Barbara O'Neil (1910-1980) was an American actress who played Ellen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939).
Filming "Gone With the Wind"[]
Barbara was given the role after Lillian Gish turned down both the role of Ellen and Belle Watling. Barbara was only three years older than her on-screen daughter Scarlett, played by Vivien Leigh (then 25). In the scene where Scarlett marries Charles, Scarlett's wedding dress was actually made to fit Barbara rather than Vivien because it was thought that a wedding organised that soon might involve the bride wearing her mother's wedding dress. This is also why the dress is out of fashion and more 1830s/1840s than 1860s.
Like her character Ellen, Barbara had some French roots, though not genetical. Her father, a succesful lumber businessman, moved to Paris in the 1920s.
Trivia[]
- In the same year as Gone With the Wind she appeared in When Tomorrow Comes (1939) with Mickey Kuhn, who played Beau Wilkes.
- She was in Stella Dallas (1937) with her co-star Hattie McDaniel (Mammy).