THIS month we’ve been delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil who, like many at the time, had a keen interest in all things aviation. The scrapbooks contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What he assembled was a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI and the time.

The back covers of the two scrapbooks.

Robert’s father was in and out of VA Hospitals during the time Robert was assembling the scrapbooks, 1929-1932. By 1940, his parents had divorced with his father trying to strike it rich as a prospector in Searchlight, Kansas. He passed in 1947 at the age of 70.

Ancestry.com points to Robert getting involved in the movie industry after the war. His obituary has him starting in the movie industry in some capacity as early as 1943. Somehow he found his way on to the big screen where IMDB lists mainly uncredited parts in fifteen movies from 1947 to 1951. Some with big stars like Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Donald O’Connor, Lauren Bacall and Burt Lancaster!

Who will ever forget his turn as a heckler in Donald O’Connor’s “Are You Worth It?” (1947); or the informer in “Johnny Stool Pigeon” (1949); or the Irishman in the Ronald Reagan – Virginia Mayo Warner Bros’ big laugh-holiday “The Girl from Jones Beach”(1949).

He played a bum in 1950’s “Young Man with a Horn” staring Burt Lancaster, Lauren Bacall and Doris Day; a cropper in the Civil War Technicolor extravaganza “Tap Roots” staring Van Heflin, Susan Hayward and Boris Karloff (1948); and “townsmen” in the Donald O’Connor vehicle “Feudin’, Fussin’ and A-Fightin’” (1948), Bill Elliot’s trucolor western “Hellfire” (1949), and the Ginger Rogers – Ronald Reagan KKK classic “Storm Warning” (1951).

A number of his movies can be found on YouTube, like the “The Baron of Arizona” where Vincent Price plays James Reavis, a master swindler who painstakingly spends years forging documents and land grants that will make his wife and him undisputed owners of the entire state of Arizona. Robert has one of his showier parts with a name and lines as Brother Paul.

Robert, pictured center, appeared as Brother Paul in The Baron of Arizona (1950).

FILMOGRAPHY

Sadly, Robert passed away when he was only 40 years old in 1951.

From The Los Angeles Times October 12th, 1951.

But what of the Scrapbooks? They were probably kept by his mother until her death in 1972 where they may have passed into his sister’s possession up in Multnomah, Oregon until she passed away in 1994 since the scrapbooks were sold by a rare book dealer out of Portland, Oregon.