Hollywood Goes to War: George O'Brien

On this episode of Our American Stories, George O'Brien was a Hollywood star, but he left the fame and fortune to fight for his country in WWI, WWII, and Korea! Roger McGrath is here with the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habibe and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And we love your stories, our listeners story. Send them
to our American Stories dot com. There's some of our
favorite here to tell. Another Hollywood goes to War's story
is Roger McGrath. McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen,

(00:32):
and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier. He's a US Marine
and former history professor at UCLA. McGrath has appeared on
numerous History Channel documentaries, and he's a regular contributor for
US here and Our American Story. Here's McGrath world. We're
one veteran. George O'Brien became a star in Hollywood with

(00:53):
his breakout performance as the lead in John Ford's silent
film epic The Iron Horse. Handsome and built like the
top athlete he was, O'Brien would appear in eleven more
John Ford movies and eighty five films altogether, and serve
in two more wars World War two in Korea. O'Brien

(01:13):
represented all that was best in America and in Hollywood,
which may be why he has forgotten today by a
different Hollywood and a different America. George J. O'Brien comes
into the world in the April eighteen ninety nine in
San Francisco. His father is Daniel J. O'Brien and his

(01:35):
mother the former Margaret Donahue, both born in the Irish
immigrant families. In nineteen two, Margaret gives birth to a
second son, Daniel J. O'Brian Junior, who was almost immediately
called Jack. George and Jack will be the best of buddies.
George is one day shy of his seventh birthday when

(01:59):
early on the morning of April eighteen, nineteen six, and
earthquake strikes. An earthquake unlike anything San Franciscans have ever experienced.
George and Jack are hurled out of bed and land
on the floor of fifteen feet away. Their mother looks
out the window of their two story brownstone house and

(02:21):
exclaims the street has burst open. People are running from
their houses. They're rumbling, and quaking continues for some time,
and then there is an eerie silence. By then the
O'Briens are in the street and their house is crumbling
with a low rumble. The quaking begins again. Suddenly Margaret

(02:43):
thinks of what she left behind in the house and says,
my wedding ring, I married certificate. Now, oh, Dan. The
brownstone is swaying and heaving, but Dan O'Brien goes back
into the house and retrieves the precious items. George later
describes his father as extraordinarily calm but stirred throughout the

(03:06):
earthquake and the fire that follows. George is shocked by
what he sees in the streets, Dying people half buried
in rubble and pleading for help. Familiar landmarks, obliterated corpses
in grotesque positions, gas lines exploding in balls of fire.

(03:27):
San Francisco gradually recovers from the great quake and fire
of nineteen six, and so too does the O'Brien family.
Dan becomes a policeman, first working as a patrolman at nights,
and then rapidly rising through the ranks become chief of
the San Francisco Police Department in nineteen twenty. It was

(03:51):
my luck to have a wonderful father, says George. He
knew how to manage a boy. He showed me what
was what, and then gave me my head with full
liberty to make an ass of myself if I felt
like it. His life and standards gave me plenty to
live up to. My father weighed two hundred and twenty
pounds and was six feet dall. He had been an

(04:14):
amateur boxer in his younger days, when the West Coast
was a rough and ready place. By the time George
arrives at San Francisco's Polytechnic High his physical prowess is
already well known. He becomes the star receiver on the
football team and an All state guard in basketball. He

(04:39):
also letters in track and swimming. In a spare time,
he learns to ride rope and bulldog on a family
friends ranch near Las Gavas. Many a college, especially Santa
Clara University, want George in pads on the gridiron, but
with the United States in World War One, George goes

(05:00):
to a recruiting office to join the Marines after graduation
from high school. The recruiter tells him the quota for
the Marine Corps is full at the moment, then he
will have to wait. More Impulsive than patient, George goes

(05:29):
to the Navy recruiter in an enjoining office and is
duly sworn in. George excels in training and later in
his service aboard the submarine Chaser SC three nine seven
here in several different ratings in the Navy Commendation Medal.

