Frank's Niece!

[Brant Gaede]

After this exchange, time for a nice meal and a glass of wine.

--Hannibal

[Cathy]

I talked to Marna today and I asked her about the little girl that was Aunt Alice and Uncle Franks god daughter, whose mother was a friend of Nicks. She said she had no idea. I was born after Nick died, so I wouldn't have known. Louise who is Mimi daughter has most of the letters and signed books of Ayn's that Mimi had before she died. Marna also never knew of any contemplating divorce and wonder if Aunt Alice was just angry with him when she said it. Uncle Frank was very soft spoken, when he said anything, you wouldn't be able to tell if he was ever angry except for the look on his face. But everyone would know if Aunt Alice was angry. Oh, and she did use the term parasites and leaches, they all did...it might have been a popular term in those day, don't know. I am going to be visiting Marna this month on the 15th. She just turned 86 in Sept. I didn't grow up with her, but we have so much in common, I wonder if genetics plays a part in that. Hope everyone is doing well ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

I talked to Marna today and I asked her about the little girl that was Aunt Alice and Uncle Franks god daughter, whose mother was a friend of Nicks. She said she had no idea. I was born after Nick died, so I wouldn't have known.

Sorry, I misremembered which brother. Joe, not Nick. The girl's name, according to Heller, was Rosalie Fitzgerald. Heller says that Joe and Ayn became the girl's godparents.

Here's the story as Heller tells it:

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

pp. 180-81

[paragraph break added]

[The excerpt comes from Chapter Eight, the time frame of which is given as 1943-1946.]

Frank's brother Joe O'Connor, now an itinerant actor with a small theatrical troupe based in Los Angeles, visited [the ranch] when he was in town. As a young man in Lorain, he had hoped to marry a woman named Millie. Millie married someone else and gave birth to a daughter, got divorced, and, in the 1920s, moved to California. Joe became the godfather of Millie's daughter, whose name was Rosalie Fitzgerald. In the late 1920s, the small girl [had] often visited the O'Connors in their apartment on North Gower Street. Rand [had] kindly appointed herself Rosalie's godmother, and Rosalie was very fond of her.

Fifteen years later [which would be the mid-30s, not the mid-40s??], Millie and Rosalie enjoyed driving out from Los Angeles together after church on Sundays. On one such Sunday, Ayn revealed a facet of her background and character that took Rosalie and her mother by surprise. The four were talking about a newspaper article concerning a federal investigation of AmericanCommunists when Millie said, apropos of the conventional wisdom that most Communists were Jewish, that she didn't approve of Hitler but agreed that "he should have incinerated all those Jews." Dead silence ensued. Then Rand said quietly, in a voice that Rosalie remembered as beautifully modulated, "Well, Millie, I guess you've never known, but I am Jewish." (On hearing this story, a longtime acquaintance of Rand's commented that she didn't believe Rand's reportedly mild response: "I guarantee that her reaction would have been rage," the acquaintance remarked.)

[The "longtime acquaintance" is identified in an endnote as Barbara Branden.]

Rosalie was horrified, ashamed of her mother's bigotry, and frightened that she would lose Rand as godmother and friend, but Millie wouldn't apologize. "I'm sorry it has to end this way," Frank told the women as he walked them to their car. That Sunday was one of the few times Rand disclosed her Jewish background to anyone other than Frank, Nick, Mimi, and possibly Joe. On this day, her principled abhorrence of anti-semitism, and, indeed, of any collective, group-based bias, trumped whatever generalized fear of humiliation or of tactical disadvantage she may have had. By then she would almost certainly have seen photographs of liberated Nazi concentration camps. A few years later she would tell a friend, "But they [the Nazis] were killing me." [insert of "the Nazis" is Heller's.]

Here are the endnotes for the passage:

pg. 475

180 Joe O'Connor, now an itinerant actor: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004. [MW is Marna Wolf.]

180 The four were talking about a newspaper article: 100 Voices, Rosalie Wilson, pp. 29-36.

181 On hearing this story: Author correspondence with Barbara Branden, September 17, 2008.

181 A few years later she would tell a friend: Author interview with Nathaniel Branden, December 11, 2008.

Ellen

[Cathy]

I talked to Marna today and I asked her about the little girl that was Aunt Alice and Uncle Franks god daughter, whose mother was a friend of Nicks. She said she had no idea. I was born after Nick died, so I wouldn't have known.

