Donald O’Connor began performing in movies in 1937, making his debut aged 11 in “Melody for Two” appearing with his family act.
He was also in Columbia’s “It Can’t Last Forever” that same year. 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.
The film was popular and Universal began to develop O’Connor and Ryan as their version of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.
During World War II, on his 18th birthday in August 1943, O’Connor was drafted into the United States Army.
Before he reported for induction on February 6, 1944, Universal already had four O’Connor films completed.
They rushed production to complete four more by that date, all with Ryan: “This Is the Life” (1944), with Foster; “The Merry Monahans” (1944), with Blyth and Jack Oakie; “Bowery to Broadway” (1945), another all-star effort where O’Connor had a cameo; and “Patrick the Great”(1945). With that backlog of features, deferred openings kept O’Connor’s screen presence uninterrupted during the two years he was overseas in the Air Corps.
In 1949, O’Connor played the lead role in “Francis,” the story of a soldier befriended by a talking mule.
Directed by Arthur Lubin, the film was a huge success. As a consequence, his musical career was constantly interrupted by production of one Francis film per year until 1955. O’Connor later said the films “were fun to make. Actually, they were quite challenging.
I had to play straight in order to convince the audience that the mule could talk.”
O’Connor’s best-known musical work is probably “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), in which he did an impressive dance that culminated in a series of backflips off the wall.
“I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day then, and getting up those walls was murder.
They had to bank one wall so I could make it up and then through another wall.
We filmed that whole sequence in one day. We did it on a concrete floor.
My body just had to absorb this tremendous shock. Things were building to such a crescendo that I thought I’d have to commit suicide for the ending. I came back on the set three days later. All the grips applauded. Gene (Kelly) applauded, told me what a great number it was.
Then Gene said, ‘Do you think you could do that number again?’ I said, ‘Sure, any time.’ He said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to do it again tomorrow.’ No one had checked the aperture of the camera and they fogged out all the film.
So the next day I did it again! By the end my feet and ankles were a mass of bruises.” (Wikipedia/IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Donald O’Connor!