I remember the first time I saw Margaret O’Brien, it was on a TCM showing of ‘Meet Me In Saint Louis‘ (1944). I thought she was just delightful in it. It turns out the “Academy” thought so too, they gave her a special Oscar: Outstanding Juvenile Performer. Which “was stolen and she was unable to regain it for nearly fifty years when two memorabilia collectors came across it at a swap meet and managed to give it back to O’Brien.” Her bio quotes on IMDB sound just like her. The 1940’s were her decade. As IMDB put it, “She had made a mint for MGM, and a personal fortune for herself. One thing you can bet is they didn’t pay her what it was worth.

Looking at her credits she did a Wagon Train at age 21 (The Sacramento Story, 1958) and a Rawhide the next year (Incident of the Town In Terror!). I have never seen any of her adult work. She has credits up through 2018. They started becoming more sparse in the 70’s, the age 40 cutoff for a lot of Hollywood women. The only other child stars that had such a magnetic personality were Shirley Temple and maybe Elizabeth Taylor. Shirley “owned” the 30’s, and Margaret “owned” the 40’s.Two huge mega stars.

In fact there’s a fun little bit in her bio about when they first met. It seems perhaps the claws were out somewhat. Margaret kept sending Shirley Christmas cards and eventually they became fast friends. Margaret said her husband “had always had a crush on Shirley and instead he got me“. I can understand that, Shirley grew up to be an unusually beautiful woman.

She has wonderful stories about many who she worked with in television and movies, two of the funniest are about Marjorie Main and Wallace Beery. My favorite quote of hers is from when she was age 6: “When I cry, do you want the tears to run all the way or shall I stop halfway down?“