Sorry, I misremembered which brother. Joe, not Nick. The girl's name, according to Heller, was Rosalie Fitzgerald. Heller says that Joe and Ayn became the girl's godparents.

Here's the story as Heller tells it:

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

pp. 180-81

[paragraph break added]

[The excerpt comes from Chapter Eight, the time frame of which is given as 1943-1946.]

Frank's brother Joe O'Connor, now an itinerant actor with a small theatrical troupe based in Los Angeles, visited [the ranch] when he was in town. As a young man in Lorain, he had hoped to marry a woman named Millie. Millie married someone else and gave birth to a daughter, got divorced, and, in the 1920s, moved to California. Joe became the godfather of Millie's daughter, whose name was Rosalie Fitzgerald. In the late 1920s, the small girl [had] often visited the O'Connors in their apartment on North Gower Street. Rand [had] kindly appointed herself Rosalie's godmother, and Rosalie was very fond of her.

Fifteen years later [which would be the mid-30s, not the mid-40s??], Millie and Rosalie enjoyed driving out from Los Angeles together after church on Sundays. On one such Sunday, Ayn revealed a facet of her background and character that took Rosalie and her mother by surprise. The four were talking about a newspaper article concerning a federal investigation of AmericanCommunists when Millie said, apropos of the conventional wisdom that most Communists were Jewish, that she didn't approve of Hitler but agreed that "he should have incinerated all those Jews." Dead silence ensued. Then Rand said quietly, in a voice that Rosalie remembered as beautifully modulated, "Well, Millie, I guess you've never known, but I am Jewish." (On hearing this story, a longtime acquaintance of Rand's commented that she didn't believe Rand's reportedly mild response: "I guarantee that her reaction would have been rage," the acquaintance remarked.)

[The "longtime acquaintance" is identified in an endnote as Barbara Branden.]

Rosalie was horrified, ashamed of her mother's bigotry, and frightened that she would lose Rand as godmother and friend, but Millie wouldn't apologize. "I'm sorry it has to end this way," Frank told the women as he walked them to their car. That Sunday was one of the few times Rand disclosed her Jewish background to anyone other than Frank, Nick, Mimi, and possibly Joe. On this day, her principled abhorrence of anti-semitism, and, indeed, of any collective, group-based bias, trumped whatever generalized fear of humiliation or of tactical disadvantage she may have had. By then she would almost certainly have seen photographs of liberated Nazi concentration camps. A few years later she would tell a friend, "But they [the Nazis] were killing me." [insert of "the Nazis" is Heller's.]

Here are the endnotes for the passage:

pg. 475

180 Joe O'Connor, now an itinerant actor: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004. [MW is Marna Wolf.]

180 The four were talking about a newspaper article: 100 Voices, Rosalie Wilson, pp. 29-36.

181 On hearing this story: Author correspondence with Barbara Branden, September 17, 2008.

181 A few years later she would tell a friend: Author interview with Nathaniel Branden, December 11, 2008.

Ellen

Ellen

Ellen, I knew Uncle Joe had a long time girl friend, but he never married. I knew he lived in Texas for a long time and my father stayed with him a while. But this would have been much later then the 20 and 30's. I cant find to much about Joe, only what the family has said growing up and what Marna has said. But by everything said, he was one of the favorite brothers, very sincere, very caring and sweet. All the boys had a very unique sensitive, passive, tenderness about them, that was a charming and endearing influence on the people around them. My father played poker with Marna's father A.M. Papurt, so they were very good friends. When Papurt died, they had an all out Jewish funeral, all in homica's. Papurt was laid in the casket with a white satin rob and a homica on his head. Marna said, in walks uncle Billy(my father), a Catholic and the only one not wearing a homica, only a brimmed hat. As he walked up to the casket to pay his final respects to his brother in law and good friend, Marna said he bowed his head and tipped his hat to say goodbye. Marna was fourteen and said that she will never forget the most sweetest and honorable way her Uncle Billy said goodbye...I am so happy Marna is still around! ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

Cathy,

I'm happy Marna is still around, too!

