Sally O'Neil

Sally O'Neil, born Virginia Louise Concepta Noonan on October 23, 1908, in Bayonne, New Jersey, was an American actress whose career spanned vaudeville, film, and the Broadway stage. She was one of eleven children born to Judge Thomas Francis Patrick Noonan and his wife, Hannah Kelly, a Metropolitan Opera singer. Two of her sisters also pursued acting careers: Isabelle Noonan appeared in films, and Suzanne Dobson Noonan performed professionally under the name Molly O'Day.

Convent-educated, O'Neil began her performing career in vaudeville, where she was billed as Chotsie Noonan. She entered films in 1925 at the Hal Roach studio, where she was billed as Sue O'Neil or Sue "Bugs" O'Neil and appeared in short-subject comedies, typically cast as flappers or hoydenish tomboys. That same year, she was cast alongside Constance Bennett and Joan Crawford in the MGM production Sally, Irene and Mary, directed by Edmund Goulding, a role that served as her major breakthrough. In 1926, she appeared with Crawford again as a WAMPAS Baby Star. Over the course of her film career, O'Neil appeared in more than 40 pictures, frequently receiving above-the-title billing.

The transition from silent films to sound presented challenges for O'Neil, as her pronounced New Jersey accent limited her range of available roles. Nevertheless, Warner Bros. signed her to portray streetwise characters in its 1929–30 features. Following her release from Warners in 1930, she worked as a freelancer across multiple studios. Among her notable later film appearances was The Brat, a 1931 pre-Code film directed by John Ford in which she played a brash chorus girl whose arrival disrupts a snobbish family; the film was revived at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in November 2016. Her final American film was released in 1935, after which she traveled to England in 1937 to make Kathleen Mavourneen, a production notable for a guest appearance by comedian Arthur Lucan performing his Old Mother Riley character.

O'Neil subsequently turned to the stage. She appeared on Broadway in When We Are Married, with the database recording her credit in 1939. She continued performing in stage productions and toured with the USO through the 1950s.

In her personal life, O'Neil married businessman S.S. Battles in October 1953. The couple divorced in 1957 but later remarried. O'Neil died of pneumonia in Galesburg, Illinois, on June 18, 1968, at the age of 59.