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##### June 24, 1998 OBITUARY ## Maureen O'Sullivan, Movie Tarzan's 'Jane,' Dies at 87 ##### By THE NEW YORK TIMES Maureen O'Sullivan, a leading Hollywood actress in the 1930's and early 40's best known for playing Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan in the series of popular jungle adventure movies, died yesterday at the Scottsdale Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 87. Ms. O'Sullivan, who was the mother of the actress Mia Farrow, had homes in Phoenix and Grantham, N.H. One of the brightest of ingenues, the actress appeared in more than 60 films, from ''Tugboat Annie'' to ''Pride and Prejudice,'' starring with everyone from Robert Taylor to the Marx Brothers. But she was always identified with the lovely, legendary Jane, teaching the niceties of civilization and romance to the yowling Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs's King of the Jungle. It was a notable pairing of opposites. Her other movie successes included ''The Thin Man,'' ''The Barretts of Wimpole Street,'' Greta Garbo's ''Anna Karenina,'' ''A Day at the Races,'' ''A Yank at Oxford,'' ''The Crowd Roars'' and ''David Copperfield'' (with W. C. Fields). Ms. O'Sullivan never studied acting and was modest about her talents, telling a 1986 interviewer: ''I didn't pretend to be an actress. I just tried to be natural, the best I could.'' In another interview, she recalled that the praise she received in 1935 for her performance in the death scene of a child bride in ''David Copperfield'' was not because of her skill, but because of the directorial wizardry of George Cukor. ''They raved about my agonized look and the tears in my eyes,'' she said, ''but it was all because George was twisting my feet off camera.'' She retired from full-time filmmaking in 1942 to bring up the children (eventually seven) she had with her husband, John V. Farrow, a movie writer, director and producer, and made only occasional films until 1963. In that year, Mr. Farrow died of a heart attack. She then moved her family from Southern California to Manhattan. In 1962, she made her Broadway debut in Sumner Arthur Long's ''Never Too Late,'' playing opposite Paul Ford as a suddenly expectant middle-aged wife. Both also appeared in the movie version of the comedy. After that, Ms. O'Sullivan had an active career as a Broadway actress, starring in ''The Subject Was Roses,'' ''Keep It in the Family,'' ''No Sex Please, We're British,'' ''Charley's Aunt'' and the charming 1980 revival of Paul Osborn's ''Morning's at Seven.'' Woody Allen gave Ms. O'Sullivan her most luminous screen role, when she was 75, in his 1986 hit ''Hannah and Her Sisters,'' in which her children included her daughter Mia. The script required the aristocratic Ms. O'Sullivan to call herself ''a boozy old flirt with a filthy mouth.'' In her major scene, she resumes drinking after her husband (Lloyd Nolan) has repeatedly berated her for flirting with a young television crewman while the couple were acting in a commercial. Hailing her performance, Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Ms. O'Sullivan ''never had five minutes on the screen to equal her work here.'' Ms. O'Sullivan compared Mr. Allen favorably to Mr. Cukor, who was renowned for his skill in directing women. ''George had a preconceived idea, and he made you do his concept of what he wanted,'' she recalled. ''I liked working with Woody more because I felt he would, in his gentle way, find out in you what you could do and let you do it.'' After the highly public breakup of Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow, Ms. O'Sullivan was very outspoken about siding with her daughter. Maureen O'Sullivan was born on May 17, 1911, in Roscommon, Ireland, to Maj. Charles Joseph O'Sullivan and the former Mary Lovatt Fraser. She was educated in convents of the Sacred Heart in London, Dublin and Paris. Desiring an acting career, she read widely and concentrated her studies on writing and music. When she was 18, she had a chance meeting with Frank Borzage, the American director, who was in Dublin filming ''Song o' My Heart,'' starring the celebrated tenor John McCormack. She passed a screen test to perform as his daughter and went to Hollywood to complete the film. She appeared in several more Fox movies and then won longterm contracts with MGM. She was first matched with Weissmuller in ''Tarzan, the Ape Man'' in 1932. As Jane Parker, Ms. O'Sullivan was rescued by Tarzan and chose to stay with him in the jungle. Five other Tarzan pictures followed. The last with the two actors (and Cheetah the chimpanzee) was ''Tarzan's New York Adventure'' in 1942. Her later films included ''Peggy Sue Got Married,'' Francis Coppola's 1986 fantasy in which her granddaughter (played by Kathleen Turner) visits her from the future. ''There's nothing to worry about, dear,'' Ms. O'Sullivan lovingly assures her. ''You're just browsing through time.'' The actress's honors included a Roman Catholic Interracial Council's 1980 award as ''a distinguished Catholic who has worked to combat racial and religious bigotry and discrimination in our society.'' Ms. O'Sullivan also wrote ''The Umbrella'' and other short stories. In 1983, she was married a second time, to James Cushing, a construction company executive. In addition to Mr. Cushing and Mia Farrow (who lives in Connecticut), she is survived by five other children, Patrick and Theresa, both of Vermont, John Jr. of Maryland, Prudence of Iowa, and Stephanie of New York City; 32 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. Michael, her oldest son, was killed in a plane crash in 1958. As the matriarch of a very large family, she was asked about off-screen motherhood. ''The real way to bind children to you is to let them go,'' she said. ''Clutching is no good; it simply makes them determined to be rid of you. But once they're free, they surprisingly want to come back to you as friends.'' Ms. O'Sullivan was irritated at times about the repeated references to her as Tarzan's Jane, but later accepted it as a kind of folkloric signature. She said that the famous line ''Me Tarzan, you Jane'' was improvised on the set. The two actors were sitting on a high branch of an MGM tree, and Weissmuller pretended that he was pushing her off, and she pretended that she was pushing back. He said, ''Jane.'' She said, ''Tarzan.'' He said, ''Jane.'' Then he said, ''Me Tarzan, you Jane,'' and the director said, ''Keep it in the script.''
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