It was quite an achievement for character actor Frank O’Connor (1881-1959) to cram well over 650 film appearances into even a forty-year career. Add in a couple of dozen pictures he directed and seven contributions to screenplays, and you have a very busy man.
O’Connot starred in his earliest pictures, starting in 1915, but by 1921 he was pursuing a career as a director. Apparently it was an attempt to set up as a producer that ruined him financially, leading to over twenty years playing bits in hundreds of films.
But, amidst much dross, O’Connor showed up in some of Hollywood’s greatest pictures: King Kong (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Force of Evil (1948), Sunset Boulevard (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Blue Gardenia (1953). Hawks, Capra, Welles, Curtiz, Wilder, Stevens, Ford, Lang: O’Connor kept good company.
Frank O’Connor made appearances in six MGM musicals: Stage Mother, The Merry Widow, Maytime, A Day at the Races, The Girl of the Golden West and Little Nellie Kelly.
