Thank you to
Dallas Cline, Oona O'Neill's first cousin and the
daughter of Margery "Budgie" Boulton Colman, for
helping to fine tune the playback speed of this video to
approximate the timbre of Oona's voice.
Besides
acquiring a stable of suitors, Oona acquired an agent,
Minna Wallis. Minna, sister of producer Hal
Wallis, started out as an acting coach and after tiring
of the tedious efforts to train the often unspeakable in
how to speak, changed careers. By the time Oona
arrive in Hollywood, the former coach was at the top of
her new profession. They were introduced at a
Hollywood party. Whether Minna was bowled over by
the young woman's looks, demeanor, and talent, or simply
by her illustrious name, or by any combination of
assets, is not clear. One thing is certain; Minna
Wallis must have been fairly confident that she could
sell Oona O'Neill. Minna arranged for a screen
test with director Eugen Frenke, who was engaged in
preliminary work on The Girl from Leningrad, a
vehicle for his wife, Anna Sten. Less than a
minute and a half in length, the screen test is the only
record of the young Oona O'Neill on film.
Opinions of the
test vary. Chaplin biographer David Robinson felt
that her brief moment indicated that Oona would have
been a striking screen personality. In his opinion
"her radiant and fragile beauty coupled with a
personality, at once diffident and eager, yielded a
vivid presence." Others who viewed the film were
not as enthusiastic. In the screen test, despite a
kerchief covering her luxurious dark hair (employed no
doubt to give her a Slavic air) Oona's beauty shines
forth. The babushka notwithstanding, she does not
look like a peasant girl from Leningrad. If
anything she resembles a starry-eyed colleen from
Dublin. Although Oona has little to say, her
cultivated and preppy voice resounds with the accents of
Park Avenue, not the Kremlin. Eugen Frenke can be
heard in the background exhorting her in heavily
accented directives to do such things as turn her head
and look up. In these swift recorded seconds
Oona's discomfort is palpable; she is obviously
self-conscious. To help overcome her anxieties,
the director and at least two others speak out and try
to loosen her up. "Now, come to ze front and just
wait. Now, say somesink," prompts Frenke from
behind the camera. "I don't know what to say,"
answers Oona, furrowing her brow. "Give me
something," she pleads, then declares with
embarrassment, "I'm sorry, OOO, I'm sorry," to which
Frenke responds, "Don't be so sorry, dear." In the
background a woman, (perhaps Miss Sten) begins singing
in accented English, "The bells are rrrink-ink for me
and my gal" and a crestfallen expression appears on
Oona's face. She drops her head and sighs, "Oh
gee," End of test.
When one looks
at this strip of film today, disregarding its original
purpose and judging it simply as a record of the young
woman herself, Oona's innate sweetness, charm, and
gentle diffidence shine through and provide a living
document of her special appeal. As a potential
actress, however, aside from her comeliness and her
effulgent smile, Oona O'Neill projects little more than
a youthful glow and an intense vulnerability. She
had the looks, certainly, and a lovely demeanor, but
whether she would have matured into a bona fide screen
artist is strictly speculation.
