Margaret O'Brien

Margaret O'Brien
Margaret O'Brien, age 11, at Los Angeles Union Station, 1948
Born	Angela Maxine O'Brien January 15, 1937 (1937-01-15) (age 72) San Diego, California‹See Tfd›, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Harold Allen, Jr. (1959–1968) (divorced) Roy Thorsen (1974–present)

Margaret O'Brien from the trailer for Journey for Margaret (1942)

Margaret O'Brien (born January 15, 1937) is an American film actress, and although her career was brief, was one of the most highly regarded child actors in cinema history.

She was born as Angela Maxine O'Brien. Her father, a circus performer, died months after her birth; Margaret's mother, Gladys Flores, was a well-known flamenco dancer who often performed with her sister Marissa, also a dancer. Margaret 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.

Margaret 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 Margaret with her 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 later marriage produced her only child, Mara Tolene Thorsen, born in 1977.

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

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Margaret O'Brien

• Official homepage
• Margaret O'Brien at the Internet Movie Database
• Margaret O'Brien at the Internet Broadway Database