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On the 11th day of November, as the 19th century was winding down, William Joseph Patrick O’Brien (a.k.a. “Pat” and “Billy”) made his grand entrance — five months before Spencer Bonaventure Tracy; both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. James Francis Cagney, born in New York City, already had four months under his belt. Besting the group by a year and already hitting his marks was another future actor, Frank McHugh, (perhaps best known for his role as Fr. Timothy O’Dowd in Going My Way), born in Homestead, New York, in May 1898.
All four would become bright theatrical lights and the best of friends.
Classmates, fellow altar boys, and navy buddies
O’Brien, best remembered for Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and Some Like It Hot (1959), was pure Irish, second generation.
He first became acquainted with Tracy at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, where the two began attending plays together, nurturing their interest in the theatre, and working at a Milwaukee lumberyard for $2.50 a week. Both had served as altar boys and Tracy was thinking, for a time, of entering the priesthood.
With the sinking of the Lusitania and America’s entry into World War I, however, the pair donned the Navy uniform and enrolled in Great Lakes Naval Training Center, though neither saw action given the impending end of the war on the 11th hour of the 11th day of November — Armistice Day — which, coincidentally, also fell on O’Brien’s 19th birthday.
After completing their education at, respectively, Marquette University and Ripon College, the two friends wended their way to New York City, where they studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began their stage careers. They shared a small studio apartment and went without food so they could see John Barrymore’s storied performance as the tortured son in Hamlet a total of four times during the play’s run from November 16, 1922 to February 1923 at the Sam H. Harris Theatre.
A tearful meeting
The friendship was deep and enduring.
In the fall of 1926, the two would meet up every night after their shows — Tracy playing in George M. Cohan’s Yellow, O’Brien in Gustav Blum’s Henry-behave — and walk to an eatery for coffee and crêpes. One night, O’Brien told biographer Ralph Story, “I noticed (Spence) was under some emotional strain, and he actually started to cry.” O’Brien thought maybe he had been fired and finally asked Spence what was wrong.
“‘Billy,’ said Spence, ‘I’ve got to tell you’” and he went on to describe how each night his son Johnny anxiously awaited his arrival home in rapt attention, gripping the rails of his crib, eyes wide open for that magic moment when his father would come home and kiss him, filling his little heart with joy. But the day before, Spence had done the matinee plus the evening show. Wearily arriving home at midnight, he went right to bed. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘It was one of those things... In the middle of the night — God knows what time it was — I awoke, and I always leave the door open into the little room with the crib, and I looked in and Johnny was standing in the crib. I’d forgotten to kiss him goodnight.’ The ordinary child, he explained, would call ‘Daddy,’ but Johnny couldn’t. ‘You see, Billy, Johnny can neither hear, nor speak.’”
Birth of “The Boys Club”
Early in his theatrical career, Spence befriended another struggling actor with an Irish Catholic background — James Cagney — and introduced him to O’Brien. McHugh would meet up with them in Hollywood when he and Cagney worked together at Warners; he became one of the industry’s top character actors.
The foursome oozed Irish charm and impishness and had great chemistry and camaraderie.
As the Hollywood battles intensified, whether fighting personal demons or the studios, “The Boys Club,” as Cagney dubbed it, was born. They met religiously each Wednesday night from the early thirties through the late forties. The routine got going when Cagney and Tracy, along with McHugh, met for dinner to sign autographs for a Hartford, Connecticut, church benefit, and McHugh hatched the idea.
Dubbed the “Irish Mafia” by Sidney Skolsky, one of Hollywood’s premier gossip columnists, the gatherings soon expanded to a wider, more ethnically diverse group, with the addition of Frank Morgan, Ralph Bellamy and Lynne Overman, and others, all Protestants.
A steady hand of friendship
“The boys” dined regularly at Chasen’s, Romanoff’s and other Hollywood spots, if not at one of their own homes where they shared good food, good talk and good jokes.
“(T)hat flatulent cave of winds (as) John Barrymore called (Hollywood)” went into overdrive describing “our little gatherings,” wrote Cagney.
In truth, “The Boys Club” mostly helped provide a steady hand of friendship, A.C. Lyles, a best friend of both Tracy and Cagney, told me — and was especially important for someone like Tracy, who had an overly-strict Catholic conscience. Wracked by guilt, he believed his deaf son was God’s punishment for his extramarital affairs. After Johnny’s birth in June 1924, he went on his first “big drunk,” said O’Brien. In 1932, when his wife was pregnant with their second child, Spence worried (needlessly) that their next child would also be born deaf. The group met and helped Spence to “relax, just relax,” as Ethel Barrymore had counseled him as he was poised to go onstage in his first Broadway show, A Royal Fandango, in Fall 1923.
O’Brien goes West
Pat O’Brien soon came out to Hollywood, joining “The Boys Club” and landing at Warner Bros. as well, where Cagney was already ensconced with successes like The Public Enemy (1931) and Taxi! (1932). They appeared together in nine films starting with Here Comes the Navy (1934) — solidifying what would be a lifelong friendship.
“Cagney was the best man I ever met in the course of my long life — and I’ve met many and many a man,” O’Brien once said.
When Cagney unwisely agreed to come out of retirement to star in Ragtime (1981) in spite of ill-health, one grace note was his chance to act and spend time with his friend again — his “dearest friend,” Cagney said of O’Brien when he died on October 15, 1983, predeceasing his cherished wife of 52 years, Eloise Taylor.
This article includes excerpts from Oasis of Faith: The Souls Behind the Billboard—Barrymore, Tracy, Cagney, Stewart, Guinness & Lemmon.
