A weekly feature in which my four-year-old son is let loose on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles, and chooses a star from among the more than 2,500 honorees. His “random” picks sometimes reveal unexplained connections such as the summer day in 2012 when he sat down on the star of actress Celeste Holm and refused to budge. We later learned that the Oscar-winning actress had died only hours earlier.
It’s sad to realize how many people there are who were once enormous stars in this town but are completely forgotten today. Charlie seems determined lately to recognize some of the former greats who have been consigned to oblivion. Last week he chose Frank Fay, at one time the highest-paid vaudeville headliner in the country who is now mostly known (if at all) for being Barbara Stanwyck’s first husband and the model for the washed-up star Norman Maine in A Star Is Born. This week Charlie made a beeline for the star of actor Eugene O’Brien, the Brad Pitt of his day, who starred opposite some of the most celebrated actresses of the silent era and received thousands of letters from girls every week before walking away from it all when talkies came in.
Born on November 14, 1880, in Boulder, Colorado, Eugene O’Brien was on track to become a doctor when he started appearing in local stage productions and caught the acting bug. To his family’s horror, he chucked medical school and hightailed it to New York, starting in musical revues and eventually catching the attention of famed theater producer Charles Frohman who put him in a play called The Builder of Bridges in 1909. But it was O’Brien’s next play, Pinero’s Trelawny of the “Wells,” that catapulted the young actor to fame when he starred opposite the great Ethel Barrymore. Lured to Hollywood, O’Brien became one of the most sought-after matinee idols in the movies, especially when he made a series of film with silent screen goddess Norma Talmadge. The handsome actor began a very close off-screen relationship with Talmadge as well that, surprisingly, did not incur the wrath of her notoriously jealous husband, movie pioneer Joseph Schenk. The reason? One of the most open “secrets” in Hollywood: Eugene O’Brien was gay.
I read dozens of articles about O’Brien from that era and the focus of every single one of them seemed to be the actor’s marital status and the fact that he didn’t seem interested in settling down. “I don’t believe Eugene O’Brien has matrimonial intentions,” one magazine reporter advised hopeful young women, “but you might write and send your photo to make an application.”
In addition to Talmadge, O’Brien was soon teamed with all of the leading ladies of the day, from Mary Pickford to Gloria Swanson. His films include The Moonstone (1915), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Is Life Worth Living? (1921) and Dangerous Innocence (1925). His last movie appearance was in a 1928 film called Faithless Lover. Eugene was 47 when he decided to retire from the screen. He’d been the leading man in nearly all of the 50-plus films he made during his career,
While O’Brien managed to survive the thousands of marriage proposals he received weekly from his rabid fans, in 1922, he was involved in a scandalous lawsuit brought against him by a 16-year-old actress who claimed the actor had taken advantage of her. But O’Brien’s obvious homosexuality worked in his favor. “Eugene O’Brien, idol of a million or so worshipful girl movie fans, he of the curly hair and grand manner, the screen personification of handsome manhood, walked smiling into a critical situation in the drama of real life today,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, “and he came out still smiling and victorious at upholding his honor as if it had all worked out according to the plan of a scenario writer.” After the girl claimed the two “became intimate” at Selznick Studios, O’Brien told his side of the story “to be held in confidence” and the matter was dismissed. Following his retirement, O’Brien told a reporter that he loved his new life since he could do whatever he wanted to do whenever he wanted. He emphasized that he never got married because women were too possessive, declaring that he was “untroubled by girls and was reveling in athletics, gardening, and most of all in bachelorhood.” Eugene O’Brien died on April 29, 1966, at the age of 85.