Erin O'Brien-Moore

Erin O'Brien-Moore, born Annette O'Brien-Moore on May 2, 1902, in Los Angeles, California, was an American actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1926 to 1943. The daughter of J.B.L. and Agnes O'Brien-Moore, she grew up with a father who published the Tucson Citizen and an older brother, Ainsworth O'Brien-Moore, who became a classical scholar. Educated at a convent in Arizona, she initially intended to pursue painting until a stage performance by Alla Nazimova redirected her ambitions toward the theater. She died on May 3, 1979, at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Los Angeles, of cancer.

O'Brien-Moore made her Broadway debut in 1926 playing a maid in The Makropoulos Secret. Two years later she took on the female lead in E.E. Cummings' Him at the Provincetown Playhouse. Her most significant stage achievement came in 1929 when she originated the role of Rose in Elmer Rice's Street Scene, a naturalistic drama set in a New York City tenement. The production ran for 601 performances on Broadway, toured across the United States, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. During the play's six-month London engagement, author Aldous Huxley attended her performance at least three times. Her Broadway work also included Riddle Me This and Yoshe Kalb, among other productions.

The success of Street Scene brought O'Brien-Moore to Hollywood, where she secured a studio contract and appeared in a substantial number of films throughout the 1930s. Her credits included Dangerous Corner (1934), Little Men (1934), His Greatest Gamble (1934), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1935), Streamline Express (1935), Our Little Girl (1935), Two in the Dark (1936), The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), Ring Around the Moon (1936), The Leavenworth Case (1936), Green Light (1937), and The Plough and the Stars (1937). In Black Legion (1937) she appeared alongside Humphrey Bogart, and in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), starring Paul Muni, she played the character who served as the inspiration for the fictional Nana.

On January 22, 1939, O'Brien-Moore suffered severe injuries in a fire that interrupted her career. During her recovery she worked in radio, appearing in Big Sister and starring in the serial John's Other Wife. Following extensive plastic surgery she returned to stage and screen work. In 1948 she performed on Kraft Television Theatre and appeared in a Philco Television Playhouse production of Street Scene, this time taking the role of Anna while Betty Field played Rose, the role O'Brien-Moore had originated on Broadway.

Her television work in subsequent decades was extensive. She co-starred with Charlie Ruggles in the sitcom The Ruggles, which ran from 1950 to 1952, and appeared in numerous series including NBC Presents, General Electric Theater, Lux Video Theater, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Perry Mason in the episode "The Case of the Deadly Verdict." She portrayed Miss Kelly in the 1961 pilot episode of Window on Main Street, appeared in a 1965 episode of Kentucky Jones, and played Nurse Esther Choate in the primetime serial Peyton Place for four seasons from 1965 to 1968. Her later film appearances included Destination Moon (1950), The Family Secret (1951), Sea of Lost Ships (1954), Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), the 1957 film adaptation of Peyton Place, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967). In 1936 O'Brien-Moore married Mark Barron, drama editor of the Associated Press; the marriage ended in divorce after ten years.