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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In 1965, there wasn't a woman to be found playing in the New York Philharmonic. In 1966, there was one. Her name was Orin O'Brien. She was 31 years old, and she played double bass, and she did so for 55 years. Now, you would think we would all know her name. There would be a day named after her or possibly a street. Well, Orin O'Brien would not have liked that at all. O'Brien, who is now nearly 90, eschewed the limelight even though she broke through a glass ceiling. A new short documentary explains why. It's called The Only Girl in the Orchestra and has been nominated for an Academy Award. You can stream it now on Netflix. Joining me now is the film's director, Molly O'Brien. She's a longtime filmmaker who was a producer on several films recently, including a 2023 documentary on Shere Hite. Director Molly O'Brien, who is also the niece of Orin O'Brien, welcome to All Of It.

Molly O’Brien: Thank you, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm a big WNYC fan.

Alison Stewart: Love it. When you were a child and you came to New York to visit your aunt, when did you realize what she had done, that she was a groundbreaker?

Molly O’Brien: It was family legend. She was a legend in the family as much as she wanted to be not considered that. I can't remember a time where I didn't know that my Aunt Orin was the first woman ever hired to be a full musician with the New York Philharmonic. When I was 11, I came to New York City. I visited New York with my mom, and we went to go see the New York Philharmonic, and Leonard Bernstein had come back to conduct a Mahler piece. It was during that concert that I really realized what a master she was and what a rare and beautiful life she had led and was leading.

Alison Stewart: You begged her for years to let you make a movie. What did the pitch sound like?

Molly O’Brien: [laughs] Well, for about nine years, the pitch was, I want to make a movie about you. I want to make a movie about you, and that didn't work because she didn't want a movie to be made about her. A biopic was not in her plans. However, when I listened. When I really listened to her and changed the film and the direction the film was going to go in from just a biopic to a film that focuses on the joy of playing in an ensemble, the joy of being in the background, and the Joy of teaching classical music in the double bass, she said, yes, and I think I've kept that promise to her. The film is very much about all of those things.

Alison Stewart: How did she get her name?

Molly O’Brien: Oh, that's a great question. Orin is an old Irish name, and I believe I'm blanking what it means. Oh, my goodness. It'll come to me in a moment. Her middle name is Yanez with a Y, and that's after the Santa Inez Mission just above Santa Barbara, where her parents met and fell in love. Orin is a Gaelic name, and I'm forgetting the meaning of it. We'll come to it, I'm sure.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about her parents. Her parents were pretty famous movie stars. Tell us a little bit about them.

Molly O’Brien: Well, Orin's father and my grandfather was an actor named George O'Brien, who made over 80 films in Hollywood. He got to start with John Ford, starring in the 1924 movie Iron Horse, a silent film. His most famous role was as the man in FW Murnau's Sunrise, also the director of the original Nosferatu. He went on to make many, many Westerns, especially. He started as a stuntman, so he did all his own trick riding. He could flip over a horse at full gallop and that sort of thing. He was really athletic and quite masterful in that kind of work.

Then her mother, my grandmother is Marguerite Churchill. She made about 12 films in Hollywood. Before that, she was a Broadway actress and model who supported her whole family from the age of four, when her father died, as an actress and a model.

Alison Stewart: Would you consider them actively engaged parents with Orin?

Molly O’Brien: In 2025 speak [laughter] but--

Alison Stewart: Understood, yes.

Molly O’Brien: I know that Orin would describe them as incredibly supportive. She never once felt that she couldn't do anything because she was a girl. No one ever made her feel that. They recognized her talents early on. Her mother took on a second job at one point to pay for bass lessons. They were parents who really understood that finding meaning and purpose through the arts is one of life's true joys, and every child should be exposed to that.

Alison Stewart: How did she pick the double bass of all things?

Molly O’Brien: Well, she played the piano. Then when she was in high school, she tells the story better than I will in the film, but she saw the orchestra, the high school orchestra, and she was entranced and ran up to the conductor afterward and said, I want to join the orchestra. He said, well, what do you play? She said the piano. He said, ah, we have too many piano players now, but there's four double basses over there in the closet. Go pick one, practice for six months, you come back, you can be in the orchestra. Then she fell in love with the tone, with the-- Just the beauty of the double bass.

It's an instrument that is an unsung hero, I think, of the orchestra. As you'll hear in the soundtrack of The Only Girl in the Orchestra, so beautifully arranged by Laura Karpman, our composer, you'll hear in that soundtrack, the double bass by itself isolated and it gets under your skin. It's really a beautiful instrument.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with director Molly O'Brien. The name of the film is The Only Girl in the Orchestra nominated for an Oscar in the short documentary category. When we watch Orin play, she's so emotive when she plays, her eyes are just going. Where does she look? I know it's an odd thing, but watching her eyes, she's looking at something.

Molly O’Brien: Wow. That's a question for Orin. I know that Leonard Bernstein said that whenever he looked up at Orin when he was conducting the orchestra, she was always looking directly at him. It baffled him because he felt like maybe she must have memorized every note of every piece they play over 300 years of repertoire, which is astonishing and maybe true. She really enjoys playing in ensemble. She is not a soloist. I think that's what I really wanted people to take away from this film. I think all of us have to play an ensemble, no matter what profession we're in or what family we're in.

We find ourselves in situations where everyone's elbowing each other out of the way to be in the spotlight, and Orin is begging us to settle in and be part of this ensemble and listen to what's going on around you. What she's looking at is what she's listening at which is what her fellow musicians and artists are doing around her. The joy of ensemble is really what I think is in her eyes.

Alison Stewart: How did she meet Leonard Bernstein?

