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The preferred leading man of many a silent screen actress, Eugene O'Brien had a rugged physique but was equally effective in drawing-room melodrama. A former stock company player, O'Brien had appeared with some of America's foremost stage divas, from Ethel Barrymore to Fritzi Scheff, prior to entering films with the World company in 1915. Mary Pickford's leading man in both Poor Little Peppina (1916) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), he enjoyed his greatest popularity as a leading man to Norma Talmadge, with whom he was to appear in 11 popular melodramas (1917-1925). There were a few attempts to launch him as a star in his own right, but like a later era's George Brent, O'Brien was always more effective opposite strong female stars. Like so many of his contemporaries, his career did not survive the transition to sound; he never made a single talkie. Long out of the public eye, O'Brien's death was attributed to bronchial pneumonia.