People
James Flavin
Acting · follow into films and chains
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.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
King Kong
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Nightmare Alley
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Most Dangerous Game
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Laura
As Det. McEveety (uncredited)
My Man Godfrey
As Detective (uncredited)
Heaven Can Wait
As Policeman (uncredited)
My Favorite Brunette
As Det. Lt. 'Mac' Hennessey (uncredited)
Pot o' Gold
As Sheriff Bud Connolly
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
Trapped and Playing by Someone Else’s Rules
With the upcoming release of Jumanji: Open World, we trace the evolution of the survival game subgenre, following how the core premise of human beings forced to...
10 films
The Hypnotic Gaze
From Woody Allen's comic hypnosis to the chilling mechanics of control, this chain traces cinema's fascination with the mind's susceptibility.
8 films
From External Beast to Internal Trauma
Here is a five-film narrative chain that traces how the monster evolved from an exotic physical threat into a psychological mirror of society.
5 films
Topics
Explore by topic
Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Acted
Nightmare Alley
1947 · Hoatley / First Carnival Owner (uncredited)
My Favorite Brunette
1947 · Det. Lt. 'Mac' Hennessey (uncredited)
Laura
1944 · Det. McEveety (uncredited)
Heaven Can Wait
1943 · Policeman (uncredited)
Pot o' Gold
1941 · Sheriff Bud Connolly
My Man Godfrey
1936 · Detective (uncredited)
King Kong
1933 · Mate Briggs
The Most Dangerous Game
1932 · First Mate on Yacht (uncredited)