Results for Virginia O'Brien
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Artist:

Virginia O'Brien

Born:
Apr 18, 1919 in Los Angeles

Died:
Jan 16, 2001 in Woodland Hills, California

Similar Artists:

MGM Studio Chorus, June Allyson, Kay Armen, Marjorie Main, Avon Long, Marion Bell, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne

Performed Songs By:

Harry Warren, Johnny Mercer

Worked With:

Judy Garland
  • Birth Name: Virginia Lee O'Brien
  • Genre: Vocal Music
  • Active: '40s
  • Instrument: Vocals
  • Representative Album: "Salutes the Great MGM Musicals"

Biography

Born in Los Angeles in 1919, Virginia O'Brien was attracted to dancing at an early age after seeing several movies starring Eleanor Powell, but she ultimately became a singer. She was hired for a 1940 stage production of Meet the People (she got the gig because the director was impressed with her spot-on impersonation of Ethel Merman). Although she thought her on-stage debut was a disaster (she suffered from stage fright and sang her song with little emotion), the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Louis B. Mayer, saw the performance and saw potential in O'Brien. She was signed to a seven-year contract after only a single screen test, starring in such movies as Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, The Harvey Girls, Thousands Cheer, and Du Barry Was a Lady alongside Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Burt Lahr, the Marx Brothers, Donald O'Connor, and Red Skelton (with whom she made a total of seven films with). In just a few short years, O'Brien was one of Hollywood's top female comedic actresses.

It was her work with Garland that O'Brien is best known for, however, singing "The Wild, Wild West" (from The Harvey Girls) and "Life Upon the Wicked Stage" (from Till the Clouds Roll By) alongside Garland. Her popularity began to wane by the end of the decade, but she kept working in both nightclubs and small theater productions, as well as appearing on such popular TV talk shows with Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, and Steve Allen, as well as an appearance in movies (the 1976 Disney film Gus). One of her last appearances was in the '90s, as part of the Palm Spring Follies. On January 23, 2001, O'Brien passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 81. ~ Greg Prato, All Music Guide
 
 
Actor:

Virginia O'Brien

  • Born: Apr 08, 1921 in Los Angeles, California
  • Died: Jan 18, 2001 in Woodland Hills, California
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '40s
  • Major Genres: Musical, Comedy
  • Career Highlights: Du Barry Was a Lady, Meet the People, Merton of the Movies
  • First Major Screen Credit: Ringside Maisie (1941)

Biography

The daughter of a Los Angeles detective captain and the niece of director Lloyd Bacon, Virginia O'Brien was 17 when she made her stage debut in Meet the People. The story goes that O'Brien "froze" at the prospect of facing an audience, whereupon she rendered her song without cracking a smile, or displaying any other sort of facial expression. The audience laughed uproariously, and thereafter O'Brien became famous as the "deadpan" songstress. Signed by MGM in 1940, O'Brien appeared in several of the studio's top musicals, usually as a specialty act unrelated to the plot at hand (a prime example of this is her entertaining but totally gratuitous swing rendition of "Rock a Bye Baby" in the Marx Brothers' The Big Store). One of her few speaking parts was in support of Judy Garland and Cyd Charisse in The Harvey Girls (1948). After her MGM contract ended in 1949, O'Brien performed in night clubs, touring shows, and TV variety series. Married twice, Virginia O'Brien's first husband was Kirk Alyn, the movies' first Superman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
Wikipedia: Virginia O'Brien
Virginia O'Brien sings in Till the Clouds Roll By
Enlarge
Virginia O'Brien sings in Till the Clouds Roll By

Virginia O'Brien (born April 18, 1919 in Los Angeles, died January 16, 2001), was an American singer and actress best known for playing supporting roles in MGM musicals in the 1940s, and for her unusual singing style.

O'Brien's dark good looks belied the fact that she primarily performed comedy roles during the height of her career. This was in part due to her intentionally humorous singing style, which involved her singing with no facial expressions and very little movement - reportedly she stumbled upon this "gimmick" by accident during a stage show when she became virtually paralyzed with stage fright before singing a number. The audience found the performance to be hilarious and she was soon hired to repeat this performance in a number of movies beginning in 1940 for which she gained the nicknames "Frozen Face" and "Miss Ice Glacier" among others. It should be noted that when she wasn't singing, her acting style was just as emotive as other actresses, and she didn't always employ her gimmick when singing as evidenced by her performance in the excerpt from Show Boat in the 1946 film Till the Clouds Roll By.

Among the films she appeared in during her time at MGM were The Big Store (1941) with the Marx Brothers, Ship Ahoy (1942) with Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton, Thousands Cheer (in which she endured ribbing from Mickey Rooney about her singing style), Du Barry Was a Lady (with Skelton and Lucille Ball), The Harvey Girls (with Judy Garland) and Ziegfeld Follies. After appearing once again with Red Skelton in 1947's, Merton of the Movies, and after a guest appearance the following year in the short Musical Merry-Go-Round, O'Brien was suddenly dropped from her MGM film contract and she moved into television and back to live performances. In 1984 she created a cabaret act saluting her career with MGM and this was recorded at the Masquer's Club in Hollywood, subsequently released as a Compact Disc and then with iTunes.

She only made two film appearances after this: Francis in the Navy and the 1976 Walt Disney Studios comedy, Gus. She continued to perform well into the 1980s with both a one-woman show and a production of Show Boat.

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Copyrights:

Artist. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Actor. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Virginia O'Brien".  Read more

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