1. Cathy O'Donnell's father, Grady Steely, was a schoolteacher and owned a local movie theater.
14 Facts About Cathy O'Donnell
1. 2.
Cathy O'Donnell's family moved to Greensboro, Alabama when she was seven, then to Oklahoma City when she was twelve.
3.
Cathy O'Donnell told a Boston Globe reporter in 1946 that she first became interested in acting at age fourteen after seeing Janet Gaynor in A Star Is Born.
4.
Cathy O'Donnell left that job to study acting at Oklahoma City University, where she played Juliet in a college production of Romeo and Juliet.
5.
Cathy O'Donnell then saved money for a two-week trip to Hollywood, where she hoped to begin a movie career.
6.
Cathy O'Donnell sent her for acting and diction lessons and had her cast in local plays, including a Pasadena Playhouse dramatization of Little Women.
7.
Cathy O'Donnell later changed her name to Cathy, after the female protagonist in Wuthering Heights.
8.
Cathy O'Donnell then changed her last name to O'Donnell as recommended by Goldwyn's wife, who claimed that audiences loved actors with Irish last names.
9.
Cathy O'Donnell made her film debut as an uncredited extra in Wonder Man.
10.
Cathy O'Donnell was loaned to RKO for They Live by Night.
11.
Cathy O'Donnell had a large supporting role in Detective Story with Kirk Douglas.
12.
Cathy O'Donnell appeared as Barbara Waggoman, the love interest of James Stewart's character in the western The Man from Laramie.
13.
In 1946, while acting in The Best Years of Our Lives, Cathy O'Donnell met director William Wyler's older brother Robert Wyler.
14.
Cathy O'Donnell is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.