I got curious because of date and sequence discrepancies between Burns' brief mention of Rosalie and what Heller says, so I read the interview in 100 Voices. I hadn't read that interview before.

I think you said that you bought 100 Voices. Yes?

The interview is under the name Rosalie Wilson (Fitzgerald was her maiden name). It's on pp. 29-36.

Unfortunately, Rosalie is reported as having died in 2008.

According to her own account, her mom (Millie), Joe, and Ayn and Frank were chums in the late '20s-'30s. Interestingly, given Ayn's distaste for beards, Rosalie says:

pg. 29

Joe always wore a beard and always looked like Christ. I think that's what drew him to California, to play Christ in the Pilgrimage play for years, year after year, at the Hollywood Pilgrimage Play Theater, which was on Highland, very close to the Hollywood Bowl entrance. I remember going to those Pilgrimage plays. There wasn't much for him to do except stand on the side of the whole theatrical stage and slowly walk up with people waving palm fronds until he got to the top of the stage.

An editor's footnote says: As far as can be determined, Christ was played by Ian Maclaren during this time period. Joe O'Connor's involvement cannot be verified.

There's a lot I think you'd find interesting in the interview, some of it maybe envy-producing because of the amount of memories Rosalie tells of staying with Frank and Ayn. (She says she always called Ayn "Ayn," btw, though she called Frank "Uncle Frank" and Joe "Uncle Joe.")

A significant detail regarding dates discrepancy is that Rosalie says the incident when her mother made the remark about Jews happened in late 1951. She says that she'd come back to Southern California in September, 1951, after not living there for years. She was by then in her late 20s - she was born December 26, 1922 - and was "raising three little kids by [her]self."

Thus the incident happened just about the same time or shortly after Ayn's late-September, 1951, decision to move back to New York City, where Barbara and Nathaniel had gone to continue their schooling, not in the 1943-1946 time frame Heller's placement of the tale makes it look as if it happened.

Ellen

[Cathy]

Cathy,

I'm happy Marna is still around, too!

I got curious because of date and sequence discrepancies between Burns' brief mention of Rosalie and what Heller says, so I read the interview in 100 Voices. I hadn't read that interview before.

I think you said that you bought 100 Voices. Yes?

The interview is under the name Rosalie Wilson (Fitzgerald was her maiden name). It's on pp. 29-36.

Unfortunately, Rosalie is reported as having died in 2008.

According to her own account, her mom (Millie), Joe, and Ayn and Frank were chums in the late '20s-'30s. Interestingly, given Ayn's distaste for beards, Rosalie says:

pg. 29

Joe always wore a beard and always looked like Christ. I think that's what drew him to California, to play Christ in the Pilgrimage play for years, year after year, at the Hollywood Pilgrimage Play Theater, which was on Highland, very close to the Hollywood Bowl entrance. I remember going to those Pilgrimage plays. There wasn't much for him to do except stand on the side of the whole theatrical stage and slowly walk up with people waving palm fronds until he got to the top of the stage.

An editor's footnote says: As far as can be determined, Christ was played by Ian Maclaren during this time period. Joe O'Connor's involvement cannot be verified.

There's a lot I think you'd find interesting in the interview, some of it maybe envy-producing because of the amount of memories Rosalie tells of staying with Frank and Ayn. (She says she always called Ayn "Ayn," btw, though she called Frank "Uncle Frank" and Joe "Uncle Joe.")

A significant detail regarding dates discrepancy is that Rosalie says the incident when her mother made the remark about Jews happened in late 1951. She says that she'd come back to Southern California in September, 1951, after not living there for years. She was by then in her late 20s - she was born December 26, 1922 - and was "raising three little kids by [her]self."

Thus the incident happened just about the same time or shortly after Ayn's late-September, 1951, decision to move back to New York City, where Barbara and Nathaniel had gone to continue their schooling, not in the 1943-1946 time frame Heller's placement of the tale makes it look as if it happened.

