Frank O’Neill, glamorous Australian Olympic swimmer who became Greta Garbo’s instructor – obituary
Frank O’Neill, who has died aged 97, was an Australian Olympic swimmer of the 1950s who went on to become a poolside instructor to the rich and famous, including Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers.
A colourful character who married into great wealth, O’Neill taught his famous clients in the glamorous surroundings of a large villa on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, which belonged to his mother-in-law, Enid, Countess of Kenmare. She was a member of the Australian Lindeman’s Wine family and nicknamed “Lady Killmore” by Somerset Maugham because she had outlived four husbands: successively, an American shipping tycoon, a polo-playing soldier called “Caviar” Cavendish, Viscount Furness and the Earl of Kenmare.
Although O’Neill, who had won two silver medals at the 1950 Commonwealth Games and captained the Australia swim team at the 1952 Olympics, was greatly over-qualified to be teaching doggy-paddling stars of stage and screen, the work was financially rewarding and suited his penchant for mixing with high society.
“When I started teaching Greta she could do a painfully slow breaststroke,” he recalled. “She was keen to learn but never got beyond a dozen yards slow overarm. I could never persuade her to put her face into the water.”
Suitably, the biggest star of the pre-talkies era “trained in almost complete silence”, and was so shy that she immediately put a robe over herself as soon as she left the water. “In the sun, too, she always wore a large floppy hat, the sort that granny used to call a gardening hat.”
He made better progress with another of his well-heeled customers, the novelist Maugham, who despite his advancing years was “mad keen to learn to dive, and was so adventurous that I used to worry that he would hurt himself”. Maugham, whom O’Neill found to be “a friendly, happy old fellow”, became accomplished at sidestroke under his instruction, but was unable to master the crawl “because he couldn’t learn the proper breathing technique”.
O’Neill had set himself up as a teacher in 1953, having retired from frontline swimming the year before. He had won his two silver medals in the 110 yards freestyle and the 4 x 220 yards freestyle relay in 1950, in what was then called the British Empire Games. Two years later, at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, he competed in the same disciplines but failed to make it into the finals of either.
By then he was already two years into his marriage to Enid’s daughter Pat Cavendish, whose family money allowed him to engineer a change of direction. Although the couple divorced within short order, they later remarried, after which he helped Pat with her horse-breeding business in South Africa.
Francis Thomas O’Neill was born on September 30 1926 in Manly, a beach-side suburb of Sydney where his father Tom was the long-serving manager of Manly Baths, and his mother Etta ran the pool’s kiosk. Living above the premises with his parents and two sisters, in his teens he became a key member of the North Steyne surf team that won the New South Wales title in 1944 and of the Manly Swimming Club water polo team that claimed the state championship in 1946.
It was at his home pool in 1948 that he also became the first Australian to go under one minute for the 110 yards, setting a time of 59.8 seconds – incentivised, he later claimed, by a female swimmer who told him she would only go to bed with him if he broke the record. Buoyed by that success, and using money he had earned as a dental technician, he paid his own way to the 1948 London Olympics in the hope that he might get a late entry into the Australian relay team.
Although that did not come to pass, he was able to make his international debut two years later at the 1950 Empire Games in New Zealand, falling just two-hundredths of a second short of the Canadian Peter Salmon in the 110 yards freestyle before teaming up with Garrick Agnew, Barrie Kellaway and James Beard to finish second behind New Zealand in the 4×220 yards freestyle.
The 1952 Olympics proved to be a sore disappointment for O’Neill, as he failed to advance beyond the heats in the 110 yards freestyle, 110 yards backstroke or the 4×220 yards freestyle relay, despite – or perhaps because of – a strict training regime that prevented Australian competitors from, among other things, sunbathing, surfing or dancing, because they used the wrong muscles.
Retiring shortly afterwards with 12 national swimming titles to his name, he created his own popular brand of sportswear, opened the Frank O’Neill Olympic Swimming School at Pymble, on Sydney’s North Shore, performed with the swimming film star Esther Williams and took on lucrative teaching work in the south of France after his mother-in law allowed him to use the pool at her villa, La Fiorentina.
O’Neill was great company, a wonderful raconteur and mesmerising to women. He had met the globetrotting Pat Cavendish in 1949 on board a ship to Sydney. They were wed in Nice the following year, but he had a loose attitude to their marriage vows, and though she initially put up with his extra-marital flings she was soon seeking a legal separation.
Her mother hired a female private detective to dig some dirt on her son-in-law, but his charm was so great that the detective fell in love with him and refused to provide any evidence. None the less, a divorce eventually took place in 1954.
Once Frank and Pat got back together in 1969, they based themselves in Somerset West in the Western Cape, although he continued to spend much of his time in Sydney, from where he sourced horses for Pat to breed and race in South Africa.
In 2000, aged 73, he was given the honour of taking part in the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch relay, running his leg in Goulburn, New South Wales.
By 2008 he and Pat had drifted apart again, and he returned to live full-time in Manly, moving in with a girlfriend, Jan Garrett, who looked after him until his death.
Pat died in 2019. Frank O’Neill is survived by Jan.
Frank O’Neill, born September 30 1926, died July 10 2024
