When O'Connor was only two years old, he and his seven-year-old sister, Arlene, were hit by a car while crossing the street outside a theater in Hartford, Connecticut Donald survived, but his sister did not. You could do that with any kid, only I got paid for it.'
O'Connor later said, 'I was about 13 months old, they tell me, when I first started dancing, and they'd hold me up by the back of my neck and they'd start the music, and I'd dance.
Indeed, his parents, Effie Irene (née Crane) and John Edward 'Chuck' O'Connor, were vaudeville entertainers she was a bareback rider and he was a circus strongman and acrobat. Often, both of his parents struggled to remember where and when exactly O'Connor was born, due to the family's extensive travel as a Vaudeville team. Though he considered Danville, Illinois, to be his hometown, O'Connor was the 200th child born in St.
