Darcy Obrien ’61

Darcy O'Brien, an awardwinning author and professor of literature, died of a heart attack Mar. 2, 1998, at his home in Tulsa, Okla. Born in 1939 to film stars George O'Brien and Marguerite Churchill, he graduated from Beverly Hills H.S., where he was senior class president.

Darcy majored in English at Princeton, writing his thesis on James Joyce's Ulysses. A member of Tower Club, he roomed with Ron George and John Ives. Something about Darcy evoked interesting nicknames -- at Princeton it was "Mistyeyes."

A Fulbright scholar at Cambridge, Darcy then earned a doctoral degree at Berkeley, after which he taught English at Pomona College, relocating to the U. of Tulsa in 1978. His first novel, A Way of Life Like Any Other, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. A nonfiction bestseller was Two of a Kind, about L.A.'s Hillside Stranglers -- his roomie Ron George presided at that famous trial. The Hidden Pope is just published.

A memorial fund has been established for Darcy at Princeton in the Irish Studies Program, c/o Prof. Paul Muldoon.

Darcy is survived by his wife, Suzanne, daughter Molly, stepson Brent Beesley, sister Orin, and his mother. With them, we mourn his passing.

The Class of 1961