Attend Christian Brothers School in Belfast and started show business as a boy there selling programs at the Empire theater and as a magician's assistant.
Played many vaudeville houses while touring Europe in a 50-year career, at one time partnering in a comic act with actor Joe Carney.
Talented Irish actor, long a member of the famous Abbey Players, but perhaps best known in America for creating the role of Finian McLonergan in the original Broadway production of "Finian's Rainbow" in 1947 and starring in the title role of Disney's "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" twelve years later. His last ten years were spent in quiet retirement until his death in 1970 at the age of 85.
Walt Disney had seen him in the Broadway production of "Finian's Rainbow." He kept him in mind for the title role in the long delayed "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" which wasn't made until 1959.