Arthur O'Connell was a stage, screen, and television veteran born on March 29, 1908, in New York City. He had a distinctive countrified appearance, often playing characters older than his actual age, with a trademark mustache, weary-worry countenance, and weathered looks.
Arthur attended St. John's High School and College in Brooklyn and made his stage debut in 1929 in a production of "The Patsy." He later toured with vaudevillians, including Bert Lahr, and played in London in a 1938 production of "Golden Boy." He reprised his role in New York over a decade later.
In 1940, O'Connell began to find atmospheric bits in films, playing pilots, pages, clerks, interns, photographers, and ambulance assistants. He worked with Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre, earning a small role in the final scenes of Citizen Kane (1941). During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army, performing and directing plays and revues, including a performance presented before President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Queen Wilhelmina.
After the war, O'Connell returned to the New York stage, touring with the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company and playing roles in "Hamlet" and "Macbeth." He finally hit pay dirt as meek bachelor/storekeeper Howard Bevans in William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Picnic," which opened on Broadway in 1953.
Arthur's big cinematic break came when he was given the opportunity to transfer his popular Broadway stage role in "Picnic" to film. Directed by Joshua Logan, Picnic (1955) won two Oscars, and O'Connell was nominated for supporting actor. He went on to play flawed gents on film and TV, earning standout roles in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956),Bus Stop (1956),Anatomy of a Murder (1959),and Gidget (1959).
Throughout his career, O'Connell remained a steady camera presence, playing warm, helpful, and wise characters or sly, impish, and crafty ones. Later films included Hound-Dog Man (1959),Cimarron (1960),Pocketful of Miracles (1961),Kissin' Cousins (1964),7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964),and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
On TV, O'Connell played urban and rustic rascals, both comedic and dramatic, on a number of regular series in the 1960s and 1970s, including "Zane Grey Theatre," "Alcoa Theatre," "The F.B.I.," "Petticoat Junction," and "The Big Valley."
Arthur married Anne Hall Dunlop in 1962 and remained married until their divorce in 1971. He was forced to curtail his work load in the mid 1970s due to the progression of Alzheimer's disease and eventually entered the Motion Picture and Television Country Home in Woodland Hills, California. He died there on May 18, 1981, at the age of 73.
