O'Connor and Ryan both had cameos in Universal's all-star Follow the Boys (1944).ĭuring World War II, on his 18th birthday in August 1943, O'Connor was drafted into the United States Army. O'Connor and Ryan were in Top Man (1943), with Susanna Foster, and Chip Off the Old Block (1944), with Ann Blyth.
Dancing cactus music movie#
O'Connor's handprints in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park Universal added $50,000 to the budget and elevated the "B" movie to "A" status. He, Ryan, and the Andrews Sisters were in Private Buckaroo (1942) and Give Out, Sisters (1942) then he was co-starred opposite Universal's teenage singing star Gloria Jean in four films: Get Hep to Love (1942), When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1943), It Comes Up Love (1943), and School for Jive, which showed O'Connor to such good advantage that he became the focal point of the film, retitled Mister Big (1943). The film was popular and Universal began to develop O'Connor and Ryan as their version of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.
In 1941, O'Connor signed with Universal Pictures for $200 a week, where he began with What's Cookin'? (1942), a low-budget musical with The Andrews Sisters, Gloria Jean and Peggy Ryan. He then returned to his family act in vaudeville for two years. He went to Warner Bros to play Eddie Albert as a young boy in On Your Toes (1939).
Night Work (1939) was a sequel to Boy Trouble and O'Connor was in Death of a Champion (1939). He played Gary Cooper as a young boy in Beau Geste (1939), directed by Wellman. O'Connor was billed fourth in Million Dollar Legs (1939) with Betty Grable. O'Connor third billed in both Boy Trouble (1939) and Unmarried (1939), playing John Hartley as a young boy in the latter. He was in Sons of the Legion (1938), then had the lead in a B-picture, Tom Sawyer, Detective (1938), playing Huckleberry Finn opposite Billy Cook's Tom Sawyer. He was billed fifth in Sing You Sinners (1938) playing Bing Crosby's and MacMurray's younger brother. He appeared in Men with Wings (1938), directed by William Wellman, as Fred MacMurray's character as a boy. He was also in Columbia's It Can't Last Forever (1937). O'Connor began performing in movies in 1937, making his debut aged 11 in Melody for Two appearing with his family act. And that's quite old for someone to start dancing real heavy, professionally." At the age of 15 - from 15 on, I really had to learn to dance. I couldn't pick up routines because I didn't have any formal training. So, when I went into movies and started working with all those great dancers, I had a terrible time. I looked like the world's greatest dancer. He later said, "I learned two dance routines. When they were not touring they stayed with O'Connor's Uncle Bill in Danville, Illinois. The live audiences created a certain spontaneity." "We really didn't have a choice if you were in the family you appeared in the act. "Our entire family composed an act", he says. They toured the country doing singing, dancing, comedy, and acting. They were billed as the O'Connor Family, the Royal Family of Vaudeville. O'Connor joined a dance act with his mother and elder brother Jack.
She did her best." Career O'Connor Family O'Connor later said regarding Effie, "She wanted me to be as great as I possibly could be. She was a typical stage mother, often striking him. Effie also stopped O'Connor from learning hazardous dance routines, and made sure she always knew where he was when he wasn't performing. O'Connor's mother was extremely possessive of her youngest son due to these traumas, not allowing him to cross the street on his own until he turned 13. O'Connor said the tragedies "marred my childhood and it's still haunting." His three other siblings died during childbirth.
His brother Billy died a decade later from scarlet fever and his eldest sibling Jack died from alcoholism in 1959. A few weeks later, his father died of a heart attack while dancing on stage in Brockton, Massachusetts. When O'Connor was only two years old, he and his seven-year-old sister, Arlene, were hit by a car while crossing the street outside a theater in Hartford, Connecticut Donald survived, but his sister did not. You could do that with any kid, only I got paid for it." O'Connor later said, "I was about 13 months old, they tell me, when I first started dancing, and they'd hold me up by the back of my neck and they'd start the music, and I'd dance. Indeed, his parents, Effie Irene (née Crane) and John Edward "Chuck" O'Connor, were vaudeville entertainers she was a bareback rider and he was a circus strongman and acrobat. Often, both of his parents struggled to remember where and when exactly O'Connor was born, due to the family's extensive travel as a Vaudeville team. Though he considered Danville, Illinois, to be his hometown, O'Connor was the 200th child born in St.
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