Frank Mcglynn, American actor. Member Actors’ Equity Association, Society Catholic Pioneers, Young Men's Institute, Catholic Actors’ Guild (president).; Club: Friars.
Background
McGlynn was born in San Francisco the eldest of two daughters and a son raised by Frank and Mary McGlynn. His father was second generation Irish from New York who supported his family as a carpenter and later working in real estate. McGlynn’s mother was born in Australia of Irish parents who brought her to America at about the time of the California Gold Rush.
Education
Educated convent and public schools, Hastings Law School, and 7 years in law office of Matthew I. Sullivan, San Francisco.
Career
Census records indicate that McGlynn lost a younger brother (George b 1869) sometime between 1870 and 1880. He received his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and was admitted to the bar in 1894. By 1896, though, he was appearing on stage at the Casino Theatre, performing in The Gold Bug, a burlesque musical comedy written by Glen MacDonough with music from Victor Herbert.
Later that year McGlynn toured in a road production of Under the Red Robe, a story based on the Stanley Weyman novel that was adapted for the stage by Edward Everett Rose.
Over the following two decades McGlynn played mostly supporting roles with stock companies and in early silent films. McGlynn’s big break came in 1919, when at the age of fifty-three, the six –foot, four-inch actor was given the opportunity to play the lead in John Drinkwater’s play Abraham Lincoln.
The play had a run of 193 performances at the Cort Theatre in New York and played on the road for well over two years. In 1924, McGlynn appeared in a two-reel short film made by Lee DeForest and J. Searle Dawley in DeForest"s Phonofilm sound-on-film process, in an excerpt of the play.
McGlynn went on to play in seven Broadway plays.
His last as Johnnie, in Frankie and Johnnie at the Theatre Republic in 1930. McGlynn’s 1919 performance as Lincoln also rejuvenated his film career which lasted into the late 1940s. He portrayed Lincoln in ten films and in one film an actor who plays Lincoln.
McGlynn died at the age of eighty-four on May 18, 1951 at his daughter’s residence in Newburg, New New York
He is interred in Glendale"s Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
Achievements
Membership
Member Actors’ Equity Association, Society Catholic Pioneers, Young Men's Institute, Catholic Actors’ Guild (president). Club: Friars.
Connections
Married Rose O’Byrne, December 16, 1900. Children: Mistress Mary Rose O’Herron, Frank, Thomas, Grace, Helen, Virginia.