James Flavin

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.

Known For	Acting
Most Rating	0.5035
Birthday	1906-05-14
Place of Birth	Portland, Maine, USA
Also Known As	James William Flavin Jr., James Flaven, Jim Flavin,

King Kong

Manpower

Confidentially Connie

Youth Will Be Served

The Most Dangerous Game

My Girl Tisa

Blondie Hits the Jackpot

One Way Ticket

Armored Car Robbery

Here Come the Marines

Three Loves Has Nancy

Night Passage

Mannequin

The Devil's Henchmen

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Desert Fury

Nora Prentiss

Nobody Lives Forever

Charlie Chan at the Race Track

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars

Wild Is the Wind

Destination Murder

The Savage Horde

McKenna of the Mounted

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Cloak and Dagger

Cheyenne Autumn

Born to Be Wild

The Shanghai Cobra

Hot News

Footsteps in the Night

Fingers at the Window

Mighty Joe Young

Kathleen

Homicide

In Cold Blood

Wild Gold

It Happened on Fifth Avenue

Belle Starr

Man on the Flying Trapeze

The Further Adventures of Gallegher

Mr. Wong in Chinatown

Dragonfly Squadron

Francis in the Haunted House

The Murder Man

Rendezvous

Sailor Beware

God Is My Co-Pilot

The Naked Street

How to Behave

So Proudly We Hail

Reap the Wild Wind

I Dood It

The Missing Lady

Riot Squad

Flamingo Road

Law and Order

Never Say Goodbye

Prison Warden

Abroad with Two Yanks

Hold That Hypnotist

Murder on the Waterfront

Wives Under Suspicion

Boys' Ranch

The Cisco Kid and the Lady

Girls Can Play

O. Henry's Full House

They All Come Out

Apache Ambush

Follow the Sun

The Brand of Hate

We Go Fast

Convicts at Large

Irish Luck

Hello, Sister!

Anchors Aweigh

Mississippi Rhythm

Lightning Carson Rides Again

While New York Sleeps

Massacre Canyon