Barbara O'Neil

Barbara O'Neil (July 17, 1910 – September 3, 1980) was an American actress whose career spanned both Broadway and film from the 1930s through the 1960s. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the daughter of David O'Neil, a lumber baron and poet, and Barbara Blackman O'Neil, a socialite and suffragist. Her maternal grandmother, Carrie Horton Blackman, was a successful portrait painter. O'Neil spent much of her childhood in Europe and later graduated from Sarah Lawrence College before studying at the Yale School of Drama under George Pierce Baker.

O'Neil launched her acting career in summer stock, joining the University Players, a repertory company based at West Falmouth on Cape Cod. The company's three directors — Bretaigne Windust, Charles Leatherbee, and Joshua Logan — hired her in July 1931 at Baker's recommendation to serve as leading lady for their winter season in Baltimore. Her time with the University Players also brought personal connections: she and Joshua Logan were briefly married in the early 1940s, though O'Neil never remarried. She made her Broadway debut in 1932 in a play about Carrie Nation, beginning a stage career that would continue through 1960. Her Broadway credits include Counterattack, Affairs of State, Little Moon of Alban, and a 1954 adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, in which she originated the role of Madam Serena Merle.

O'Neil made her film debut in Stella Dallas in 1937. Two years later she was cast as Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett O'Hara's mother, in Gone with the Wind (1939), despite being only three years older than Vivien Leigh, who played her daughter. The role had previously been turned down by Lillian Gish. In 1940, O'Neil appeared in All This, and Heaven Too opposite Charles Boyer, playing the domineering and jealous Duchesse de Praslin. The performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her subsequent film work included Shining Victory (1941), I Remember Mama (1948), Secret Beyond the Door (1948), and two films directed by Otto Preminger, Whirlpool (1949) and Angel Face (1952). She also appeared in The Nun's Story (1959), starring Audrey Hepburn.

O'Neil died of a heart attack on September 3, 1980, at her home in Cos Cob, Connecticut. She was 70 years old.