(05:50):
While stationed at San Diego. After the war ends, he
boxes his way through a series of bouts to become
heavyweight Champion of the Pacific Fleet. He's mustard out a
service at the end of August nineteen nineteen. And you've
been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of screen

(06:12):
star and this is back when stars were really big,
during the Silent screen era. An American film Iron Horse,
john Ford's Silent Classic while he was the star, and
many many more john Ford movies. Only John Wayne could
make the claim that George O'Brien did. Born in eighteen
ninety nine, lived through the San Francisco earthquake, and what

(06:35):
a thing as a seven year old to witness and
get through. A star athlete, and when the Marines say
no during World War One, he joins the Navy instead,
and as he leaves, he's also the heavyweight Champ of
the Pacific Fleet. When we come back more of this
remarkable story. George O'Brien's story part of our Hollywood Goes

(06:58):
to War series here on our American Stories. Lee Habibi

(07:33):
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
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If you love what you hear, go to our American
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(07:55):
give a lot. Go to our American Stories dot com
and give and we continue with our American Stories and
the story of actor George O'Brien, a part of our

(08:15):
Hollywood Goes to War series. Let's return to Roger McGrath.
Less than a month later, he's playing football for Santa Clara,
a school founded by Jesuits in eighteen fifty one, making
it California's oldest institution of higher learning. At six feet
in a very muscular one hundred ninety pounds, O'Brien looks

(08:38):
as if phiteous has sculpted him out of marble. While
he excels in football, his classroom work languishes. In high school,
he had done so well in chemistry and biology that
his father thought George might one day pursue a career
in medicine. However, George now can't get himself motivated to study. Then,

(09:01):
at a rodeo, he meets Tom Mix, Hollywood's Cowboys star.
Mix asks him what he does, and when he replies
he's a student, Mix asks a student of what, Oh,
I play football for Santa Clara, says O'Brien, But I
want to be a doctor. I'm taking a pre medical course.

(09:24):
I've got a long way to go, maybe eight years,
and then I don't know. Mix knows O'Brien served in
the Navy and tells him if he ever decides to
leave school and go to work, he should come to
Hollywood and look him up. At the end of his
first year at Santa Clara, George says goodbye to his

(09:46):
jesuit professors and heads to Hollywood. When he arrives, he
learns Mix is on location in Oklahoma, but George finds
work as an assistant cameraman at fifteen dollars a week.
Assistant means doing every great job imaginable, but is excited

(10:10):
to be part of making movies and he's learning a trade.
He lives at the Hollywood y m C, a sharing
an eleven dollars a month room with another assistant cameraman.
He also gets additional work as a stuntman and as
an extra. However, after two years of this, he grows
discouraged and heads back home to San Francisco, where his

(10:34):
father is the toast of the town. As Chief of Police,
Dan O'Brien implements several innovative programs that not only win
widespread praise, bill so greatly improved the department and policing
in the city by the Bay. Jose O'Brien is a
natural for the s f p D, but he decides

(10:57):
instead to go to sea. While waiting on wharf before
boarding a ship bound for a white he bumps into
Hobart Bosworth, an actor, director, and producer. He knows why
are the seafaring Get up? George asked, Bosworth, working on
a picture, replies O'Brien, I'm shipping for Honolulu. Hobart understands

(11:20):
by o'brand's dejected tone the young man has given up
on Hollywood. Motioning to a fight scene he's shooting for
a Tale of the ICs, Obart tells George get in
there and show those birds out to fight. O'Brien does,
and then works on the movie until it's completed three

(11:41):
weeks later, and has given a second small part in
Bosworth's next movie, More Movies. In pit Part's follow O'Brien
is earning twenty five dollars a day and is now
known as an actor. Is a handsome visage physique and
athletic prowess get him an audition for the lead in

(12:02):
Ben Hurd. For a time, it looks as if he
might get the part. His high hopes are dashed when
the studio decides it needs a big name actor. O'Brien
is so disappointed he thinks of returning to San Francisco
and joining the police department. He stays in Hollywood, though,

(12:24):
and works regularly in small roles, usually as a sailor
or a cowboy. In nineteen twenty four, John Ford is
hired by Fox Studios to make a Western epic to
top all others, a story about the building of the
Transcontinental Railroad titled The Iron Horse. Dozens auditioned for the

(12:48):
lead role of Davy Brandon, but Ford remains unsatisfied. Fox
finally sends O'Brien over for an audition. Ford rigorously tests
O'Brien and several scenes and is happy with what he sees,
especially a fight scene that has O'Brien vaulting onto a

(13:09):
horse after pummeling an enemy. O'Brien's vault is as good
as any stuntman's, but when he hits the saddle, the
scinch breaks and O'Brien hits the ground hard nonetheless, immediately
springs to his feet and is ready for action. Ford
is sold. The Iron Horse is both a critical and