Ellen

Wow, all the other brother's always were clean shaven, and the pictures of Uncle Joe, he was clean shaven to. But of course she would know better than me. I am going to have to ask Marna about that. No, I didn't get 100 voices. I have a lot of the books and started reading "Fountainhead" then decided to watch the movie My eyes aren't as good as they use to be But I have watch a few movies and have listen to some of her interviews. I am not surprised that everyone else knew her as Ayn. Marna said that my father would never have allowed us to be involved with any of her philosophy or what she did for a living. I didn't even know my father was a bookie until years and years later, and he did that right under my nose. I was so naïve! Ellen is also still alive. Shoshana was suppose to get us together, but I haven't heard from her for awhile now. She's up in her 70's but if she is anything like Marna, we may have years left with her. I talk to Marna about once a week and I wish I could visit her more. She's very bright and so funny...I hope I got many more years with her...God willing (sorry). As you know, I never knew any of my relatives young or my father...Marna can tell me stories of my father and how he was with them growing up. Its kind of like where Aunt Agnes ended, Marna continues...and I am loving every minute of it! ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

Cathy,

I hope you get in touch with your relative named Ellen. I forget at this point, is she Elizabeth's daughter?

I wish I could type in the whole interview with Rosalie, which I think you'd find really interesting, but it's too long. Speaking of one's eyes not being what they used to be, I have a lot of trouble with my eyes, especially with sight loss in the left eye.

Something else to ask Marna, along with asking about Joe's being bearded...

I quoted from the Rosalie interview:

pg. 29

Joe [...] play[ed] Christ in the Pilgrimage play for years, year after year, at the Hollywood Pilgrimage Play Theater, which was on Highland, very close to the Hollywood Bowl entrance. [....]

An editor's footnote says: As far as can be determined, Christ was played by Ian Maclaren during this time period. Joe O'Connor's involvement cannot be verified.

The footnote doesn't say if anyone connected with the "Voices" project tried to find out if "Ian Maclaren" might have been a stage name Joe used. Possibly Marna might know.

Marna can tell me stories of my father and how he was with them growing up. Its kind of like where Aunt Agnes ended, Marna continues...and I am loving every minute of it! ~Cathy~

The flow of the family, generation to generation. I always liked reading family sagas, and here's a real-life one.

Ellen

[Cathy]

Cathy,

I hope you get in touch with your relative named Ellen. I forget at this point, is she Elizabeth's daughter?

I wish I could type in the whole interview with Rosalie, which I think you'd find really interesting, but it's too long. Speaking of one's eyes not being what they used to be, I have a lot of trouble with my eyes, especially with sight loss in the left eye.

Something else to ask Marna, along with asking about Joe's being bearded...

I quoted from the Rosalie interview:

pg. 29

Joe [...] play[ed] Christ in the Pilgrimage play for years, year after year, at the Hollywood Pilgrimage Play Theater, which was on Highland, very close to the Hollywood Bowl entrance. [....]

An editor's footnote says: As far as can be determined, Christ was played by Ian Maclaren during this time period. Joe O'Connor's involvement cannot be verified.

The footnote doesn't say if anyone connected with the "Voices" project tried to find out if "Ian Maclaren" might have been a stage name Joe used. Possibly Marna might know.

Marna can tell me stories of my father and how he was with them growing up. Its kind of like where Aunt Agnes ended, Marna continues...and I am loving every minute of it! ~Cathy~

The flow of the family, generation to generation. I always liked reading family sagas, and here's a real-life one.

Ellen

Yes, Ellen is Aunt Bess's only daughter. I will ask Marna about Rosalie and if Uncle Joe had a stage name. I am writing notes as I go along...I don't want to forget anything again. Family sagas lol thanks to Aunt Agnes, now Marna...I suppose the next one will/or is me. Next weekend I am visiting Marna, I am also going to Wis. to visit another cousin on my mother side...I am feeling like Aunt Agnes more and more. I wonder which one of my children will carry on and make this family live forever :)And the saga continues...~Cathy~ p.s. I am going to have to get that book!

[Cathy]

I got my first hate mail today on facebook. I don't know this person. This is what he wrote me,

You being the niece of Ayn Rand, you are not even worth saying anything to because of your IMMENSE incompetence, its hopeless. id like to call you a sorry xcuse for a human being, but that would stooping to your [incredibly low] level.

good day, stupid bitch.

I had to laugh because he said I wasn't worth saying anything to...but he preceded to say it anyway. But on the flip side of this, I have had some very nice, appreciation messages about my aunt. I think back, and I know my aunt had to have gotten letters like this or worse...no wonder she always seemed defensive in some of her interviews I've watched. ~Cathy~

[Selene]

Cathy:

Kinda like being an early Christian!

