Erin O'Brien-Moore

Biography

This fetching beauty, Erin O'Brien-Moore, started to attract notice on the Broadway stage before Warner Bros. signed her to a contract in the mid-30s. She played 'second leads' opposite many of the top stars on the lot, including Donald Cook in Ring Around the Moon (1936), Humphrey Bogart in Black Legion (1937), and Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), in which Erin portrayed Nana, the pathetic streetwalker, who served as an unexpected source of inspiration to Zola in writing a novel detailing the corruption of society. Tragedy struck in 1939 when Erin was seriously burned in a restaurant fire. It took years of painful rehabilitation and reconstructive surgery before she was able to return to her profession, but she did so valiantly. Film roles again came her way, albeit minor ones, in the 1950s, this time as a character actress. Her more noticeable films included Destination Moon (1950), The Family Secret (1951), The Long Gray Line (1955), and Peyton Place (1957). On TV she played Charlie Ruggles wife in the series The Ruggles (1949) and spent three seasons as Nurse Choate on Peyton Place (1964). Once wed to stage critic Mark Barron, she retired before the end of the decade. She died of cancer in 1979.