Maureen O'Sullivan

Maureen Paula O'Sullivan (May 17, 1911 – June 23, 1998) was an Irish-American actress born in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland, one of five children of Mary Fraser O'Sullivan and Major Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in the Connaught Rangers who served in World War I. After attending a convent school in Dublin and the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton, England, where a fellow student was the future actress Vivien Leigh, O'Sullivan completed her education at a finishing school in France before returning to Dublin. In October 1929, she and her mother sailed to New York aboard the RMS Baltic, bound for Hollywood and a contract with Fox Film Corporation.

Her screen career was launched when director Frank Borzage, filming Song o' My Heart on location in Ireland, invited her to take a screen test. She won a part in the film, which starred Irish tenor John McCormack and was released in 1930. After appearing in six pictures at Fox and three more at other studios, O'Sullivan signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1932. It was Irving Thalberg who selected her to play Jane Parker opposite Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan the Ape Man, a role she would reprise in five additional films through 1942. Her MGM years also brought her alongside William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man (1934), Greta Garbo and Fredric March in Anna Karenina (1935), the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races (1937), and Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice (1940). She supported Ann Sothern in Maisie Was a Lady (1941) and appeared as Molly Beaumont in A Yank at Oxford (1938), a screenplay written in part by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Following Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), O'Sullivan asked MGM to release her from her contract to care for her husband, director John Farrow, who had contracted typhoid after leaving the Navy. She stepped away from the entertainment industry to focus on her family. Her return to the screen came in 1948 with The Big Clock, directed by Farrow for Paramount Pictures, and she continued to appear occasionally in her husband's subsequent productions as well as on television. By 1960 she considered herself permanently retired, but actor Pat O'Brien persuaded her to take a role in summer stock. The resulting production, A Roomful of Roses, opened in 1961 and led directly to her Broadway debut in Never Too Late alongside costar Paul Ford. Shortly after the play opened, John Farrow died of a heart attack on January 27, 1963. O'Sullivan continued performing, serving for a time as the Today Girl for NBC before making the film version of Never Too Late for Warner Bros. in 1965.

Her Broadway career extended from 1962 to 1980 and encompassed productions including Morning's at Seven, Keep It in the Family, Charley's Aunt, and No Sex Please, We're British. Her work on Broadway was recognized with the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in 1980. In June and July 1972, she starred in the Elitch Theatre production of Butterflies Are Free in Denver, Colorado, alongside Karen Grassle and Brandon deWilde. Later film work included Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), in which she played the mother of her daughter Mia Farrow's character, Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), and the science fiction film Stranded (1987). In 1994 she appeared in the television film Hart to Hart: Home Is Where the Hart Is with Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers.

O'Sullivan's first marriage was to Australian-American director John Villiers Farrow on September 12, 1936. Together they had seven children: Michael Damien, Patrick Villiers Farrow, Mia Farrow, John Charles, Prudence Farrow, Stephanie Farrow, and Tisa Farrow. Their eldest son, Michael, died in a plane crash in California in 1958. Twenty years after John Farrow's death, O'Sullivan married businessman James Cushing on August 22, 1983, and the two remained married until her death. She became a United States citizen on October 22, 1947, in Los Angeles, California.

In 1982, O'Sullivan received the George Eastman Award from George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. She holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6541 Hollywood Boulevard, positioned facing the star of Johnny Weissmuller. In 2020, The Irish Times ranked her eighth on its list of Ireland's greatest film actors. O'Sullivan returned to Boyle in 1988 to be honored by the town, and a black plaque marks her former home on Main Street there. She died on June 23, 1998, in Scottsdale, Arizona, of complications from heart surgery, at the age of 87.