Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303250086
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JERRY BUCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
And that's a talent he calls on in his new role as host of "Comedy Classics" on the American Movie Classics channel.
The newly launched Friday night show will present movies by Bob Hope, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball and many others.
"The wonderful thing is I knew all these people," O'Connor says. "I knew them all when I was a child actor and later as an adult. I loved the Marx Brothers because they'd work out their movie material in front of an audience. I never recognized Harpo until he put on the wig. The Three Stooges were always nice to me. Moe Howard was a wonderful man.
"I hope they'll even show some of my movies. I made my movie debut as Bing Crosby's kid brother in `Sing You Sinners' in 1938. I made 12 pictures within the next year, including playing Gary Cooper as a boy in `Beau Geste.' We did it two ways, with a British accent and without, because they didn't know at the time if Coop would do an accent. Coop started the picture with an accent, then quickly lapsed into his usual way of talking."
O'Connor starred in six Francis the Talking Mule movies, played Buster Keaton in his film biography, and starred with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in "Singing' in the Rain," considered by many as the greatest movie musical of all time.
For his famous "Make 'em Laugh" song and dance for "Singin' in the Rain," Donald O'Connor borrowed comedy bits from his old pals.
"I worked it up in about a day and a half, but the hardest thing was finding an ending," recalls O'Connor, who lifted routines from such comics as the Three Stooges, Joan Davis and Willie, West and McGinty. "I spent weeks trying to think how to end it."
In his latest movie role, O'Connor played Robin Williams' father in "Toys."
Now he and Mickey Rooney are taking their Las Vegas act to Hawaii to perform in a benefit to raise money for a Little Theater group.
"Mickey and I have been friends for 61 years," says O'Connor. Rooney made musicals at MGM and O'Connor starred in a long series of musicals as a teen-ager at Universal.
"We weren't close when we were child actors because he's older, and when you're a child four years is a big difference," O'Connor says. "I grew up in vaudeville, so I'm used to doing ad-lib, and the more Mickey wants to do off the cuff the better."
O'Connor was one of the few stars who was under contract to three studios at the same time. He made movies at Fox, Universal and MGM. He was one of the few who starred on television at the same time he performed in such big musicals as "Singin' in the Rain" and "Call Me Madam."
He won an Emmy as host of the Colgate Comedy Hour and later starred in "Here Comes Donald."
"My career's really been a fluke," O'Connor says as he sips coffee in his living room on a rainy morning. "In 1938 we went to Los Angeles to do a benefit. Bob Hope was the emcee. Paramount needed a kid to play a jockey, and the producer saw me and called my mother. I got the part and did 12 dramatic roles in one year. Then I started to grow and went back to the vaudeville act.
"When my mother retired from the act I started doing movie musicals, which was another fluke. A Universal talent scout saw me performing in Chicago. I never auditioned for a role until recently. I auditioned for a role and didn't get it."
O'Connor says the producer of the Francis the Mule movie series wanted to turn it into a television series, but the creator refused.
"The talking mule became a talking horse called `Mr. Ed,"' he says. "I always say Francis retired from movies and went into politics. I didn't do the television series. Francis was a bon vivant, but Mr. Ed was just a horse in a barn."
In "Singin' in the Rain," a comedy in which a squeaky voiced movie star couldn't adapt to talkies, O'Connor played a public relations man named Cosmo Brown.
"Cosmo's job was to make Gene Kelly's character laugh," he says. "I didn't have a solo number until Gene gave me `Make 'Em Laugh.' Someone handed me a dummy that was on the stage. That was the only prop I used. I did a pratfall and we wrote that down. Every time I did something that got a laugh we wrote it down to keep in the number."
"COMEDY CLASSICS" airs 11 p.m. Fridays on the American Movie Classics channel.
by CNB