(13:32):
commercial success, and George O'Brien is suddenly a star. He
and John Ford become fast friends. They have a lot
in common. They're both Irish Catholics, former star football players,
lovers of the sea, and American patriots. There are important
differences too. Ford smokes and drinks often to excess and

(13:55):
experiences periods of alcoholic depression and rage. O'b ryan is
a physical fitness buff who shuns drinking and smoking, and
because he's on screen, thinks it important to set a
good example for the youth of America. George O'Brien's great
success with John Ford in The Iron Horse means top

(14:17):
directors now demand O'Brien for leading roles. From nineteen twenty
four through nineteen twenty eight, he stars in twenty four movies,
and in addition to john Ford, works with such directors
as emm and Flynn, Jack Conway, Howard Hawks, Frederick Murnaut,

(14:38):
Alan Duan, and Michael Curtiz by nineteen twenty eight. In
nineteen twenty nine, the studios are abandoning silence for talkies
after the success of the Jazz Singer late in nineteen
twenty seven. Some stars don't have the voise to make

(15:00):
the transition, but George O'Brien has a voice rich in
timber and residence and makes the transition easily. His first
all sound movie is Salute, a tribute to West Point
and Annapolis and the football rivalry between the academies, directed
by John Ford. O'Brien plays west Point's star halfback. The

(15:25):
movie is mostly forgettable, but it does have scenes with
a couple of football players from the University of Southern California,
John Wayne and Ward Bond. From nineteen twenty nine through
nineteen forty, O'Brien stars in nearly fifty films, mostly westerns.
When he isn't a cowboy, he's a cop, or a

(15:47):
soldier or a sailor. He becomes a husband in real
life in nineteen thirty three when he marries Marguerite Churchill.
A year later, they have their first child, Brian, but
eyes ten days after birth. A daughter, Orren, is born
in nineteen thirty five. She will become an accomplished musician

(16:09):
and a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. In
nineteen sixty six. A second son, Dercy, has born in
nineteen thirty nine. He will become an English professor and
a prize winning novelist. And you've been listening to Roger
McGrath tell the story of George O'Brien. He went to

(16:30):
Santa Clara after his time in the Navy, spent a
year playing football and realized pretty soon that being pre
mad and being a doctor these were someone else's dreams,
not his. And he goes to Hollywood. He picks up
every job he could and lives in a ymca with
a buddy, and then comes his big break. A couple

(16:51):
of small pictures were then working with the then not
so great but soon to be great John Ford and
what would turn out to be a classic and a
big hit, The Iron Horse. And this is still back
when movies had no words, He's there, silent screen time,
and the stars were big. When we come back, more
of the story of George O'Brien and more of our

(17:14):
Hollywood Goes to War series with Roger McGrath. McGrath is
the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier.
He's a US marine and former history professor at UCLA.
McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries and he's
a regular contributor for US here and our American Story.

(17:35):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story, George
O'Brien's story part of our Hollywood Goes to War series
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our

(18:09):
American Stories and the story of George O'Brien our continuing series,
Hollywood Goes to War. Let's pick up where we last
left off with Roger McGrath. Yesterday, December nineteen forty one,

(18:38):
a date which will live in infamy. The United States
of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and
air forces of the Empire of Japan. I regret to
tell you that very many American life have been lost.

(19:03):
In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the
high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. No matter how
long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,
the American people, in their righteous might, will win through

(19:26):
to absolute With confidence in our armed forces, with the
unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.

(19:48):
So help us God. When the Japanese launched their sneak
attack on Pearl Harbor, Georgia Bryant is forty one years
old in the married, father of two children. He's also
started in movies, including a dozen in the three years
leading up to Pearl Harbor. Moreover, O'Brien has already served

(20:09):
the country in World War One, So what does he do.
Ten days after the Japanese sneak attack, George O'Brien goes
back into the Navy. O'Brien has commissioned a lieutenant and
is assigned to the San Diego Naval Base. To improve
physical training for recruits, Lieutenant O'Brien implements programs in boxing,

(20:32):
weight training, and hand to hand combat techniques, which he
partly borrows from similar programs his father developed for the
San Francisco Police Department. After his training regiments are fully
implemented and producing excellent results. Lieutenant O'Brien requests a combat assignment.

