Trivia of Margaret O'Brien

 Trivia of Margaret O'Brien (15 January 1937)

*At the age four, she made film debut on one-minute shot in MGM's Babes on Broadway (1941) starred Mick Rooney and Judy Garland.But it was the following year that her first major role brought her widespread attention. As a five-year-old in Journey for Margaret (1942), O'Brien won wide praise for her quite convincing acting style, unusual for a child of her age.This is the film from which Margaret O'Brien took her name. She was born Angela O'Brien, but she so identified with the character she played in this film that she decided to change her name to Margaret.

*She played Adèle Verans , a young French girl, and spoke and sang all her dialogue with a French accent in Jane Eyre (1943) opposite Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.Director Cary Joji Fukunaga held auditions at a local bilingual school to find a girl who could convincingly play a French child but who could also understand his direction.Six years old Margaret got that role.

*Her most memorable role was in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), opposite Judy Garland and Mary Astor. As Tootie Smith, the feisty but fragile little sister of Judy Garland, she was a bright point, especially in her musical numbers with Garland and during a Halloween sequence in which she confronts a grouchy neighbor. For her performance, she was awarded a special juvenile Oscar in 1944.

*According to Mary Astor, Margaret O'Brien liked to have fun with the prop master on the set Meet Me in St.Louis (1944). For instance, when shooting a scene at the Smith family dinner table, all of the dishes and utensils had been laid out meticulously. "It was Maggie's favorite form of mischief, when his back was turned," said Astor, "to put things in disorder again, to reverse knives and forks, to put two napkin rings beside a plate. It would drive him nuts. And remember the strong caste system on the sets: she was a star and he was just a lowly property man, so all he could do was to smile and say, 'Please, Maggie dear!' when he'd have liked to have shaken her."

*Margaret O'Brien and June Allyson were known as "The Town Criers" of MGM. She declared "We were always in competition. I wanted to cry better than June, and June wanted to cry better than me. The way my mother got me to cry was if I was having trouble with a scene, she'd say, 'why don't we have the make-up man come over and give you false tears?' Then I'd think to myself, 'they'll say I'm not as good as June,' and I'd start to cry." They appeared together in three movies : Thousand Cheer (1943), Music for Millions (1944), and Little Women (1949) ,

*She played Beth in the 1949 MGM release of Little Women, but was unable to make the transition to adult roles.O'Brien gave credit to television for helping her reform and modify her public image.O'Brien starred in "The Young Years " on General Electric Theater " and played the role of Betsy Stauffer, a small-town nurse, in "The Incident of the Town in Terror" on television's Rawhide.

*One day in 1954, the family's maid asked to take O'Brien's Juvenile Oscar and two other awards home with her to polish, as she had done in the past.After three days, the maid didn't return to work, prompting O'Brien's mother to discharge her, requesting that the awards be returned. Not long after, O'Brien's mother, who had been sick with a heart condition, suffered a relapse and died.In mourning, 17-year-old O'Brien forgot about the maid and the Oscar until several months later when she tried to contact her, only to find that the maid had moved and had left no forwarding address.Several years later, upon learning that the original had been stolen, the Academy promptly supplied O'Brien with a replacement Oscar, but O'Brien still held on to hope that she might one day recover her original Award. In the years that followed, O'Brien attended memorabilia shows and searched antique shops, hoping she might find the original statuette, until one day in 1995 when Bruce Davis, then executive director of the Academy, was alerted that a miniature statuette bearing O'Brien's name had surfaced in a catalogue for an upcoming memorabilia auction.Davis contacted a mutual friend of his and O'Brien's, who in turn phoned O'Brien to tell her the long-lost Oscar had been found.