Obituary: Tim O'Connor

Just a few weeks after his Peyton Place onscreen wife Dorothy Malone died, actor Tim O'Connor, 90, passed away.  He died on April 5.  I read about his death a couple of hours ago from the Wright King Facebook page.

I am still watching the series on YouTube, where the entire run is posted.  I am on episode 302 out of the 514 episodes in the series.

In the series, O'Connor played Elliot Carson, a man who was wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife.  He spent 18 years in prison until he was cleared.  While he was married to his wife, he carried on an affair with the young Constance MacKenzie (Dorothy Malone), who subsequently left Peyton Place after he knocked her up.  She gave birth to Allison (Mia Farrow) and returned, claiming that she was a widow.  Anyway, the storyline was fodder for the series for its first couple of seasons before Farrow disappeared into the night and took off with Frank Sinatra.

The funny thing is O'Connor, who was only in his late thirties when he first appeared on the show, looked way older than Frank Ferguson, the actor who played his father Eli.

Born on July 3, 1927, on the South Side of Chicago, O'Connor enrolled in a school to study radio acting and engineering. He quickly landed a scholarship at the renowned Goodman Theatre, then worked in local television.

In 1953, he came to New York and did several installments of prestigious DuPont Show of the Monthfor producer David Susskind, appearing alongside the likes of Jessica Tandy, Boris Karloff and Maureen O'Hara.

O'Connor joined Peyton Place three months into its first season as Elliot, who had been imprisoned for 18 years for murdering his wife (he was innocent, however; the real killer was Mary Anderson's Catherine Peyton Harrington). Elliot then took over the town newspaper, but those days behind bars cast a shadow over him.

O'Connor's character was a hothead, to put it mildly.  It was a miracle he didn't turn around and actually kill somebody for a change.  In real life, Tim was well liked in his community of Nevada City, California.

The article notes he was in 416 episodes of the series.

O'Connor was married twice and had a son.