I would report the individual to Facebook just for the record.

A...

[PDS]

You always have my permission Cathy,..Adam is another story!

I believe Adam prefers submission to permission.

[Selene]

You always have my permission Cathy,..Adam is another story!

I believe Adam prefers submission to permission.

As does the submissive and you do need her permission.

Safe, Sane and Consensual is similar to the three laws of robotics.

However, that post did have a smooth lyrical quality PDS.

[Guyau]

.

Scroll down here for a 1961 drawing (?) of Ayn Rand by Frank O'Connor.

[Brant Gaede]

Apparently Rand was throwing the portrait away when someone asked for it saving it. It's not a very good outside in portrait. It's about the inside out.

--Brant

I think she was trying to discard it after Frank died (according to an OLer?)

[Cathy]

I went and visited with Marna, she is doing great for being 86 years old. She meet us at our hotel room and we took her out to dinner. We came back to the hotel and visited until her son Mark called worrying about her. Mark said he knew she was out to dinner, but he said, he didn't think she could eat dinner for five hours. She left soon after Mark called at eleven...but we could have talked for hours more. Its like we have always known each other...and I hope I have her for many more years. She found some letters that Uncle Nick had written in the 1940's she is going to copy and send to me. Also Fabe (her husband) was a photographer/ magician and she found old negatives that he had taken of Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice that she is going to get developed for me. She said I was robbed in life for not knowing Uncle Nick. She said he was one man that was hard to forget by anyone who has ever meet him. We talked about Aunt Alice, and I told her that the interviews I have watched isn't her personality that I remember. She said she had the benefit of know Aunt Alice as a child and as an adult...Aunt Alice expects more out of the adult. I told her that I read up on them and articles say that Uncle Frank was a house husband, and I feel like the articles in some way are saying Uncle Frank was a kept man that lived off his wife, and made out to be less of a man. She said that Uncle Frank had many jobs in his life, but he had told her once...the hardest job he's ever had was being the husband of Ayn Rand. She said that Aunt Alice had to have him close by her always, and that anyone who really knew them knew that Uncle Frank was her strength. She also told me of my father. Marna is 30 years older than I am. When she was growing up, Aunt Agnes was a single mother. She said my father would come and help with Aunt Agnes and the kids. He tried to be a father figure to them. He was very upset that Marna started smoking at 14, and was angry at Aunt Agnes for letting her. Aunt Agnes and my father didn't smoke. But my father taught Connie (Papurt) Aunt Agnes's youngest daughter and (Marna's youngest sister) to play poker. Connie as an adult gambled away a lot of money. Marna said that Connie would have to borrow money from her and Mimi to keep the lights on because she lost big at poker. So Connie had a problem not knowing when to leave the table...I by the way know when to leave I can tell if Marna and I would have been born in the same generation, we would have always been up to something! Sometimes I feel bitter that I didn't grow up with Marna, and then I have to remind myself that I am blessed that I have her now. What surprises me the most, because I didn't know I would...I love her. ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

.

Scroll down here for a 1961 drawing (?) of Ayn Rand by Frank O'Connor.

Apparently Rand was throwing the portrait away when someone asked for it saving it. It's not a very good outside in portrait. It's about the inside out.

--Brant

I think she was trying to discard it after Frank died (according to an OLer?)

The story about the painting comes from Heller. Here it is, such as it is. The opinion expressed is of course Heller's.

Roberta Satro, a Murray Hill area rental agent for several apartment buildings, including the one the O'Connors lived in, is the person who's reported to have seen Ayn throwing the painting away and to have asked if she (Satro) could keep it.

pg. 340

In a 1961 portrait O'Connor painted of her (a strong likeness that demonstrates his ability to communicate in paint), the huge eyes are not only slightly out of alignment with each other but also radiate different messages: anger, sexuality, and power on the left and wariness and sorrow on the right. It's a striking image. Although she forbade him to sell his paintings while he lived - she could not bear to part with them - she was discovered throwing this one in a trash bin after his death in 1979. None of her inner circle had ever seen it.

Endnotes, pg. 512

340 she forbade him to sell his paintings: Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004; author correspondence with BB, September 17, 2008.

