (47, Michael Gordon); A Double Life (47, Cukor); Another Part of the Forest (48, Gordon); Fighter Squadron (48, Raoul Walsh); An Act of Murder (48, Gordon); the plant in White Heat (49, Walsh); 711 Ocean Drive (50, Joseph M. Newman); Between Midnight and Dawn (50, Gordon Douglas); Warpath (51, Byron Haskin); Silver City (51, Haskin); Two of a Kind (51, Henry Le\in); Denver Is Rio Grande (52, Haskin); The Turning Point (52, Dieterle); as Casca in Julius Caesar (53, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); The Hitchhiker (53, Ida Lupino); The Bigamist (53, Lupino); Broken Lance (54, Edward Dmytryk); winning the supporting actor Oscar as the press agent in The Barefoot Contessa (54, Mankiewicz); Pete Kelly’s Blues (55, Jack Webb); as Winston Smith in 1984 (56, Michael Anderson); A Cry in the Night (56, Frank Tuttle); The Girl Can't Help It (56, Frank Tashlin); The Big Land (57, Douglas); The Third Voice (59, Hubert Cornfield); Up Periscope (59, Douglas); The Last Voyage (60, Andrew Stone); The Great Imposter (60, Robert Mulligan); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (62, John Ford); Birdman of Alcatraz (62, John Frankenheimer); Seven Days in May (64, Frankenheimer); Rio Conchos (64. Douglas); The Hanged Man (64, Don Siegel); Sylvia (65, Douglas); Synanon (65, Richard Quine); Peau d’Espion (66, Edouard Molinaro); Fantastic Voyage (66, Richard Fleischer); an elderly survivor in The Wild Bunch (69, Sam Peckinpah); Lucky Luciano (73, Francisco Rosi); and .9.9 44/100% Dead (74, Frankenheimer).
Served with United States Army Air Force, World World War World War II. Member Screen Actors Guild. Screen Dirs. Guild, A.F.R.T.A.
Actors do not sweat: an interesting essay could be researched on the methods they employ to prevent it. For sweat is not glamorous—no matter that, photographically, it is just a shining. Edmond O'Brien sweated—not always, yet often enough for him to seem, in memory’s eye, always disheveled, out of breath, and aglow.
There was never a truer role for this actor than D O.A. (49, Rudolph Maté), in which an insurance salesman goes to San Francisco for the cool air and some fun, only to get fatally overheated. He is desperately energetic in D O.A., living his circumscribed life to the full, terrified of stopping, and past caring that sweat shows.
Married Olga San Juan, September 26, 1948. Children: Bridget, Maria.