Dave O'Brien (actor)
American actor and director (1912-1969)
Dave O'Brien (born David Poole Fronabarger; May 31, 1912 – November 8, 1969) was an American film actor, stunt man, film director, and Emmy awarded comedy writer. He was well known for his portrayal, in the 1942 serial films of the title character in Captain Midnight, performer and comedy writer in the Pete Smith Specialties and as one of Red Skelton's comedy writers.
Life and career
Born in Big Spring, Texas, to Mike Fronabarger and his wife, Mary Edith, he started his film career performing in choruses and working as a stunt double, then graduating into larger roles, mostly in B pictures. He adopted "O'Brien" as his acting pseudonym. He had roles in early Western movies such as Lightnin' Crandall (1937).
O'Brien acted in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer comedy short film series Pete Smith Specialties. O'Brien wrote and directed many of these subjects under the name David Barclay. In 1933, O'Brien also had a small dancing part with Bebe Daniels in the Busby Berkeley musical 42nd Street. O'Brien portrayed a frantic drug abuser in the 1936 anti-drug film Tell Your Children (better known under its reissue title, Reefer Madness).
He appeared in several of the East Side Kids films.
“Dave O'Brien (actor)” enters the record as american actor and director (1912-1969). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dave, O'Brien and actor can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3017220. VIAF identifies the subject as 42097490. The Library of Congress control number is n87847758. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1969, 1942 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dave O'Brien (actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.