340 she was discovered:: Author interview with Roberta Satro, July 20, 2006. Satro was the on-site rental agent for 120 East Thirty-fourth Street and several other Murray Hill apartment buildings in the 1970s; in 1979 or 1980, she came upon Rand putting the painting in a trash can and asked if she could take it home. Rand agreed.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Cathy,

I'm glad you had another good visit with Marna, and I hope she'll be around for multiple more years.

A family friend of my husband's recently had her 106th birthday, and, although she's somewhat hard of hearing, she's still mentally with it.

Ellen

[Cathy]

Cathy,

I'm glad you had another good visit with Marna, and I hope she'll be around for multiple more years.

A family friend of my husband's recently had her 106th birthday, and, although she's somewhat hard of hearing, she's still mentally with it.

Ellen

Ellen, thank you. I hope your right that I will have Marna around for along time! I just got done putting up a family tree on Ancestry.com, since I know more now and put Marna's and most of the families pictures on the tree. Maybe my grandkids will get on there when I am gone. BTW, Marna doesn't know a Millie or Rosalie...she said that Uncle Joe had a long time girlfriend he lived with in Texas...which is what Aunt Agnes told me growing up. Do you know what years that was, because Marna lived in New York for awhile. I think her first child was born there. I wish there was more I knew about Joe...he seems to be the one I know the less about. Oh, did you know Uncle Frank played in the movie Frankenstein in the 30's and the is a good shoot of him rolling out the corpse through the door. Its on youtube, because someone sent it to me...its pretty cool ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

BTW, Marna doesn't know a Millie or Rosalie...she said that Uncle Joe had a long time girlfriend he lived with in Texas...which is what Aunt Agnes told me growing up. Do you know what years that was, because Marna lived in New York for awhile. I think her first child was born there. I wish there was more I knew about Joe...he seems to be the one I know the less about.

The times when Rosalie stayed with Ayn and Frank would have been when Marna was very young, the late 1920s through mid-'30s.

There are few references to Joe in either Barbara's biography or Heller's - none by name that I could find in Nathaniel Branden's or Burns'.

With one exception, in Heller's book, there's no reference to Joe's whereabouts after 1935. The exception concerns Thadeus Ashby's writing to Ayn from New York City in 1945 (Ayn and Frank were living on the California ranch).

pp. 175-76, Ayn Rand and the World She Made

[Ashby] held an entry-level job at the McCann-Erickson advertising agency in Madison Avenue and typed his letter on company stationery. Was he important? Rand and O'Connor apparently wondered. Later, Ashby discovered that they had sent Frank's older brother Joe, who happened to be in New York, to the advertising agency to check him out.

--

The endnote, pg 473, says:

Account is based on two interviews with Thadeus Ashby, conducted for the author by Wendy de Weese in Hawaii, June 19 and July 17, 2005.

There isn't even any mention I could find of when Joe died.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Oh, did you know Uncle Frank played in the movie Frankenstein in the 30's and the is a good shoot of him rolling out the corpse through the door. Its on youtube, because someone sent it to me...its pretty cool ~Cathy~

If I ever heard or read about Frank appearing in Frankenstein in the '30s, I don't remember. The part isn't mentioned by Heller.

pg. 75

[Frank] was landing small parts in early talking pictures: Shadow of the Law (1930), Cimarron (1931), Ladies' Man (1931), Arrowsmith (1931), Three on a Match (1932), and Handle with Care (1932).

--

pg. 78

In 1933 and early 1934, [Frank] had small parts in six or seven films, including the sequel to King Kong. But he wasn't earning much money, and he wasn't getting major roles. Rand began to chafe under the impression that he was being passed up for the romantic leads she thought he had been born to play. She later described as heartbreaking the experience of seeing her handsome husband portraying characters who were clumsy or foolish.

Endnotes

pg. 446

75 He was landing small parts: My thanks to David Hayes for compiling FO's movie titles. The list appears at http://movies.davidhayes.net.. [This link doesn't work. Use the one given below.]

pg. 447

78 he wasn't earning much money: O'Connor earned about seven dollars a day as a film extra (100 Voices, Marcella Rabwin, p. 41).

The other notes are to the interviews of Ayn taped by Barbara in 1960-61.

.

