Oscar Profile #279: Pat O’Brien

Born November 11, 1899, “Hollywood’s Irishman in Residence”, William Joseph Patrick “Pat” O’Brien was American through and through having been born in Milkwaukee, Wisconsin to first generation American parents. All four of his grandparents, however, came from Ireland. As a boy, he wanted to become a priest and a cop before settling on acting, but often played both priests and cops on screen.

O’Brien attended Marquette University with Spencer Tracy who became a life-long friend. The two joined the U.S. Navy together where they met Jack Benny. It was O’Brien who, as a result of the audience booing violinist Benny on stage, walked up to him and whispered in his ear to put down the violin and talk to the audience. That’s how Benny the comedian was born.

Mentored, along with Tracy, by actor James Gleason, O’Brien spent a decade on Broadway before making his screen debut in 1930. The following year he played his first starring role in The Front Page. He married actress Eloise Taylor with whom he would have four children, three of them adopted, that same year.

It was in 1934 that O’Brien began his nine film association with James Cagney, co-starring with him in Here Comes the Navy. The following year found O’Brien in one of his best dramatic roles in Oil for the Lamps of China opposite Josephine Hutchinson. He then reteamed with Cagney in The Irish in Us opposite rising star Olivia de Havilland. With Cagney again in 1938’s Angels with Dirty Faces, the film would bring both actors the best notices of their careers to date and an Oscar nomination for Cagney.

O’Brien had his best known starring role as legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne in 1940’s Knute Rockne, All American. Subsequent 1940s successes included His Butler’s Sister, Crack-Up, Riff-Raff, Fighting Father Dunne and The Boy with Green Hair.

In the 1950s O’Brien interspersed TV work with big screen performances in The People vs. O’Hara, Jubilee Trail, Ring of Fear, The Last Hurrah and Some Like It Hot. Later big screen appearances were rare but he did occasionally have a memorable role in such films as The Over-the-Hill Gang, The Sky’s the Limit, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, The End and his last, Ragtime, which was also Cagney’s last. On TV, he won a pair of 1974 Emmys for his performance in an episode of The ABC Afternoon Playbreak.

One of Hollywood’s most prolific storytellers, he often made personal appearances on TV, the last being All Star Party for Burt Reynolds which aired after his death.

Pat O’Brien died of a heart attack on October 15, 1983, less than a month before his 84th birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938), directed by Michael Curtiz

Pat O’Brien had his first brush with Oscar when his first starring film, 1931’s The Front Page was nominated for Best Picture along with its director Lewis Milestone and O’Brien’s co-star, Adolphe Menjou. He had his second brush when this film repeated the pattern with nominations for Best Picture, Director and co-star James Cagney. Frequent co-star Cagney won the New York Film Critics Award played a gangster to O’Brien’s priest, but it was O’Brien’s old pal Spencer Tracy who won the Oscar for playing real life priest Father Flanagan in Boys Town.

KNUTE ROCKNE, ALL AMERICAN (1940), directed by Lloyd Bacon

O’Brien had his most popular starring role as the famed Notre Dame football player and coach in tis box office smash and staple of 1950s TV broadcasts. Johnny Sheffield, Tarzan’s “boy” plays Rockne as a 7-year-old. Without Cagney as his co-star this was supposed to be all O’Brien, but there was another scene stealer about in this one, future U.S. President Ronald Reagan in one of his own best remembered roles as George Gipp, the dying football player for whom the team sets about to “win one for the Gipper!”, a phrase which followed Reagan for the rest of his life. Gale Page and Donald Crisp co-star.

THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948), directed by Joseph Losey

This was Losey’s breakthrough film and the only important film he was able to make before being blacklisted. An indictment of intolerance, Dean Stockwell plays the 12-year-old title character whose hair turns green after he learns that his parents died during the war. Shuttled from family member to family member he finally finds a connection with O’Brien as a retired vaudevillian, now making a modest living as a singing waiter. Stockwell calls him “Gramp” even though he’s not his real grandfather. This was one of the first films to say “it’s OK to be different”. Stockwell and O’Brien are both unforgettable..

THE LAST HURRAH (1958), directed by John Ford

Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien were lifelong friends, but this was their only film together as Tracy’s career was mainly with MGM and O’Brien’s was mainly with Warner Bros. Tracy is the star here as the old-time Boston mayor running for his last election and O’Brien is his chief crony. There are supporting performances of real distinction by the likes of James Gleason (Tracy and O’Brien’s mentor), Donald Crisp, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Jane Darwell, Ed Brphy, Anna Lee and others, but it the interaction of Tracy and Jeffrey Hunter as his nephew and Tracy and O’Brien as old pals that register the strongest.

RAGTIME (1981), directed by Milos Forman

Forman’s film of E.L. Doctorow’s massive historical novel was generally panned, but not severely enough to keep it from amassing eight Oscar nominations including supporting nods for Howard E. Rollins, Jr. and Elizabeth McGovern. The film garnered attention mainly for featuring 82-year-old James Cagney in his first film in twenty-three years as the New York Police Commissioner in what was basically a glorified cameo. This was O’Brien’s ninth film with Cagney, but the first in which they did not have any scenes together. The slightly younger, but much more agile O’Brien played a wily defense attorney.