William Dennis Gargan was born to an irish-american Catholic family in Brooklyn, New York on July 17th, 1905. His parents—Bill and Irene—had seven children, but only Bill and his brother Ed survived infancy. Ed was four years older than Bill. The pair were close. Bill’s mother had been a teacher, but his father was a book maker and a gambler, which didn’t sit well with Irene’s parents.

Gargan’s dad made book in the copy room at the New York World and in Room 9 of City Hall. The four-story brownstone they lived in at 427 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights was won in a poker game. Today P.S. 29 stands on the site. Bill got his first silent movie job at seven for Vitagraph Studios. He was paid Three dollars and eighty-five cents. That’s roughly one-hundred twenty dollars today. It portended things to come. By ten, