O’Neil, Barry

Barry O’NeilBarry O’Neil (Sept. 24, 1864—March 25, 1918) was one of the first motion picture directors in the new industry. He started his career as a stage actor and smoothly transitioned to silent films. He was elected to The Lambs in 1913.

Born Thomas J. McCarthy in Manhattan at the close of the Civil War, young McCarthy chose Barry O’Neil for his stage name. Early notices mentioned him as a “tuneful singer” and he sometimes sang and danced in routines he wrote for himself. He naturally gravitated to “stage Irish” roles in popular melodramas, musical entertainments, and comedies of the era.

A trouper, he performed in various stock companies to good notices and reviews, travelling the theater circuit of major U.S. cities and towns, returning to New York, to direct for Keith and Proctor’s, the Harlem Opera Company, Klaw and Erlanger, and other Broadway venues.

In 1892 he met the love of his life in Philadelphia, Nellie Walters, in her first role with the stock company that featured O’Neil as a leading man. The director saw their chemistry and told them they should get married; retold later in a publicity headline, “…and they did!” Nellie, a veteran at 20, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where her parents performed at the Royal Theatre and London venues, before emigrating in 1876. Her family was based in Philadelphia, and toured the country as the Walters Company. She traveled as a team with Charles K. Harris, of “After the Ball is Over” fame, in shows that included his most loved original songs, in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. She retired from the stage in 1909 when O’Neil began his film career.

O’Neil had just come from staging a play with Lillian Russell at Chicago’s Bush Temple Theatre in 1909 when approached by Edwin Thanhouser to make his first moving picture. Thanhouser was forming a company and wanted O’Neil to join him.

Barry O’NeilA well-liked veteran stage director/producer/actor, with a successful theatrical career in New York and hard-won reputation on the theatre circuit nation-wide; O’Neil, at first laughed at the idea. Motion pictures were considered only a novelty entertainment, steps down in prestige and financially uncertain. He knew his wife and mother-in-law, with their own stage careers, were against it, for good reasons: The syndicates of major New York theater owners who controlled circuit bookings on which most theater professionals depended, threatened to blacklist any of their contracted players who participated. It included Frohman’s theaters, and Klaw and Erlanger’s, where O’Neil had directed and created shows. He well knew the risks. All their hard work, a life in the theater, would be at stake. Still, he was tempted, saw the possibilities, and jumped in.

The decision to join Thanhouser and direct The Actor’s Children (1910) would change the trajectory of his life. As he later said, “only the cameraman knew anything about making a film.” He had to learn and invent as he went. His second Thanhouser picture, Romeo and Juliet (1911), was their first two-reel, and voted “One of Ten Best Films Made of the Year” in a crowded field. Perhaps it was the opportunity to do Shakespeare, or cast his classically trained mother-in-law. He never looked back.

Enter Siegmund Lubin (Lubin Manufacturing Company) who made a fortune making 5-cent photoplay entertainments, and distributing them worldwide, going head-to-head with Thomas Edison. In 1912, he had just completed construction of state-of-the-art Betzwood Studios, dubbed Lubinville, outside Philadelphia. With a beehive of well-paid employees, Lubin was ready to make the leap to quality multi-reel motion pictures. He had developed new technical industry standards in length and clarity of film, innovations in cameras and lenses, and sought the creative people required to “uplift” his rapidly expanding business. Lubin knew O’Neil’s background in theater and at Thanhouser and wanted him. This time O’Neil needed no persuasion.

With Lubin’s unwavering support, he was given free reign, and thrived. O’Neil was made a principal director, given his own stock company of players, assistant directors, and experienced cameramen. He was ideally suited to “the motion picture game” and emerged something of a legend in the competitive hardscrabble new industry, with a place in the history of silent film.

O’Neil is best known today for When the Earth Trembled the first three-reel shot at Betzwood studios—now considered the earliest special effects disaster film. In its depiction of San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, he achieved a startling emotional realism with tumbling constructed sets, close ups, and incorporated use of actual newsreel footage.

In 1913, the year of its release, Barry joined The Lambs.

O’Neil brought to his film work theatrical instincts, versatility, and sheer stamina, from a life on the road. Crucially, he brought relationships with outstanding actors who trusted him, and helped build the renown Lubin Players, contributing to a “star” system that developed audiences for the challenging melodramas that supplemented the Lubin staple of westerns and comedies.

Barry O’NeilHe directed many of Lubin’s most prestigious titles: The Lion and the Mouse, The Third Degree, The District Attorney, and finally, his own adaptation of the novel McTeague, Life’s Whirlpool—shot in Death Valley with his intrepid team. The film pre-dated Erick Von Stroheim’s Greed of the same novel by a few years. His 1915 film, The Sporting Duchess was chosen to be the first movie screened at New York’s Madison Square Garden, enhancing his reputation.

In 1914, a massive explosion in Lubin’s nitrate film vaults destroyed most of the company’s masters and some single prints, shaking the company to its foundations. Years of work was gone forever. Compounded by the onset of World War I, Lubin’s company faltered in 1915.

Lewis J. Selznick at the World Film Corporation announced O’Neil was joining his studio in a full-page ad in the trades. With Selznick, he survived the 1916 merger/take over of William A. Brady. Along with the entire motion picture industry, O’Neil was poised to take the leap into a new phase of important work ahead.

An active reformer, he organized on behalf of directors against patent companies and was one of the original “invaluable” incorporators of the New York Motion Picture Directors Association, which became the Screen Directors Guild in 1936 (today the Directors Guild of America).

Despite victories, these were unimaginably tumultuous years for O’Neil. His beloved wife died in 1915, then his mother-in-law, Mrs. George Walters, a featured performer in most of his films, in 1916. The unravelling of the Lubin Company, followed by the devastating loss of his family, undoubtedly contributed to his own sudden death of a stroke on March 25, 1918. He was 53. He is buried under his birth name, Thomas J. McCarthy, in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, in the Aster section.

Barry O’Neil directed an estimated 60 motion pictures, many singled out for distinction. Considering the short arc of his career and age when he began—an astounding accomplishment.

“A good director and a good pal,” was the succinct manner in which one of the members of the Cinema Camera Club (today the American Society of Cinematographers) expressed himself on hearing of the sudden and unexpected death O’Neil. “To the cameraman this loss is a severe one, for Mr. O’Neil had the astute and unsnobbish belief that the photographer was as important and significant a factor in the creation of an artistic photoplay as any other. This conviction, together with a natural spirit of friendliness and good fellowship, made him one of the most delightful companions to work with. May he rest in peace!”

Information compiled by Mary C. McCarthy (Barry O’Neil’s niece and goddaughter), Marie H. Hannah (Barry’s great niece, elected to The Lambs in 2015), and Lynn Holst (Barry’s great-great niece). Thanks to the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.