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Pat Flaherty
Pat Flaherty in My Man Godfrey (1936)
Born	Edmund Joseph Flaherty (1897-03-08)March 8, 1897 Washington, D.C., U.S.
Died	December 2, 1970(1970-12-02) (aged 73) New York City, U.S.
Years active	1930s–1950s
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Fiske (m. 191?; ? 192?) Dorothea Xaviera Fugazy ​ ​(m. 1929)​
Children	3

Edmund Joseph Flaherty (March 8, 1897 – December 2, 1970) was an American film actor who appeared in about 200 films.

Biography

Early life

Flaherty was born Edmund Joseph Flaherty in Washington, D.C.; the son of Mary Rose Ella (née Wilson) and Michael Joseph Flaherty. He was the older brother of writer Vincent X. Flaherty. Flaherty had Irish ancestry. Pat attended Eastern High School, and Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts. After playing baseball, he attended Princeton University and graduated on January 26, 1918. Flaherty served in the U.S. Army during the Pancho Villa Expedition and then as an U.S. Army Air Service pilot in World War I.

Early athletic career

Flaherty was a popular Washington, D.C., athlete and coach, who went on to become a professional baseball and football player and was in the bullpen for John McGraw's New York Giants during the 1921 World Series, and punted for George Halas' Chicago Bears. After his professional athletic career ended, he went into the music publishing business with the legendary DeSylva, Brown and Henderson during the time of Mayor Jimmy Walker in New York.

Acting career

Flaherty relocated to Hollywood to take a position as a producer at 20th Century Fox for the owner Joseph P. Kennedy when the Great Depression began. Subsequently, he found work as an actor and technical advisor in over 200 motion pictures. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in films such as Death on the Diamond (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Sergeant York (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), and a bit appearance as a bewildered Marine in Stage Door Canteen.

In 1943, he was commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps as a captain. He returned to the Corps for the Korean War and finished his service as a major.

He resumed his acting career after the war with The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). He was given the task of making William Bendix look, move and act like Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story, and Gary Cooper to pitch, look, move and act like Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. Outside the realm of baseball, Flaherty was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Flaherty's most unusual roles was in Wheeler & Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which his character finds his wife (played by actress Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler; he does not pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness.

Personal life

Flaherty was married twice. His first wife was Dorothy Fiske. The couple had one child, Edmund Flaherty, Jr. who was born in 1919 and died in 1995, by which time his name had been changed to Edmund Graham. On January 19, 1929, Flaherty married Dorothea Xaviera Fugazy, daughter of boxing promoter Jack Fugazy aka Humbert Fugazy. They had two children, Patrick Joseph Flaherty and Frances X. Flaherty Knox.

Flaherty died on December 4, 1970, in New York City of a heart attack.

Filmography

References

1. ^ Pat Flaherty at the SABR Baseball Biography Project , by Bill Hickman, Retrieved November 21, 2013.
2. "Pat Flaherty – Society for American Baseball Research".
3. Marine Corps Chevron, Volume 2, Number 21, May 29, 1943
4. pg 157 Rowan, Terry World War II Goes to the Movies & Television Guide. Lulu.com
5. "Pat Flaherty profile". Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved May 21, 2024.

External links

• Pat Flaherty at IMDb 
• Pat Flaherty at the TCM Movie Database
• Pat Flaherty – CITWF

• Career statistics from Baseball Reference (Minors)

• 1897 births
• 1970 deaths
• 20th-century American male actors
• American aviators
• American male film actors
• American male television actors
• American people of Irish descent
• American World War I pilots
• Eastern High School (Washington, D.C.) alumni
• Male actors from New York City
• Male actors from Washington, D.C.
• Military personnel from Washington, D.C.
• Princeton University alumni
• United States Army Air Service pilots of World War I
• United States Army personnel of World War I
• United States Army Signal Corps personnel
• United States Marine Corps officers
• United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II
• United States Marine Corps personnel of the Korean War