Edmond O'Brien

Was cast in Black Christmas (1974) as Lt. Kenneth Fuller, but the part was recast with John Saxon because of O'Brien's poor health. He was rumored to be suffering from Alzheimers.

He also appeared as crusty old-timer 'Freddy Sykes', who antagonizes Ben Johnson's character 'Tector Gorch' in director Sam Peckinpah's classic Western, The Wild Bunch (1969).

O'Brien was originally cast as the photo-journalist Jackson Bentley (based on Lowell Thomas) in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). After O'Brien filmed several scenes, he suffered a heart attack and had to drop out of the picture. He was replaced by Arthur Kennedy.

Increasingly, O'Brien appeared on television in the 1960s and '70s, but managed a turn in his old boss Welles' unfinished film, The Other Side of the Wind (2018). He married and divorced actresses Nancy Kelly and Olga San Juan, the latter being the mother of his three children, including actors Maria O'Brien and Brendan O'Brien.

He appeared in two films that depicted the Normandy landings on 6/6/44: D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) and The Longest Day (1962). D-Day veteran Richard Todd also appeared in both films.

O'Brien won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and also received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role as a drunken senator who ferrets out an attempted coup d'etat in Seven Days in May (1964).

Mankiewicz's film of the play, Julius Caesar (1953).

Appeared in three Oscar Best Picture nominees: Greatest Show On Earth (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and The Longest Day (1962). Only the first of these won.

A (1949).

He appeared in six films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Killers (1946), White Heat (1949), D.O.A (1949), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and The Wild Bunch (1969).

Oscar-winner Edmond O'Brien was one of the most respected character actors in American cinema, from his heyday of the mid-1940s through the late 1960s.

Four years later, he would play 'Mercutio' to the 'Romeo' of another legendary Shakespearean, Laurence Olivier, in Olivier's 1940 Brodway production of "Romeo & Juliet". O'Brien worked with another magician, Orson Welles, in the Mercury Theater's production of "Julius Caesar", appearing as 'Mark Antony'. He would later play 'Casca' in Joseph L.

Berman, who brought him to Hollywood to appear in the plum supporting part of 'Gringoire' in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), which starred Charles Laughton in the title role. After returning from his wartime service with the Army Air Force, O'Brien built up a distinguished career as a supporting actor in A-list films, and as an occasional character lead, such as in D. O.

Although it has been stated that he made his debut as an uncredited extra in the 1938 film, Prison Break (1938), the truth is that his stage work impressed RKO boss Pandro S.

He made his Broadway debut at the age of 21 in 1936 and, later that year, played "The Gravedigger" in the great Shakespearean actor John Gielgud's legendary production of "Hamlet".

Born on September 10, 1915, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, O'Brien learned the craft of performance as a magician, reportedly tutored by neighbor Harry Houdini. He took part in student theatrics in high school and majored in drama at Fordham University, dropping out after six months.