Early life and career

Barbara O'Neil was born in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

. She began her acting career in summer stock

Summer Stock

For the article about the theatre genre, see Summer stock theatre.Summer Stock is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical made in 1950. The film was directed by Charles Walters and stars Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, and Phil Silvers...

. In July 1931 Bretaigne Windust

Bretaigne Windust

Bretaigne Windust was a French-born theatre, film, and television director.-Early life:He was born Ernest Bretaigne Windust in Paris, France, the son of English violin virtuoso Ernest Joseph Windust and singer Elizabeth Amory Day from New York City...

, Charles Leatherbee (the grandson of Charles Richard Crane

Charles Richard Crane

Charles Richard Crane was a wealthy American businessman, heir to a large industrial fortune and connoisseur of Arab culture, a noted Arabist. His widespread business interests gave him entree into domestic and international political affairs where he enjoyed privileged access to many...

), and Joshua Logan

Joshua Logan

Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American stage and film director and writer.-Early years:Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide...

, the three directors of the University Players

University Players

The University Players was primarily a summer stock theater company located in West Falmouth, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, from 1928 to 1932. It was formed in 1928 by eighteen college undergraduates...

, a three-year old summer stock company at West Falmouth on Cape Code, were looking for a leading lady for their repertory season that winter in Baltimore. At the suggestion of George Pierce Baker

George Pierce Baker

George Pierce Baker was an American educator in the field of drama.Baker graduated in the Harvard University class of 1887, and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwrighting in 1905. He was instrumental in creating the Harvard...

, they auditioned and hired O'Neil, one of his talented students at the Yale School of Drama

Yale School of Drama

The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...

. Romances born of the University Players led to three significant marriages: actress Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...

 to Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

 for a few months in 1932, director/actor Joshua Logan's younger sister Mary Lee Logan to Charles Leatherbee, and Joshua Logan

Joshua Logan

Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American stage and film director and writer.-Early years:Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide...

 himself to Barbara O'Neil, which lasted only a brief period in the early 1940s. O'Neil never remarried.

In 1937, O'Neil debuted in the film Stella Dallas

Stella Dallas (1937 film)

Stella Dallas is a 1937 film based on the Olive Higgins Prouty novel of the same name. It was directed by King Vidor, and stars Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, and Anne Shirley. Stanwyck was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Shirley for Best Actress in a Supporting Role...

and in 1939 she was cast in the role of Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett O'Hara

Scarlett O'Hara

Scarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name...

's mother, in Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind (film)

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...

, after the role was turned down by Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish

Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....

. The following year, she appeared in All This and Heaven Too

All This and Heaven Too

All This, and Heaven Too is a 1940 American drama film made by Warner Bros.-First National Pictures, produced and directed by Anatole Litvak with Hal B. Wallis as executive producer. The screenplay was adapted by Casey Robinson from the novel by Rachel Field...

; she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for the role of the domineering and jealous Duchesse de Praslin.

Her later films include Shining Victory

Shining Victory

Shining Victory is a 1941 film based on the play, Jupiter Laughs, by A. J. Cronin. It stars James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, and Barbara O'Neil, and it was the first film directed by Irving Rapper. Bette Davis makes a brief cameo appearance as a nurse in the film.-Plot...

(1941), I Remember Mama

I Remember Mama

I Remember Mama is a play by John Van Druten. Based on the fictionalized memoir Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes, it focuses on the Hanson family, a loving family of Norwegian immigrants living on Steiner Street in San Francisco in the 1910s.Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein...

(1948), and Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger

Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...

's Whirlpool (1949) and The Nun's Story

The Nun's Story (film)

The Nun's Story is a 1959 Warner Brothers film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Audrey Hepburn. Based upon the 1956 novel of the same title by Kathryn Hulme, the story tells of the life of Sister Luke , a young Belgian woman who decides to enter a convent and make the many sacrifices...

(1959).

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1937	Stella Dallas Stella Dallas (1937 film) Stella Dallas is a 1937 film based on the Olive Higgins Prouty novel of the same name. It was directed by King Vidor, and stars Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, and Anne Shirley. Stanwyck was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Shirley for Best Actress in a Supporting Role...	Helen Morrison Dallas
1938	Love, Honor and Behave	Sally Painter
	The Toy Wife The Toy Wife The Toy Wife is a 1938 drama film directed by Richard Thorpe. The period film was produced by Merian C. Cooper, written by Zoe Akins and had Luise Rainer and Melvyn Douglas in the leading roles.-Plot:...	Louise Brigard
	I Am the Law I Am the Law (1938 film) -Plot:New York City law professor John Lindsay is asked by Eugene Ferguson, a member of the governor's Civic Committee, to become a special prosecuter to fight racketeers and corruption in the city, but unknown to Lindsay, Ferguson is in association with the racketeers.-Cast:* Edward G...	Jerry Lindsay
1939	The Sun Never Sets	Helen Randolph
	When Tomorrow Comes When Tomorrow Comes (film) When Tomorrow Comes is a 1939 romantic drama film starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. A waitress falls in love with a man who later turns out to be a married concert pianist. Bernard B...	Madeleine Chagal
	Tower of London Tower of London (1939 film) Tower of London is a 1939 black-and-white historical film and quasi-horror film released by Universal Pictures and directed by Rowland V. Lee. It stars Basil Rathbone as the future Richard III of England, and Boris Karloff as his fictitious club-footed executioner Mord. Vincent Price appears as...	Queen Elyzabeth
	Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...	Ellen O'Hara
1940	All This, and Heaven Too	Duchesse de Praslin	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
1941	Shining Victory Shining Victory Shining Victory is a 1941 film based on the play, Jupiter Laughs, by A. J. Cronin. It stars James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, and Barbara O'Neil, and it was the first film directed by Irving Rapper. Bette Davis makes a brief cameo appearance as a nurse in the film.-Plot...	Miss Leeming
1948	Secret Beyond the Door... Secret Beyond the Door... Secret Beyond the Door... is a psychological thriller and modern updating of the Bluebeard fairytale, directed by Fritz Lang, produced by Lang's Diana Productions, and released by Universal Pictures. The film starred Joan Bennett and was produced by her husband Walter Wanger...	Miss Robey
	I Remember Mama I Remember Mama I Remember Mama is a play by John Van Druten. Based on the fictionalized memoir Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes, it focuses on the Hanson family, a loving family of Norwegian immigrants living on Steiner Street in San Francisco in the 1910s.Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein...	Jessie Brown
1949	Whirlpool	Theresa Randolph
1952	Angel Face	Mrs. Catherine Tremayne
1956	Flame of the Islands	Mrs. Duryea
1959	The Nun's Story The Nun's Story (film) The Nun's Story is a 1959 Warner Brothers film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Audrey Hepburn. Based upon the 1956 novel of the same title by Kathryn Hulme, the story tells of the life of Sister Luke , a young Belgian woman who decides to enter a convent and make the many sacrifices...	Mother Didyma
1970	Lions of St. Petersburg	Tamila	aka Leoni di Petersburgo

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