Molly O’Brien: Oh, well, her teacher is a wonderful double bassist, a master, also in the New York Philharmonic for, I think, 36 years. A man named Fred Zimmerman, and he was-- He played it in the New York Philharmonic. He encouraged Orin to audition for the Philharmonic every single time she did. She auditioned three times. It was on the third time that she got in. I'm sure that's the Bernstein connection is through her teacher, Zimmerman.

Alison Stewart: Once she became part of the orchestra, the press came running. They had a lot of things to say about her. We'll talk about those in a minute, but let's listen to a clip from your film. This is her friend reading a piece of press much later. This is-- They're now in their 80s and she's reading this piece of press to her. We can talk about it on the other side. This is from The Only Girl in the Orchestra.

Speaker 3: Wow. I bet you my father's had this.

Speaker 4: Probably.

Speaker 3: Because he seemed to know all about you.

Speaker 4: Oh dear.

Speaker 3: Orin O'Brien.

Speaker 4: This is painful.

Speaker 3: The newest member of the New York Philharmonic scurried into Philharmonic hall one rainy night and ignoring the musicians' locker room, got dressed in a washroom. Ms. O'Brien, who is the daughter of old-time Western star George O'Brien and actress Marguerite Churchill, maybe the best woman bassist in the world. To a man, they say Orin is one of the boys. Only Orin is one of the girls, the only girl in fact in the 104-member orchestra, a situation unique at the Philharmonics, so there is yet no place for her to dress.

Alison Stewart: They called her the pretty bassist, the best woman bassist. They commented on her curves. First of all, how did she feel about being called the best woman bassist versus the best bassist?

Molly O’Brien: Well, I know that Orin really shuns the idea that there is this woman versus man dynamic in any arena. She doesn't want any part of it. She wants to be seen as a professional musician, which she was and she is one of the best. She didn't like that.

Alison Stewart: Would she consider herself a feminist?

Molly O’Brien: No, she wouldn't. Much to my chagrin and to many in my generation. She didn't grow up with feminism. She had none of that. As an example, she's the same age as Gloria Steinem and she would consider herself lucky and she would consider herself a professional and she would not want you to consider her gender and she doesn't consider it. She's definitely a pioneer in women's liberation, but the word feminist is not one that she would use.

Alison Stewart: She also doesn't like the attention, the bottom line. I had to wonder if that had something to do with her parents' relationship to fame.

Molly O’Brien: Yes. Growing up during the birth of celebrity culture in Hollywood, California, she witnessed what that does to the adults in her life. While she loved her parents very much, she saw that they craved the spotlight and she didn't want to have anything to do with that. She turned her back on all of that, moved to New York City, picked up a 19th-century or even earlier instrument, and said I'm going to be part of an ensemble. I am not going to be seeking the spotlight here. Yet the irony and the tension in the film, which is what makes drama and makes good film, is that she didn't want the spotlight, but she was thrust into it when Leonard Bernstein made her the first full-time woman in the New York Philharmonic.

She had to reckon with the spotlight even though she didn't want it. Then it doesn't go unnoticed on me that and my partners who made this film with me that done that all over again to her and throw the spotlight with The Only Girl in the Orchestra, the short documentary. I think that again, we've done it for a good reason. I think her story of being part of an ensemble and enjoying the work of the people around you, that's a story worth telling.

Alison Stewart: She also seems to love teaching.

Molly O’Brien: Exactly. Not only is it The Only Girl in the Orchestra about her groundbreaking move into the New York Philharmonic in 1966, it's really about her philosophy of life, which is if you want to be a happy person, learn how to play the second fiddle and pass it on. Become a teacher, be generous. The things that her teacher Zimmerman taught her, she has pushed forward through hundreds and hundreds of students that are all over the globe. Three of them, or I think maybe four, are part of the New York Philharmonic double bass section now. Three or four of her students and one being of course David Grossman, who is highlighted in the film, who's a masterful player as well.

Alison Stewart: One thing we see in the film is we see her have to change apartments. That's for New Yorkers, ah, change apartments. What? Are you kidding me? [laughs] How hard was it for her to move?

Molly O’Brien: It was really hard. As a New Yorker, you'll know about rent-stabilized apartments. She'd been there since, for over 50 years. It was a great bargain and a beautiful large, high-ceiling, gorgeous apartment, but the landlords were neglectful and they were neglectful for many decades until it got untenable. She couldn't live there anymore. The flooding, the black mold. We had to get her out. Yes, but it was very hard.

Alison Stewart: Before I let you go, you mentioned Laura Karpman, her role in creating the score for you. What was her goal in creating the score?

Molly O’Brien: Well, Laura operated on the same philosophy that Orin O'Brien has taught us all, and that is to work in ensemble. The first thing Laura did is send Orin a questionnaire. What are your top 10 orchestral pieces for the double bass? Orin immediately pointed Laura toward, again, her teacher Zimmerman's double bass quartet arrangements. We all settled on Marler's Second Beethovens, Seventh, and a few other pieces that we re-recorded with Orin present, not as the producer, but as the approver.

Laura Karpman is incredibly collaborative and incredibly talented. Of course, she's a Juilliard alumnus, so is Orin. There's a lineage there that's all very-- I don't know, just all very organic and terrific. Unfortunately, I had COVID during the recording, so I couldn't be there, but according to my producer, Lisa Remington, my amazing producer, it was a transcendental experience to be in that room with those four double bassists, all who were students of Orin in some way.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is The Only Girl in the Orchestra. Its director, Molly O'Brien, has been my guest. It's nominated for an Academy Award, by the way, and you can stream it on Netflix. Molly, it was really nice to talk to you.

Molly O’Brien: Thank you, Alison. Nice to talk to you.

Alison Stewart: We'll go out on a little bit of the score from Laura Karpman.