Pat Flaherty (actor)
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| Pat Flaherty | |
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 Pat Flaherty |
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| Born | Edmund Joseph Flaherty March 8, 1897 Washington, District of Columbia, USA |
| Died | December 2, 1970 (aged 73) New York City, New York, USA |
| Years active | 1930s — 1950s |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothea X. Fugazy |
Pat Flaherty (March 8, 1897 – December 2, 1970) was an American actor who primarily played uncredited roles as forces of the law.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Flaherty was born Edmund Joseph Flaherty in Washington, D.C.; the son of Margaret (née Fisher) and Ronald Phillip Flaherty.[1] Flaherty had English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, German, and Dutch ancestry.[2] [3] Pat attended the Eastern High School, and the Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts, after the baseball, he attended the Princeton University and graduated on January 26, 1918.
[edit] Acting Career
Flaherty was a former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), 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). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!.
[edit] Military Career
Flaherty had been involved in World War II as a military personnel fighting againt Japan. On August 6, 1945, the United States Army dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. This was called the "Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki". In 1918, Pat was missing from spring training because he was a World War I pilot with the U.S. Army Aviation Corps in Memphis, Tennessee. In the latter half of 1917, he had attended the School of Military Aeronautics at Princeton University. He graduated from there on January 26, 1918.
He was in the military service during the Mexican border war, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, having attained the rank of Major by the time of his final discharge. After his professional athletic career ended, he went into the music publishing business. And after that, he became a Hollywood actor, with around 250 films to his credit. He was in many of the baseball classics and other recognizable movies.
[edit] Personal life
Pat was married twice. His first wife was the former Dorothy Fiske. The couple had one child: Edmund Flaherty Jr. was born in 1919 and died in 1995, by which time his name had been changed to Edmund Graham. Pat then married Dorothea Fugazy, the daughter of New York boxing promoter Humbert Fugazy, on January 19, 1929. Fugazy had grand visions of using outdoor venues to draw larger fight crowds (he owned the Brooklyn Horsemen of the first American Football League in 1926). He was the first promoter to gain the exclusive right to use the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field for boxing matches. Indeed, Fugazy promoted two of Jim Braddock's fights––against Norman "Doc" Conrad in Jersey City on December 26, 1926, and against Joe Sekyra in Ebbets Field on August 8, 1928. Dorothea and Pat had two children--Patrick Joseph Flaherty and Frances X. Flaherty Knox, who are still living.
[edit] Death
Flaherty died on December 4, 1970, in New York City of a heart attack. He was a man of many talents who knew how to live life to the fullest by making many friends. The list of celebrities who considered him a friend is enormous. As just one example, when it came time for his daughter Frances to learn to play golf, it was his friend Smoky Joe Wood who taught her. His Washington Senators teammates enjoyed having him around in spring training, and they missed him when he was shipped out. It was the Senators fans' loss that they were never able to see him pitch for the team during the regular season.
