Silent Movie Star George O'Brien: A Man's Man in Hollywood

George O'Brien thrills audiences today with his signature role in F. W. Murnau's Sunrise, Michael Curtiz' Noah's Ark, and John Ford's The Iron Horse, The Blue Eagle, Salute, The Seas Beneath, Fort Apache, and Cheyenne Autumn. He was one of America's most beloved film stars.

His on-screen heroics were more than matched by his real life bravery. For the first time, the story is told how he survived the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake to grow up a superb athlete, a decorated hero in World War One, and a stunt double for film idol Rudolph Valentino. O'Brien was one of hundreds working as an assistant cameraman, extra, and bit player when he was plucked from obscurity to head the cast of John Ford's epic, The Iron Horse. They said he became a star overnight, but he had appeared in dozens of silent movies.

O'Brien's rise to the top ranks of silent films reached sublime proportions when F. W. Murnau featured him in the classic romance, Sunrise. Warner Bros. plunged him into one of the first talking pictures when director Michael Curtiz converted his silent Noah's Ark epic into sound. Many men, women, and animals were injured during the climatic flood scenes, but O'Brien lived through the deluge to become a top star for twenty years. In the 1940s, O'Brien walked away from the pinnacle of stardom to answer the call to arms and re-enlist when American entered World War Two. He actively fought in several island invasions, and when the war ended, he returned only to find that a new generation of filmgoers had grown up never having seen him in a motion picture. He succeeded with a modest comeback, but left Hollywood a second time to assist with military conflicts in Korea. When he returned to civilian life again, he briefly pioneered in early television work and lived to enjoy retrospectives of his films during the 1970s and 1980s.

This richly researched work draws from hundreds of sources, including major archives and the George O'Brien Estate. The book reveals how he was received in his time and his role in the development of motion pictures from silent to sound. George appeared in more than a hundred credited and unaccredited films, and this book reveals them with a richly researched biography, an extensive Filmography, and hundreds of rare portraits, posters, and lobby cards that capture the glamour of Hollywood's Golden Era.

This video contains excerpts from George O'Brien: A Man's Man in Hollywood, and these are used here with permission from the author and publisher, BearManor Media.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• George O'Brien
• John Ford
• John Wayne
• Sunrise
• Murnau
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
• Iron Horse
• Noah's Ark
• silent movies
• cinema
• Hollywood
• film history
• Pickford
• Chaplin
• Wallace Reid