FrameThrower · Actors · Cathy O'Donnell
Cathy O'Donnell
3 films · 115 frames · top-billed in 1 · 1946–1959
Born 6 July 1923 · Siluria, Alabama, USA · died 11 April 1970
Cathy O'Donnell was an American actress, best known for her many roles in film-noir movies.
While under contract with Samuel Goldwyn, O'Donnell made her debut in an uncredited role as a nightclub extra in Wonder Man (1945). Her first major role in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), playing Wilma Cameron, the high-school sweetheart of double amputatee Homer Parrish, played by real-life World War II veteran/amputee Harold Russell.
She was loaned out to RKO for one of her most memorable films, They Live by Night (1949) starring with Farley Granger, widely considered a classic of the noir genre and on the Guardian's list of the top ten noir films. The film was directed by Nicholas Ray.…
How their films are shot
Measured across 115 frames from the 3 films we hold. This is the look of the work Cathy takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 3 films we hold, 59% of their frames are night — the look of the work Cathy takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 115 frames from Cathy O'Donnell's 3 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.