From the current SUMMER 2026 Issue

Radio, television, Westerns, Shakespeare:
How EDMOND O'BRIEN's career was much more than film noir

MAN IN THE DARK

By Stone Wallace

The Golden Age of Entertainment saw a number of performers who became famous for a certain type of character or film. As a result, when we look back on their work, it’s through the filter of very specific criteria. Such criteria shouldn’t obscure the fact that to be good in any one genre, one had to be a pretty good actor in many of them.

Take Edmond O’Brien. Today, he’s remembered as a major presence in the genre known as film noir. Throughout the late ‘40s into the mid-1950s, O’Brien appeared in a number of classic noirs, playing a variety of intense roles. These included a tragic victim of circumstance (D.O.A.), a self-serving criminal (711 Ocean Drive) and a vicious Prohibition-era gangster (Pete Kelly’s Blues).

Despite his prominence in the field of noir and crime movies, O’Brien is rarely spoken of in the same breath as such noir heavyweights as Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart or Burt Lancaster. Even though he headlined many movies in and out of the genre, he was regarded more as a character actor than a “star.” He wasn’t a physically unattractive man but neither could he be considered a matinee idol; he tended toward the heavy, with features that grew more jowly as he aged.

Still, what he may have lacked in leading-man-looks he made up for in talent and versatility. Regardless of whether he was playing a (usually flawed or vulnerable) hero or a ruthless villain, the one quality O’Brien exemplified on screen was believability.

Even if the roles were somewhat exaggerated, he never came across as a cinematic caricature. Each of his performances was an effective display of human qualities and emotions to which audiences could relate. As O’Brien noted in a 1963 interview, “I’ve never made any kind of personality success. People never say ‘That’s an Eddie O’Brien part.’ They say, ‘That’s a part Eddie O’Brien can play.’”

Eamon Joseph O’Brien was born on September 10, 1915, the youngest of seven children born to Agnes and James O’Brien (who died when Eamon was 4). At a young age, O’Brien demonstrated a love of performing by putting on magic shows for neighborhood kids, using the name “Neirbo the Great” (a reversal of his surname). O’Brien claimed that he was tutored in the art of magic by neighbor Harry Houdini, who taught him “a few of the easier tricks in his bag of magic.”

O’Brien credited an aunt who took him to the theater at an early age for stimulating an interest in acting. He transferred his interest in performing magic to performing in plays at school.

He briefly attended Fordham University as a drama major but dropped out to accept a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. He studied there for two years under renowned teachers (including the legendary Sanford Meisner) and took classes with Columbia Laboratory Group, which emphasized training in Shakespeare.

Appropriately, Shakespeare provided O’Brien with his first professional acting credit; in 1936, the 21-year-old played the grave digger in John Gielgud’s critically lauded production of Hamlet. Before the 1930s were done, he had appeared in Orson Welles’ modern-dress version of Julius Caesar and played the tragic Mercutio (opposite Laurence Olivier’s Romeo) in the Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet.

His theater work soon attracted the attention of RKO producer Pandro Berman. Berman put him to work as Gringoire, the dashing, romantic lead in Charles Laughton’s 1939 remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The film’s success led to a long-term contract at RKO, where O’Brien appeared in several films produced by comedy legend Harold Lloyd.

The films that followed may have been forgettable, although O’Brien got to display his skill at comedy in A Guy, a Girl and a Gob (with Lucille Ball) and Obliging Young Lady. Universal bought out his contract in 1942 but after appearing with Deanna Durbin (in another mediocre effort, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday), O’Brien left to join the Army Air Force.

Although O’Brien was ostensibly in the military, his acting experience came in handy when Moss Hart wrote Winged Victory, a play about the Air Forces with a cast that included O’Brien, Pvts. Red Button, Lee J. Cobb, John Forsythe and Karl Malden and Sgt. Peter Lind Hayes. In an effort to raise money for the Army Emergency Relief Fund, Winged Victory played on Broadway for 226 performances and enjoyed a successful tour. O’Brien (now a Sergeant) reprised his role of trainee Irvin Miller when the popular play was filmed in 1944.

