Arthur O'Connell

Arthur O'Connell was born to Julia (née Byrne) & Michael O'Connell on March 29, 1908, in Manhattan, New York. His father died when O'Connell was two, and his mother when he was 12. He was the youngest of four siblings: William, Kathleen, and Juliette. William, the eldest, became a justice of the New York State Supreme Court and died in 1972. After his father's death, Arthur was sent to live in Flushing, New York, with his mother's sister, Mrs. Charles Koetzner, while his sisters moved in with other relatives and William remained with his mother. Arthur attended St John's College for two years. His early jobs included working in the engineering department of New York Edison, as a salesman at Macy's, and as a door-to-door salesman of magazines. == Career ==

Early roles O'Connell went into acting in 1929, landing a role in summer stock at the Frankin Stock Company in Dorchester, Massachusetts, playing a role in The Patsy. He made his legitimate stage debut in the middle 1930s, appearing in various roles in theater and vaudeville in the U.S, and in London. O'Connell had small film roles early in his career. His film debut was as a student in Freshman Year (1938) and he appeared in a small role as a reporter in Citizen Kane (1941). After Picnic, he appeared in another Joshua Logan film, Bus Stop, in 1956, as the down-to-earth friend of the lead, played by Don Murray. In that same year he appeared in Solid Gold Cadillac, playing a kindly office manager in love with Judy Holliday's assistant, Miss Shotgraven. His performance as James Stewart's alcoholic mentor in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) resulted in a second Oscar nomination. In 1962, he portrayed the father of Elvis Presley's character in the motion picture Follow That Dream, and in 1964 in the Presley-picture ''Kissin' Cousins.'' In the same year, O'Connell portrayed the idealist-turned-antagonist Clint Stark in The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, which has become a cult classic, and in which O'Connell's is the only character other than star Tony Randall to appear as one of the "7 faces." O'Connell continued appearing in choice character parts on both television and films during the 1960s, but avoided a regular television series, holding out until he could be assured top billing. On Christmas Day, 1962, O'Connell was cast as Clayton Dodd in the episode "Green, Green Hills" of the western series Empire, starring Richard Egan as the rancher Jim Redigo. This episode features Dayton Lummis as Jason Simms and Joanna Moore as Althea Dodd. In 1966, he guest-starred as a scientist who regretfully realized that he has created an all-powerful android (played by James Darren) in an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, titled "The Mechanical Man." In the February 1967 episode "Never Look Back" of the TV series Lassie, he played Luther Jennings, an elderly ranger who monitors the survey tower at Strawberry Peak and who takes it hard when he finds he'll lose his job when the tower is slated for destruction. In 1967, O'Connell co-starred with Monte Markham in The Second Hundred Years, playing the aging son of a gold miner who was frozen for a hundred years in Alaska. The series lasted for one season. He worked in commercials, playing a friendly pharmacist as a spokesperson for Crest. He made his final film appearance in The Hiding Place (1975), portraying a Dutch watch-maker who hides Jews during World War II. Alzheimer's disease forced his retirement in the mid-1970s. == Personal life and death==

In the late 1950s, O'Connell jointly owned a race horse, April Love, with the singer Pat Boone. and divorced in December 1972 in Los Angeles. On May 18, 1981, O'Connell died of Alzheimer's disease at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles. He was interred at Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. ==Filmography==