John David O'Connell (1923 - 2019)

Born 2 May 1923 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States

Ancestors

Died 20 Jul 2019 at age 96 in New York City, New York, United States

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Biography

John Francis "Jack" O'Connell was born in 1923 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, the son of Maurice Robert O'Connell (1892–1964) and Margaret Ellen Purcell (1889–1975).

"Jack O’Connell, an overlooked pioneer of independent cinema, captured the zeitgeist of 60s America with Revolution, his iconic documentary of the San Francisco hippie counter-culture during the Summer of Love, 1967. In 1986 Jack turned back to San Francisco to renew his acquaintance of the beautiful hippie chick, Today Malone, from his original footage. He filmed her again, ingeniously incorporating the new material with the old. He called this updated Revolution, The Hippie Revolution. Jack’s first film, shot in 1962, was Greenwich Village Story, set in the bars and beatnik coffee houses of the Village. He wrote, produced, and directed two more films, Christa (aka Swedish Fly Girls, 1970) and City Women (formerly Up the Girls, 1974, never released), always remaining fiercely independent."^[1]

Jack married actress Britta Elisabet Lindgren (born 24 Mar 1943)^[2] on 8 Oct 2017 in Manhattan.

Jack passed away in 2019 at age 96 in New York City, New York.

Notes

Obituary in the New York Times: "Death of American director Jack O'Connell, who studied with Antonioni & Fellini

On July 20, 2019, Jack O'Connell, director of iconic indie movies that depicted America's beat and hippie generations died peacefully at his New York City apartment, with his wife Britta Lindgren by his side. He was 96. His legacy is assured by the movies GREENWICH VILLAGE STORY, REVOLUTION and THE HIPPIE REVOLUTION.

He was born on May 2, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated with an BA from Princeton University in 1947, and an MBA from Harvard Business School (Advertising and Marketing major) in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army for three years during World War II (19 months in Europe, doing signal intelligence behind the German lines).

After a ten-year career in advertising on Madison Avenue, working in all phases of print, poster, and film commercials for national and regional clients, O'Connell got his start in feature films in 1959 with Antonioni (on L'Avventura) and Fellini (on La Dolce Vita). They were a seminal influence on his subsequent filmmaking in America. Jack wrote about his experience in his Italian diary which he called "Bring in the Lions: Behind the Scenes with Fellini and Antonioni." The diary includes many wonderful photos that he took. It has yet to be published.

In July 2015, IndieCollect began an exhaustive inventory of the hundreds of film and sound elements in Jack's apartment. Once they had completed the inventory, they were able to place the most important elements at the Anthology Films Archives in New York City. This collaboration led in 2017 to Anthology's retrospective of two of the films, The Greenwich Village Story (1963) and Revolution (1968). J. Hoberman, in his New York Times article about the re-discovery of O'Connell's work, noted that after seeing Revolution, Antonioni cast one of the extras, dancer Daria Halprin, as the lead in Zabriski Point, closing the circle between mentor and protégé.

Jack is survived by his wife, Britta Lindgren, his sister-in-law Lela O'Connell, two nieces, Caroline O'Connell and Melissa Verdugo, grand-nieces Jillian and Annelise Sinton, and a grand-nephew, Justin Verdugo.

- NY Times: "Did They Wear Flowers in their Hair? See the Happy Hippies in 1967": https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/movies/did-they-wear-flowers-in-their-hair-see-the-happy-hippies-in-1967.html

- LA Times: "‘Hippie Revolution’ Updates Landmark Documentary": https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-09-05-ca-40575-story.html

- SF Chronicle: "The Haight, Yesterday and Today / Ex-hippie recalls starring role in documentary": https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/The-Haight-Yesterday-and-Today-Ex-hippie-3499581.php

Links to Jack's website and IMDb page.

Jack O'Connell website has evocative photos:

http://www.jackoconnellfilms.com/

Jack O'Connell film credits on IMDb

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0640080/

Photo; Jack (left) with Anthology archivist John Klacsmann,

taken in Jack's home the summer of 2015

To Plant Memorial Trees in memory, please visit our Sympathy Store. ^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ http://www.jackoconnellfilms.com/
2. ↑ "United States Public Records, 1970-2009", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KJBD-5CZ : 9 November 2019), Britta E Lindgren, 2009
3. ↑ Published in New York Times from Sep. 20 to Sep. 21, 2019. " https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=jack-o-connell&pid=193954867&fhid=30283

• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X45K-N2W : accessed 8 June 2020), John F O'Connell in household of Maurice R O'Connell, Queens (Districts 0501-0750), Queens, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 576, sheet 13A, line 35, family 281, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1610; FHL microfilm 2,341,344.

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K4FR-92W : 29 July 2019), John O Connell in household of Margaret O Connell, Ward 5, Newton, Newton City, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 9-437, sheet 4B, line 63, family 80, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 1615.