When the war ended, O’Brien returned to Hollywood, no longer the slim leading man he’d been in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He’d gained weight and his formerly youthful face now displayed a heavier, harder look and a touch of cynicism – which served him well as he made his entry into the emerging realm of film noir.

His first such effort was The Killers, based on Ernest Hemingway’s short story. Mark Hellinger’s production featured O’Brien as insurance investigator Jim Riordan, a character added to the cast to flesh out the plot and ultimately solve the mystery of a murdered ex-boxer (Burt Lancaster) and a missing cache of stolen money.

O’Brien’s credits at Universal included Another Part of the Forest (a prequel to Lillian Hellman’s play The Little Foxes), a comedy with a now-grown-up Deanna Durbin (For the Love of Mary) and the noir dramas A Double Life and An Act of Murder. The former saw O’Brien as a press agent whose actor client (Ronald Colman) lets his performance as Othello creep into his personal life; in the latter, he played an attorney who clashed with an inflexible judge (played by Fredric March).

In late 1948, O’Brien signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. and starred in the wartime drama Fighter Squadron before adding to his film noir resume with White Heat. This 1949 offering saw O’Brien going undercover as treasury agent Hank Fallon (alias convict Vic Pardo) in order to get the goods on Cody Jarrett, a murderous psychopathic gang leader (played to perfection by James Cagney).

That same year, O’Brien landed a starring role in another film noir classic, D.O.A. Here, the actor plays Frank Bigelow, an accountant on vacation who is fatally poisoned and desperately tries to discover the culprit — and the motive — in the short time remaining to him. The film is considered one of the best crime noirs and helped to solidify O’Brien as one of the genre’s major players.

Before the year was out, O’Brien received an unusual honor when members of the Young Women’s League of America voted that the actor had more “male magnetism” than any other male in America today.

O’Brien got to be a romantic lead in the 1950 comedy, The Admiral Was a Lady, where he played an ex-GI who shows a former WAVE ensign (Wanda Hendrix) how he and his pals live on their $20 unemployment checks. Otherwise, there were more offerings in the field of crime, including Between Midnight and Dawn, with O’Brien as a police officer whose partner (Mark Stevens) is killed by a racketeer.

There were also movies that featured O’Brien’s voice rather than his face. In 1949, he was heard in Task Force as a radio voice announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; later that year, he provided the narration for Alfred Hitchcock’s historical drama, Under Capricorn.

O’Brien was familiar with the idea of voice-acting thanks to radio; in the 1930s, he was appearing in small roles on soap operas like John’s Other Wife and Valiant Lady, as well as anthology series like Adventures in Reading and Arch Oboler’s Plays. He even worked with Welles on the wartime series Hello Americans.

“There were a handful of us who did all the radio in New York,” he recalled later. “Orson, Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, Agnes Moorehead, Joe Cotten, Everett Sloane. Three of us could do each other’s voices.”

After O’Brien had become a full-fledged noir star, he was a natural choice to star in a relatively new radio series, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. During its 13-year run (1949-62), the show featured six different actors in the title role; from 1950-52, O’Brien became the second one to play the insurance investigator with “the action-packed expense account.”

As the original Dollar, Charles Russell had played Dollar as a flip, breezy character, one prone to a wisecrack no matter how dire the situation. By contrast, O’Brien’s Dollar was all business; although he could display a deadpan sense of humor, he tended to cut right to the chase during the course of an investigation — and he wasn’t afraid to get tough when the situation demanded it. (Five years after leaving the show, O’Brien put his voice to work again on a commercial recording of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.)

With the 1950s, O’Brien also begun making inroads into television, beginning with the Pulitzer Prize Playhouse and continuing with Robert Montgomery Presents, Ford Television Theater, Climax!, Damon Runyon Theater and Zane Grey Theatre. He even made a guest appearance as a grizzled old prospector on The Red Skelton Show.

