Cast

James Flavin

Acting

Cast

James Flavin

Known for

Acting

Born

1906-05-14

From

Portland, Maine, USA

Died

1976-04-23

Also known as James William Flavin Jr., James Flaven, Jim Flavin

Biography

American character actor whose career lasted nearly half a century. James Wilson Flavin Jr. was the son of a hotel waiter of Canadian-English extraction and a mother, Katherine, whose father was an Irish immigrant. (Thus Flavin, well-known in Hollywood as an "Irish" type, was only one-quarter Irish.) Flavin was born and raised in Portland, Maine (a fact that may have enrichened his later working relationship with director John Ford, also a Portland native). He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, but (contrary to some sources) did not graduate. Instead he dropped out and returned to Portland where he drove a taxi. Then as now, summer stock companies flocked to Maine each year, and in 1929 he was asked to fill in for an actor. He did well with the part and the company manager offered him $150 per week to go with the troupe back to New York. Flavin accepted and by the spring of 1930 was living in a rooming house at 108 W. 87th Street in Manhattan. Flavin didn't manage to crack Broadway at this time (his Broadway debut would not occur for another thirty-nine years, in the 1971 revival of "The Front Page," in which Flavin played Murphy and briefly took over the lead role of Walter Burns from star Robert Ryan). He worked his way across the country in stock productions and tours, arriving in Los Angeles around 1932. He quickly made the transition to movies, landing the lead in his very first film, a Universal serial, The Airmail Mystery (1932). He also landed his leading lady, marrying the serial's female star Lucile Browne that same year. However, the serial marked virtually the last time that Flavin would play the lead in a film. Thereafter, he was restricted almost exclusively to supporting characters, many of them without so much as a name. He specialized in uniformed cops and hard-bitten detectives, but played chauffeurs, cabbies, and even a 16th-century palace guard with aplomb. Flavin appeared in nearly four hundred films between 1932 and 1971, and in almost a hundred television episodes before his final appearance, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident (1976). Flavin died of a heart ailment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on April 23, 1976. His widow Lucile died seventeen days later. They were survived by their son, William James Flavin, subsequently a professor at the United States Army War College. James and Lucile Brown Flavin were buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

James Flavin

James Flavin

Biography

King Kong

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Nightmare Alley

Unconquered

Captain Hurricane

Start Cheering

The Grapes of Wrath

Laura

In Cold Blood

Mildred Pierce

The Most Dangerous Game

You Can't Take It with You

Reap the Wild Wind

Prison Warden

Hello, Sister!

North West Mounted Police

Buck Privates

Belle Starr

Saboteur

The Ghost Breakers

God Is My Co-Pilot

Sleep, My Love

Cheyenne Autumn

Anchors Aweigh

Action in the North Atlantic

O. Henry's Full House

Night Passage

So Proudly We Hail

Heaven Can Wait

Special Agent

Operation Pacific

The Wings of Eagles

My Man Godfrey

Blondie

Wives Under Suspicion

'G' Men

Mighty Joe Young

Jesse James

Boys' Ranch

Western Union

The Roaring Twenties

The Long Voyage Home

Union Pacific

I Am the Law

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Naked Street

The Last Hurrah

Affectionately Yours

Fighting Coast Guard

It Happened on Fifth Avenue

You Only Live Once

The Wild Man of Borneo

Never Say Goodbye

The Velvet Touch

Trouble Along the Way

My Favorite Brunette

They Met in a Taxi

Remember the Night

Only Yesterday

Brother Orchid

Desert Fury

Confidentially Connie

Flamingo Road

Nora Prentiss

The Shanghai Cobra

Hollywood Canteen

The Devil's Henchmen

Nobody Lives Forever

The Affairs of Cellini

Johnny Apollo

A Stolen Life

Once Upon a Time

Three Loves Has Nancy

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars

Knute Rockne All American

Angel on My Shoulder

Francis in the Haunted House