George O'Brien was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the sound film era of the 1930s, best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and subsequent appearances in a number of Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a 1927 American synchronized sound romantic drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau and starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Movietone sound-on-film process. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "The Excursion to Tilsit", from the 1917 collection with the same title by Hermann Sudermann.