He also made three appearances on the ambitious anthology series Playhouse 90, most notably in 1957’s “The Comedian,” a story written by Rod Serling and directed by John Frankenheimer. The story features O’Brien as Al Preston, the long-suffering head writer for a vicious and insecure television comedy star, played by Mickey Rooney. In an effort to keep his job, Preston steals material from a writer who died in World War II, only to be fired after confessing to the theft. It was clear O’Brien enjoyed his craft and kept active at it, regardless of the medium.

Of course, there were more movies during this period, including more excursions into noir: Two of a Kind, The Turning Point, Shield For Murder (which he co-directed) and Man in the Dark. The latter was a 3-D remake of the 1936 film The Man Who Lived Twice, with O’Brien as a criminal who undergoes a brain operation that removes all the memories of his past life. Trouble arises, however, when his old gang shows up, demanding to know where he hid the money from a factory payroll robbery.

There were also two memorable dramas directed by actress Ida Lupino, The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker. The latter was a tense tale of two men (O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy) whose fishing trip is interrupted by an escaped killer (William Talman). “I seldom get far away from crime,” O’Brien admitted at one point. “I’ve found it pays.”

Luckily, he had at least some chances to break the mold: In 1953, he finally got the opportunity to perform Shakespeare on the screen with Julius Caesar, an all-star affair in which he played Casca the conspirator. One of O’Brien’s more uncharacteristic roles was that of Winston Smith in the screen adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. The picture itself was not critically lauded, but New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote “Mr. O’Brien wins genuine sympathy.”

One of his less successful attempts to alter his screen image was the 1953 western Cow Country. While O’Brien would later create two very memorable Western characters suited to his by-then aged and irascible image, he was not convincing as the cowboy hero in this production and the film itself was as uninspired as its title.

A year later, he found material more suited to his talent when he was cast in Joseph Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa. The film follows the career of a young Italian woman (Ava Gardner) who becomes a movie star with the help of a sympathetic director (Humphrey Bogart) and publicist Oscar Muldoon (played by O’Brien). The movie not only gave O’Brien a reprieve from film noir but also garnered him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Even so, noir continued to follow him, with roles in Pete Kelly’s Blues (as the racketeer who threatens bandleader Jack Webb) and A Cry in the Night (as the police captain out to nab kidnapper Raymond Burr). One refreshing change of pace came when director Frank Tashlin cast O’Brien in the 1956 musical comedy, The Girl Can’t Help It, the film that brought numerous rock & roll legends (including Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and The Platters) to the big screen in “gorgeous, life-like color by Deluxe.”

Girl featured O’Brien as Marty “Fats” Murdock, a one-time slot-machine kingpin who gets out of prison and wants to make his girlfriend (Jayne Mansfield) into a singing star. For the film’s hilarious climax, press agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell), trying to save Murdock from a rival gangster, pushes him onto the stage… whereupon Murdock becomes a star by singing his own composition, “Rock Around the Rockpile.”

As movie roles dwindled in the late 1950s, O’Brien turned to television once more. Anthology series were on their way out, but he got to direct the story “The Town That Slept with the Lights On” (written by his brother Liam) for the Schlitz Playhouse. This story also featured O’Brien as a newspaper reporter who visits a town that has been rocked by two recent murders.

O’Brien spent more time on television in the 1960s, actually starring on three short-lived series. After dropping 50 lbs., he played the titular character in Johnny Midnight, a syndicated 1960 crime drama which featured O’Brien as a former New York actor turned private detective. He returned to television in 1962 for Sam Benedict, playing an attorney with a penchant for helping those in need. In 1965, he was cast as unscrupulous banker Will Varner on the television version of The Long Hot Summer, but left after 13 weeks following a disagreement with the producers.

As the decade progressed, O’Brien recognized he was no longer a leading man and he settled more firmly into character roles, while also taking a stab at directing with the 1961 noir thriller Man-Trap. He was cast in a number of high-quality films, playing strong supporting roles. He had planned to play reporter Jackson Bentley in Lawrence of Arabia until a heart attack forced him to bow out. It was a choice role in a big-budget epic and a disappointment to lose it.

