His first screen appearance was in the silent film Food of Love in 1916.
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In 1946 Kerrigan tried breaking into Broadway shows, playing the discombobulated leprechaun Jackeen J. O'Malley in the show "Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley", based on the Crockett Johnson comic strip.
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There he became a stalwart, appearing in plays by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge (for whom he played the role of Shawn Keogh in The Playboy of the Western World.
J. M. Kerrigan, character actor who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Nancy Kerrigan | Lodge Kerrigan | Kait Kerrigan | Mike Kerrigan | Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health | John J. Kerrigan | Joe Kerrigan | J. M. Kerrigan | Gene Kerrigan | Dan Kerrigan |
John J. Kerrigan (1932–1996), member of the Boston School Committee, 1968–1976
He has served as President of the Irish American Bar Association and successfully defended a law created in the Great Depression to protect workers before the United States Supreme Court in 2001 (Lujan v. G&G Fire Sprinklers, Inc., 532 U.S. 189, decided April 17, 2001).