(20:53):
He's trained as a beach master. A beach master is
the officer responsible for landing craft to the beach in
a coordinated pattern to the right location in on time.
Because of all the things that can go wrong at
each step of an amphibious operation, the task of a
beach master is very difficult. Moreover, a beach master is

(21:17):
in the thick of the action, exposed to enemy rifle,
machine gun, mortar, in artillery fire. Lieutenant O'Brien sees his
first action in the Aleutian Islands in the Battle of
Atwo during May nineteen forty three. A Japanese force of
three thousand men have been occupying at Two Island since

(21:39):
invading the island against no opposition in June nineteen forty two.
There were only forty Allyoode Indians on the island at
the time, and the Japanese took them prisoner. The Alliots
were shipped off to Japan and half of them died
in captivity. Considering the wet, windy and frigid weather and

(22:00):
heavy Japanese fire, the landings on Attitude go fairly well,
but they are not without casualties. O'Brien himself was wounded
and also comes down with pneumonia. It will be many
weeks before he is fit for duty again. While as recovering,
he learns that Chester Bennett, who directed one of O'Brien's movies,

(22:22):
was captured in Hong Kong by the Japanese for eating
the Chinese in their resistance. The Japanese tortured Bennett and
then sliced off his head with a sword. George O'Brien,
now a lieutenant commander, his back in action as a
beach master in the invasion of Saipan in the Mariana

(22:43):
Islands during June nineteen forty four. The initial landings of
the Marines are met by fierce Japanese resistance, which includes
highly accurate artillery fire. Dozens of landing craft were hit
and explode in balls of flame before they reached the beach.
O'Brien is in the thick of the action, but this

(23:04):
time he comes through the campaign without a scratch. O'Brien's
next landing is at Laty Island in the Philippines in
October nineteen forty four. Resistance is relatively light and American
forces land with few casualties. By the afternoon, the Americans
have established a beachhead one mile deep and five miles wide.

(23:29):
This enables General Douglas MacArthur to wait ashore from a
landing craft and declare, people of the Philippines, I have returned,
by the grace of Almighty God. Our forces stand again
on Philippine soil. The next day, though, become a series

(23:49):
of Japanese air raids that make shuttling troops and supplies
back and forth from the beaches at Layte a death
the fine task, O'Brien is fortune to come through unscathed.
Promoted to commander, the naval rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel, George,
O'Brien becomes one of the many thousands of Americans preparing

(24:13):
to invade the Japanese home Islands. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima,
Nagasaki in August nineteen forty five, though caused Japan to
surrender and a monumental bloodbath is avoided. O'Brien is with
the American fleet when it sails into Tokyo Bay. After

(24:37):
or O'Brien is reduced to character roles, but those included
playing cavalry officers and two john Ford's greatest Westerns for
Apache in nineteen forty six, and she wore a Yellow
ribbon in nineteen forty nine. I was slowly but surely
rebuilding my second career in films when the trouble in
Korea started, said O'Brien. Maybe it was my inner sense

(25:01):
of loyalty, but whatever it was forced me to again
abort my career in films and resume the life of
an officer in the Navy. O'Brien serves in a naval
intelligence unit during Korea and then later in the nineteen
fifties as a navel at a shade of NATO. He
also helps make several films for the government, including two

(25:24):
that have significant relevance for today Korea Battleground for Liberty
End Taiwan Island of Freedom. George O'Brien retires from the
Navy in nineteen sixty at the rank of captain at
age sixty five. O'Brien appears in his final movie, the

(25:45):
john Ford directed Cheyenne Autumn in nineteen sixty four. O'Brien
again plays the role of a cavalry officer. O'Brien lives
for another twenty one years and dies at age eighty
six in nineteen eighty five. The Hollywood motion picture star
who appeared in eighty five movies is buried at sea

(26:09):
by the US Navy in a formal ceremony off San
Diego as Captain George O'Brien decorated veteran of World War One,
World War Two in Korea, and a terrific job on
the production by Greg And a special thanks to Roger
McGrath as always for sharing the story of those Hollywood

(26:32):
stars who served our country in war, and this time
George O'Brien's story, and my goodness, World War one, World
War Two and the Korean War and his service in
World War two possibly the toughest combat zones, and my
goodness where he starts is tough enough. The illusions first,
then the Mariana Islands and then Layte Island easily the

(26:56):
high point of his life, failing into Tokyo Bay. No
acting gig could have touched that. And of course the
call of duty comes again as he's resurrecting his acting
career one more time, this time with a naval intelligence unit,
serving his country once again in the Korean War. The
story of George O'Brien, a remarkable story of public service

(27:18):
and heroism. Here on our American stories.