Life and career

She was born Angela Maxine O'Brien; her name was later changed to Margaret following the success of the film Journey for Margaret, in which she played the title role. Her father, Lawrence O'Brien, a circus performer, died before she was born. O'Brien's mother, Gladys Flores, was a well-known flamenco dancer who often performed with her sister Marissa, also a dancer. O'Brien is of half-Irish and half-Spanish ancestry.

Film

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. Also In 1943, at the age of seven, Margaret co-starred in, "You, John Jones," a "War Bond/Effort," short film, with, James Cagney and Ann Sothern, (playing their daughter), in which she wonderfully and dramatically recited President Lincoln's, "Gettysburg Address!"

She played Adèle, 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. As she told the true story on a Turner Classic Movie special, Margaret was known as one of "the Best Cryers" on M.G.M.'s lot, but she was having a tough time crying, so to get Margaret to cry during a crucial emotional scene in the movie, her mother told her that "June Allyson, (another one of M.G.M.'s Best Cryers), is a better cryer than you!!" No Surprise, she cried, and was wonderful in the role of "Tootie!"

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), Bad Bascomb (1946) with Wallace Beery, and the first sound version of The Secret Garden (1949). She played Beth in the 1949 release of the MGM movie, Little Women, but she was unable to make the transition to adult roles.

O'Brien 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.

Television

O'Brien gave television credit for helping her to change her public image. In an interview in 1957, when she was 19, she said: "The wonderful thing about TV is that it has given me a chance to get out of the awkward age -- something the movies couldn't do for me. No movie producer could really afford to take a chance at handing me an adult role."

On December 22, 1957, O'Brien starred in "The Young Years" on General Electric Theater. She played the role of Betsy Stauffer, a small town nurse, in "The Incident of the Town in Terror" on television's Rawhide. She made a guest appearance on a 1963 episode of Perry Mason as Virginia Trent in "The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe." Also, in a 1968 2Pt. episode of "Ironside," ("Split Second to an Epitaph," O'Brien played a pharmacist, (quite the opposite of her usual screen persona), involved in drug theft, and accessory to attempted murder of star, Raymond Burr's, "Ironside!" Another rare television outing was as a guest star on the popular Marcus Welby, M.D. in the early 1970s, reuniting O'Brien with her Journey For Margaret and The Canterville Ghost co-star Robert Young.

In 1991, O'Brien appeared in Murder She Wrote, season 7, episode "Who Killed JB Fletcher?".

Academy Award

Growing up, O'Brien's awards were always kept in a special room. One day in 1954, the family's maid asked to take O'Brien's Juvenile Oscar and two other awards home with her to polish, as she had done in the past. After three days, the maid failed to return to work, prompting O'Brien's mother to discharge her, requesting that the awards be returned. Not long after, O'Brien's mother, who had been sick with a heart condition, suffered a relapse and died. In mourning, 17-year-old O'Brien forgot about the maid and the Oscar until several months later when she tried to contact her, only to find that the maid had moved and had left no forwarding address.

Several years later, upon learning that the original had been stolen, the Academy promptly supplied O'Brien with a replacement Oscar, but O'Brien still held on to hope that she might one day recover her original Award. In the years that followed, O'Brien attended memorabilia shows and searched antique shops, hoping she might find the original statuette, until one day in 1995 when Bruce Davis, then executive director of the Academy, was alerted that a miniature statuette bearing O'Brien's name had surfaced in a catalogue for an upcoming memorabilia auction. Davis contacted a mutual friend of his and O'Brien's, who in turn phoned O'Brien to tell her the long-lost Oscar had been found.

Memorabilia collectors Steve Neimand and Mark Nash were attending a flea market in 1995 when Neimand spotted a small Oscar with Margaret O'Brien's name inscribed upon it. The two men decided to split the $500 asking price hoping to resell it at a profit and lent it to a photographer to shoot for an upcoming auction catalogue. This led to Bruce Davis' discovery that the statuette had resurfaced and, upon learning of the award's history, Nash and Neimand agreed to return the Oscar to O'Brien. On February 7, 1995, almost fifty years after she'd first received it, the Academy held a special ceremony in Beverly Hills to return the stolen award to O’Brien. Upon being reunited with her Juvenile Oscar, Margaret O'Brien told the attending journalists:

“For all those people who have lost or misplaced something that was dear to them, as I have, never give up the dream of searching - never let go of the hope that you’ll find it because after all these many years, at last, my Oscar has been returned to me.”

