Pat O’Malley — Patrick Should Worry! (1924) 🇺🇸
To explain the seemingly sudden success of Pat O’Malley, it is necessary to explain Patrick himself.
America gave him birth. Ireland a hit-and-miss education. Chicago’s ten-cent-meal restaurants and five-cents-a-flop rooming houses knew him for months during one of the down stages of his ebullient career when stubbornness forbade his seeking aid from relatives. As a child he ran away with a circus, walking a tight rope, and he has held — temporarily — about every sort of a job there is.
“I’m gettin’ along,” he smiles quizzically, though for sure he’s not exactly what you’d call bowed down by rheumatics. “Used to worry about how I looked, thought I could maybe be a handsome hero. But now I see my chance, is in character roles, so it doesn’t matter how many lines I’ve got in my face or if my trousers need pressin’ or not.
“I’ve got no looks, but I’m hefty,” he chuckles. “I was made when meat was cheap. I fit into the new scheme of things where the character man— long A. W. O. L. from the party — again has a look-in on the feast.”
He talks interestingly, continuously. The blarney of the Emerald Isle’s talented, guileless children is in his words, in the cadences of his voice — and his twinkling eyes give the lie to it all. Pat takes himself seriously — and his one fear is that everybody else will take him that way.
The curious way he seemingly slipped when almost upon the topmost rung of the ladder, O’Malley says is due to cussed self-conceit.
“Sure, and don’t every Irishman think he knows it all? That’s what got me, at first, being too sure. The second time I fell was through not being sure. Y’see, ‘twas like this: I’d been knocking around the old Edison Company, and with the Kalem players all over Europe and way stations, and began to think I was some pumpkins. Universal brought me out to the Coast five years ago to play in Holubar’s [Allen Holubar] war picture, ‘Hearts of Humanity.’ Instead of dyin’ all over the lot, like actors mostly do, I did my dyin’ like a gentleman, tryin’ to look happy about it so’s folks wouldn’t be bothered.”
After that success, Mither O’Malley got the cocky idea he was some actor. Others, though, didn’t agree, so he “rested” for almost a year.
Several pictures with Mickey Neilan [Marshall Neilan] — Dinty and Bob Hampton of Placer particularly — took him on another upward wave. Offers came. Pat grabbed the most money, thought he was sitting pretty and didn’t work his brain overmuch — and soon he woke up to the fact that the producers were buying his name for inconspicuous roles. After a while, when big productions were being cast, the wise ones shook their heads with an ominous, “No, he’s only doing little things now, he’s slipping.”
Happily, though, he got another good chance in “Brothers Under the Skin,” a zippy, brazen yearling of married life’s squalls; and, having a red-headed wife of his own. he knew the business and walked away with it. high, wide and handsome. A comparatively small part in “The Virginian” he made stand out. Now he is playing Laurette Taylor’s leading man.
“I’ve figured it all out,” he wags his head sagely, “I’ll stay on tap now.”
But he won’t. He’ll disappear and then pop up again. His kind never stays put. And that’s the charm of the lad.
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1924