A Bio of Barry O’Neil

September 24 was the birthday of pioneering silent film director Barry O’Neil (Thomas J. McCarthy, 1865-1918).

O’Neil was the son of Irish immigrants residing in New York City. His name change likely had to do with the presence of another actor named Thomas McCarthy; one notes that he commendably chose a professional name that similarly advertised his origins. O’Neil started out playing Irish character parts with stock companies, which led to jobs as a stage manager (closer to a director then) with Tony Pastor, Keith and Proctor, Klaw and Erlanger, and other concerns. In Chicago, he worked for Edwin Thanhouser, and this led to his being a film director. O’Neil directed Thanhouser’s first movie The Actor’s Children (1910), as well as their first two-reeler Romeo and Juliet (1911) as well as several other adaptations of Shakespeare, Dickens,Uncle Tom’s Cabin and similar staples.

O’Neil later went on to direct for Lubin, the World Film Corporation, and other studios, turning out some five dozen films, mostly dramas over the next few years, starring the likes of Harry Myers, Holbrook Blinn, Ethel Clayton, and others. (According to Marie Hannah, O’Neil’s great niece, it was O’Neil who introduced Lillian Russell, whom he’d known from his days working for Tony Pastor, to Siegmund Lubin. Like, her great uncle, Hannah, is a member of The Lambs). I am especially intrigued to learn that he directed an adaptation of Frank Norris’s McTeague in 1916, eight years before Von Stroheim’s Greed.

A succession of three naked facts intrigue me. O’Neil’s wife, actress Nellie Walters died in 1915. O’Neill released his last film The Hidden Scar, in late 1916. He died in early 1918, of what was called an apoplectic stroke. Did grief hasten retirement and then death? And also, when was the stroke? Something like a year and a half elapsed between his last film and his expiration. Did the stroke occur while he was working? He was described as a bit of a slave driver and martinet on the set. Did he blow his stack in that context? Otherwise, why the long layoff without working? If I stumble across it, I’ll update the foregoing.

For more on the history of vaudeville,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on silent film please check out: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.