Actor's Spotlight: Edmond O'Brien

Edmond O'Brien.  American.  Born September 10, 1915.  Died May 9, 1985.  Star of radio, film, stage and TV.  Academy Award Winner (Best Supporting Actor, 1954).

Radio program(s) featured:  Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

IMDB biography
Wikipedia biography

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I could have started with any legendary artist of the Golden Age of Radio, but that's where everybody starts.  Everybody has a story about Orson Welles or Agnes Moorehead, Frank Sinatra or Humphrey Bogart - and in days to come, I probably will too.

But why not start off learning about someone you've never heard of before, one who was a great star and familiar face - and voice - in his day.


"...Edmond O'Brien in another adventure of the man with the action-packed expense account, America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator...'Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.'"

O'Brien was the second of several actors to play the role of Johnny Dollar.  He was born in NYC, and you can really hear that distinctive accent in his voice when he plays this character.  Sometimes, actors reprising the role of the hard-boiled detective tend to lower their voices and stay in a narrow vocal range, but O'Brien mixes it up.  To compare, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame was very much monotone (deliberately), on screen and on the radio, to the point where I just want to grab him by the lapels and shake him; but O'Brien keeps a level voice without being monotone - a voice befitting lawyers, cops and private detectives as portrayed in the 30s, 40s and 50s.

But on the downside, I find that his gruff accent isn't enough to distinguish his voice from others on the radio; in fact, in his efforts to be hard-boiled, he sounds villainous.  There are no visual queues that help the audience distinguish one character from the other; voice, word choice and diction are the only three clues to who is speaking, so sometimes it's hard to tell who's winning, the good guy with the tough accent or the bad guy with the criminal drawl.

He can also play the part of a mouth breather, as he did in Julius Caesar (1953).

But regardless, O'Brien was a consummate actor, as you can see in the two biographies posted above.  As you'll see in the video below, acting as a young lawyer O'Brien has a nice, understated, nuanced style, with subtle facial expressions and posture that compliment his otherwise level voice.  This is captured very nicely between 13:05-15:44 and again 1:16:18-1:16:46.  Now, if you were to listen to 13:05-15:44 without looking at the screen, you might not actually hear the difference between one subtle emotion and the next; but when you watch him, you can see the caliber of his performance. I love his versatility in terms of voice and accent, too.  When I compare the character of Johnny Dollar against the character of David Douglas, I can hardly imagine the voice is coming from the same man.

1984 (1956 - confusing, I know, but that's the title of the movie, 1984)

So in my humble opinion, I like O'Brien's work better in a visual medium than on the radio, but I still very much enjoy his style.

Radio spotlight: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.  "The Byron Hayes Matter."  Aired March 24, 1951.  This episode has lapsed into the public domain. All content Courtesy of Internet Archive.  For more information, or to listen to more episodes of Johnny Dollar, visit Internet Archive.




Movie spotlight:  An Act of Murder (1948).  This movie has lapsed into the public domain.  I especially enjoyed this movie; even though it's a bit of a courtroom drama, I loved the story.  All content Courtesy of Internet Archive.