George O'Brien2

George O'Brien was born on April 19, 1899. He became an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the talkie era of the 1930s, best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Born in San Francisco, California, O'Brien lived through the great earthquake of San Francisco in 1906. O'Brien's father later became the Chief of Police for the City of San Francisco later he ordered the arrest of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in September 1921 at the scandalous Labor Day party held by Arbuckle. O'Brien would spend the 1920s as an extremely popular leading man in films, often starring in action and adventure roles alongside such popular actresses of the era as Alma Rubens, Anita Stewart, Dolores Costello, Madge Bellamy, Olive Borden (with whom he was linked romantically during the 1920s) and Janet Gaynor. With the advent of sound, George O'Brien became a popular star of Westerns and rarely took parts outside of the Western film genre. Throughout the 1930s, O'Brien was a consistent Top Ten box-office draw appearing in scores of Westerns, often atop his horse named Mike. O'Brien suffered a stroke in 1981 and was bedridden the last few years of his life. He died on September 4, 1985 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.