Additional honors

In February 1960, O'Brien was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6606 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for television at 1634 Vine St. In 1990, O'Brien was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star "Lifetime Achievement" Award recognizing her outstanding achievements within the film industry as a child actress. In 2006, she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the SunDeis Film Festival at Brandeis University.

Personal life

She has been married twice, to Harold Allen, Jr. from 1959 to 1968, and later to Roy Thorsen. The latter marriage produced her only child, Mara Tolene Thorsen, born in 1977.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1941	Babes on Broadway	Maxine, Little Girl at Audition	uncredited
1942	Journey for Margaret	Margaret White
1943	You, John Jones!	Their daughter	short subject
	Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case	Margaret
	Thousands Cheer	Customer in Red Skelton Skit
	Madame Curie	Irene Curie (at age 5)
	Lost Angel	Alpha
1944	Jane Eyre	Adèle Varens
	The Canterville Ghost	Lady Jessica de Canterville
	Meet Me in St. Louis	'Tootie' Smith	Academy Juvenile Award
	Music for Millions	Mike
1945	Our Vines Have Tender Grapes	Selma Jacobson
1946	Bad Bascomb	Emmy
	Three Wise Fools	Sheila O'Monahan
1947	The Unfinished Dance	'Meg' Merlin
1948	Big City	Midge
	Tenth Avenue Angel	Flavia Mills
1949	Little Women	Beth March
	The Secret Garden	Mary Lennox
1951	Her First Romance	Betty Foster
1952	Futari no hitomi	Katherine McDermott	Girls Hand in Hand US title
1956	Glory	Clarabel Tilbee
1960	Heller in Pink Tights	Della Southby
1963	Perry Mason (TV series)	Virginia Trent	The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe; Season 6, Ep. 13, aired Jan. 3, 1963
1965	Agente S 3 S operazione Uranio
1974	Annabelle Lee
1974	Diabolique Wedding		aka Diabolic Wedding
	That's Entertainment!	Herself and archive footage
1977	Testimony of Two Men	Flora Eaton	Television miniseries
1981	Amy	Hazel Johnson	aka Amy on the Lips
1996	Sunset After Dark
1998	Creaturealm: From the Dead	Herself	segment Hollywood Mortuary
2000	Child Stars: Their Story	Herself	aka Child Stars
2002	Dead Season	Friendly Looking Lady
2004	The Mystery of Natalie Wood	Herself
2005	Boxes	Herself	short subject
2006	Store	Herself
2009	Dead in Love	Cris
2009-2011	Project Lodestar Sagas	Livia Wells

Awards

Year	Award	Honor	Result	Ref.
1945	Academy Award	Juvenile Award for Outstanding Child Actress of 1944	Honored
1960	Hollywood Walk of Fame	Star of Motion Pictures - 6606 Hollywood Blvd.	Inducted
		Star of Television - 1634 Vine Street.	Inducted
1990	Young Artist Award	Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award	Honored

Box Office Ranking

For a time O'Brien was voted by exhibitors as among the most popular stars in the country.

• 1945 - 9th
• 1946 - 8th
• 1947 - 19th

Radio appearances

Margaret O'Brien dramatized many radio plays and appeared on several radio shows, including:

Year	Program	Episode	Airdate	Writer (original story)	Character Role	Notes	mp3
1943	The Screen Guild Theater	"Journey for Margaret"	5 April 1943	William Lindsay White	Margaret Davis (girl)	The Lady Esther Presents The Screen Guild Players. Related movie: Journey for Margaret.	mp3
1947	Philco Radio Time (with Bing Crosby)		28 May 1947		self (as guest)		mp3
1948	Lux Radio Theatre	"Bad Bascomb"	1 March 1948		Emmy (girl)	Western radio drama involving a Mormon emigrant wagon train. Related movie: Bad Bascomb.	mp3
1948	Philco Radio Time (with Bing Crosby)	"St. Patrick's Day Program"	17 March 1948		self (as guest)	Saint Patrick's Day special.	mp3
1948	Suspense	"The Screaming Woman"	25 November 1948	Ray Bradbury	Margaret Leary (girl)	Thanksgiving themed radio drama. Agnes Moorehead as the screaming woman. Considered one of the best episodes of Suspense and old-time radio overall.	mp3

[ Source: Wikipedia ]