Career
O’Brien appeared with James Cagney in nine feature films, including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Cagney’s last film, Ragtime (1981). The two originally met in 1926 and became lifelong friends. O'Brien began appearing in movies (many times playing Irish cops or priests) in the 1930s, starting with the role of ace reporter Hildy Johnson in the original version of The Front Page in 1931. He appeared in the successful 1946 suspense film, Crack-Up, and played the lead in the boxing film, The Personality Kid.
O’Brien may be best remembered for his role as a police detective opposite George Raft in Some Like It Hot and the title role of a football coach in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), where he gave the speech to “win just one for the Gipper,” referring to recently deceased football player, George Gipp, portrayed in the film by a young Ronald W. Reagan.
O’Brien’s movie career more or less ended in the early 1950s. He still managed to get work in television; O’Brien later claimed to be completely flummoxed about this in his autobiography The Wind At My Back. His close friend, Spencer Tracy, had to fight the studio to get a small role for O’Brien in Tracy’s film The Last Hurrah in 1958.
In his later years, O'Brien worked in television. He was cast in 1956 and 1957 in four episodes of the religion anthology series, Crossroads: in "The Strange Bequest", as the lead character Father Jim in "A Holiday for Father Jim", as Father Edward Sullivan in "Circus Priest", and as Father Patrick O'Neil in "Benediction of Blood".
On April 4, 1957, O'Brien guest starred in the first season of the NBC variety program, The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. In the 1960—1961 television season, O’Brien joined Roger Perry in the 34-episode ABCsitcom, Harrigan and Son, about a father-and-son team of lawyers.
O’Brien had a small role as Burt Reynolds’ father in the 1978 comedy film The End, opposite Myrna Loy, cast as Reynolds’ mother.
Read more about this topic: Pat O'Brien (actor)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)