Here's a link to David Hayes' website. He lists a few more movies, which I'll list in a separate post.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

David Hayes' list of movies in which Frank appeared - link. I've rearranged in year order.

Orphans of the Storm (1921)

Shadow of the Law (1930)

Cimarron (1931 version)

Ladies' Man (1931)

Handle with Care (December 1932)

Three on a Match (1932)

After Tonight (1933)

Good-bye Love (1933)

Son of Kong (1933)

The Death Kiss (1933)

Tillie and Gus (1933)

As Husbands Go (1934)

Hide-out (1934)

You're Telling Me (1934)

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Barbara only mentions a few of Frank's movies by name, but three of those are ones Hayes doesn't include:

King of Kings (Correction: Hayes does include that movie, as one in which both Ayn and Frank appeared.)

Smashing the Rackets

Hold 'em Up

Barbara says regarding Cimarron and As Husbands Go:

pg. 108

In Cimarron (the movie from the novel by Edna Ferber, staring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne) he was given a scene in the opening sequence, as the young fiancé of the heroine, whom she leaves for the hero; it was his first part with dialogue.

--

A footnote adds:

When the movie recently appeared, uncut, on cable television, no such scene appeared; presumably it had been removed from the film years earlier. All that remained was a dinner party during which one saw Frank in two or three brief glimpses.

--

Frank's important "break" came in a comedy entitled As Husbands Go. He was hired for the Los Angeles road company production of the Rachel Crothers stage play. But he played - as Ayn later termed it, while Frank nodded his head in agreement - "a tall, ungainly young professor having a romance with a young girl; they were the comedy relief. The part was totally wrong for Frank. Then Fox bought the movie rights and Frank did the same role on the screen. After the first day of shooting, he was told not to wear makeup, because he was too good-looking! It was heartbreaking for me to see him trying to be as ungainly as he could and to clown as much as he could."

[....] "That particular break in As Husbands Go really finished him," Ayn said. "And even if he had gotten big parts, Hollywood would have done to him what they did to Gary Cooper. I don't know if Frank would have stood for it, or if he would have fallen to pieces."

[i skipped Barbara's filling in her belief as to what Frank was feeling.]

Ellen

[Cathy]

Barbara only mentions a few of Frank's movies by name, but three of those are ones Hayes doesn't include:

King of Kings (Correction: Hayes does include that movie, as one in which both Ayn and Frank appeared.)

Smashing the Rackets

Hold 'em Up

I have the book "as Husbands Go" Shoshana sent it to me. I wish I knew how to upload the video of Frankenstein because it looks just like Uncle Frank and I believe it was him. If you find it, he is in a white lab coat pushing the gurney through the door. I played it a few times and the paused it at the right moment and it looks just like him. Let me know if you find it. ~Cathy~

Barbara says regarding Cimarron and As Husbands Go:

pg. 108

In Cimarron (the movie from the novel by Edna Ferber, staring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne) he was given a scene in the opening sequence, as the young fiancé of the heroine, whom she leaves for the hero; it was his first part with dialogue.

--

A footnote adds:

When the movie recently appeared, uncut, on cable television, no such scene appeared; presumably it had been removed from the film years earlier. All that remained was a dinner party during which one saw Frank in two or three brief glimpses.

--

Frank's important "break" came in a comedy entitled As Husbands Go. He was hired for the Los Angeles road company production of the Rachel Crothers stage play. But he played - as Ayn later termed it, while Frank nodded his head in agreement - "a tall, ungainly young professor having a romance with a young girl; they were the comedy relief. The part was totally wrong for Frank. Then Fox bought the movie rights and Frank did the same role on the screen. After the first day of shooting, he was told not to wear makeup, because he was too good-looking! It was heartbreaking for me to see him trying to be as ungainly as he could and to clown as much as he could."

[....] "That particular break in As Husbands Go really finished him," Ayn said. "And even if he had gotten big parts, Hollywood would have done to him what they did to Gary Cooper. I don't know if Frank would have stood for it, or if he would have fallen to pieces."

[i skipped Barbara's filling in her belief as to what Frank was feeling.]

Ellen

[Cathy]

I HOPE EACH AND EVERYONE ONE OF YOU HAVE A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I AM VERY THANKFUL FOR YOU ALL! ~CATHY~

[Brant Gaede]

Same, same.

--Brant