{"id":17476,"date":"2014-12-23T16:14:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T00:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=17476"},"modified":"2014-12-23T16:24:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T00:24:23","slug":"charlies-hollywood-star-week-christmas-margaret-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/charlies-hollywood-star-week-christmas-margaret-obrien\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie\u2019s Hollywood Star-of-the-Week: Christmas with Margaret O\u2019Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"charlie-oscar2\"<\/a>A weekly feature in which my five-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 \u201crandom\u201d 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. There are five categories on the Walk of Fame: motion pictures, television, radio, music and theater but Charlie tends to favor the movies.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

With no prompting from me, Charlie settled this week on the star of one of our favorite holiday girls, Miss Margaret O\u2019Brien. Her two best films, Meet Me in St. Louis<\/em> (1944) and Little Women<\/em> (1949) are both seasonal favorites because of their homespun Christmas scenes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"journeyformargaret\"<\/a>Born on January 15, 1937, in San Diego, Angela Maxine O\u2019Brien made her first screen appearance (a bit part in the Mickey Rooney\/Judy Garland film Babes on Broadway<\/em>) when she was just four years old.\u00a0 She catapulted to fame the following year when she got the lead in W.S. Van Dyke’s\u00a0Journey for Margaret<\/em>, playing a traumatized orphan in the London blitz who walks around clutching a toy bomb as if it were her teddy bear. She is eventually adopted by American newspaperman Robert Young and his wife, Laraine Day, who lost their own unborn baby during an air raid. O\u2019Brien’s first major role provided not only a new first name but also plenty of opportunities to display what she became best known for in Hollywood: her uncanny ability to cry on command. MGM was quick to cast O\u2019Brien in a series of parts where the little tyke could sob at the drop of a hat.<\/p>\n

\"Judy-Garland-sings-Have-Yourself-a-Merry-Little-Christmas\"<\/a>Margaret bawled her way through films such as Jane Eyre, Madame Curie,<\/em> and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes<\/em> before playing one of her most popular roles, Judy Garland\u2019s youngest sister, Tootie Smith, in Vincent Minnelli\u2019s Technicolor jewel, Meet Me in St. Louis.<\/em> At seven years old, O’Brien received star billing above such pros as Mary Astor and Leon Ames and even won an honorary Oscar for the role. The absence of wartime bombs or severe family dysfunction in the story did not prevent Margaret from exhibiting her trademark tears. The film\u2019s major conflict involved Mr. Smith\u2019s decision to accept a lucrative job offer and, horror of horrors, move his family from St. Louis to New York. Realizing that she can\u2019t take her snow people with her to their new home, O\u2019Brien completely loses it and runs outside in her nightgown in the dead of winter to destroy her creations. Let\u2019s take a look at that scene which is preceded by Garland trying to comfort her little sister by singing a song that has become a perennial favorite for yuletide carolers everywhere:<\/p>\n