Thankfully, he recovered and was featured in other A-list productions (albeit in smaller roles), including The Longest Day and The Birdman of Alcatraz. He was especially effective (and almost unrecognizable) as Dutton Peabody, the grizzled, whiskey-voiced frontier newspaper publisher in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In 1964, O’Brien received another Oscar nomination (and won a Golden Globe Award) for his role as an alcoholic senator in the political thriller Seven Days in May. Two years later, he entered the realm of science fiction, playing General Carter in the popular microscopic fantasy film Fantastic Voyage.

Perhaps his best film during this time was The Wild Bunch, director Sam Peckinpah’s groundbreaking western of a 1913 outlaw gang looking for one last big robbery. O’Brien played Freddy Sykes, who accompanies the gang to Mexico and turns out to be one of the two survivors following the climactic carnage. Despite its graphic blood-spurting violence, The Wild Bunch was one of the highest grossing films of 1969. “Mr. O’Brien is a special shock,” wrote New York Times critic Vincent Canby, “looking like an evil Gabby Hayes, a foul-mouthed, cackling old man…”

At the same time, O’Brien continued to appear on television, mostly in guest-starring roles. However, there was one telefilm that achieved a certain and unexpected notoriety: The Doomsday Flight. Written by Rod Serling, the play features O’Brien as a terrorist (known as “The Man”) who plants a bomb on an airline and demands a $100,000 ransom. When it aired in 1966, The Doomsday Flight was the most watched made-for-TV movie in television’s young history.

Unfortunately, the movie resulted in numerous copycats calling in real-life bomb threats and demanding ransom payments. While most were sick hoaxes, each threat had to be taken seriously. After an actual bomb threat was discovered, the Federal Aviation Administration urged U.S. television stations not to re-broadcast the film.

In 1974, O’Brien appeared in John Frankenheimer’s action/comedy misfire, 99 and 44/100% Dead, playing a crime boss whose operation is challenged by a newcomer (Bradford Dillman). That fall, he appeared in his last television role, playing a police captain on the anthology series Police Story. By this time, O’Brien was nearly 60 and had been battling health issues for years — including one that was beginning to take a real toll.

As early as 1953, it was suspected that O’Brien might be having difficulties both with his eyesight and, more significantly, his memory. Director Don Siegel recalled a time when, during the making of the film China Venture, he discovered the accomplished actor seated in his trailer having someone feed him his lines and stage directions immediately before reporting to the set so he wouldn’t forget them.

O’Brien was, in his words, “a substantial Irish drinker,” and when he reunited with Welles in 1974 to shoot a scene for Orson’s film The Other Side of the Wind (a film that was finally released in 2018), the crew assumed O’Brien’s erratic behavior was the result of alcohol. In fact, the actor was beginning a slow decline into dementia, due to Alzheimer’s Disease. “I used to be the fastest study in this town,” O’Brien complained to his son Brendan, “and now I can’t remember my own name.”

O’Brien’s last years were trying for everyone involved; his daughter Maria recalled seeing him at a Veterans’ Administration hospital and “noticing how thin he’d gotten. We didn’t know, because for years he’d been sleeping with all his clothes on. We saw him a little later and he was walking around like all the other lost souls there.”

Edmond O’Brien was 69 when he died at St. Erne’s Sanatorium on May 9, 1985. He was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. Although we can lament that he left us far too soon, Edmond O’Brien the actor is remembered as a consummate professional, dedicated to his craft. His talent and versatility took him to roles that ranged from the gritty to the classical; in the process, he enhanced many a production.

“I’d like to be able to say something important,” O’Brien told an interviewer as he reflected on his career, “to say something to people about their relationship with each other. If it touches just one guy, helps illustrate some points of view about living, then you’ve accomplished something.”

Looking back at Edmond O’Brien’s body of work, one could truthfully say: mission accomplished.

To hear Edmond O'Brien on radio, tune in to Those Were the Days on August 1 and to Radio's Golden Age on August 16.

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