LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comic actor Donald O'Connor (news), who won lasting fame for an acrobatic dance number that saw him running up walls in the musical "Singin' in the Rain," died Saturday, according to a Web site devoted to his career.
O'Connor, 78, had been in declining health for several years and died of heart failure at a retirement home in Calabasas, California, according to TV station KABC.
O'Connor's career stretched 70 years from vaudeville song-and-dance to Hollywood movies and television. He was best known for "Make 'Em Laugh," a slapstick dance solo in "Singin' in the Rain."
That 1952 film, starring Gene Kelly (news) and Debbie Reynolds (news), remains one of the most beloved Hollywood musicals, defined by Kelly's rain-soaked title sequence and O'Connor's show-stopping backflips in "Make 'Em Laugh."
Critic Roger Ebert called the latter "one of the most amazing dance sequences ever filmed."
In that performance, the 27-year-old O'Connor "wrestles with a dummy, runs up walls and does backflips, tosses his body around like a rag doll, turns cartwheels on the floor, runs into a brick wall and a lumber plane and crashes through a backdrop," Ebert said.
O'Connor said he choreographed the sequence by seeing what made two female assistants laugh the most.
"As I progressed in the number doing pratfalls, it was on cement," O'Connor recalled later. "My body, my knees, my ankles, and toes, everything started to hurt."
Director Stanley Donen (news) shot the sequence in a day in order to help protect O'Connor from the rigors of the number but discovered two days later that the camera aperture had been set incorrectly, he said.
"So I had to do it all over again," said O'Connor, who needed three days of bed rest to recover.
'MULE AND ME'
O'Connor also starred in six movies in the 1950s starring "Francis the Talking Mule," a profitable franchise for Universal-International. The actor later referred to the movies, which left critics cold, as "the 'mule and me' era of my life."
"It was wonderful at first," he said. "But after three pictures Francis started getting more fan mail than I did and I said 'This can't happen."'
Born in Chicago in 1925 to parents who were circus performers, O'Connor began performing as part of a family act and made his movie debut at the age of 12 in 1937's "Melody for Two."
"I was doing a benefit for the Motion Picture Relief Fund when I was discovered to go into movies," O'Connor said in one interview. "Some talent scout pointed his finger at me and said, 'Get that kid,' and there I went. It was a real Hollywood type of thing."
O'Connor won an Emmy in 1954 for his work on "The Colgate Comedy Hour," a variety show, and in 1968 hosted a short-lived syndicated talk show.
In 1979, O'Connor was hospitalized for a drinking problem that had derailed his career for most of a decade.
He appeared briefly in 1992's "Toys" with Robin Williams (news), and put in guest appearances on a range of television shows in the 1990s including "Murder She Wrote" and "Frasier."
O'Connor's family released a short statement in which they said the actor had joked in his final hours about the Oscar that eluded him.
"I'd like to thank the Academy for my lifetime achievement award that I will eventually get," he was quoted as saying.
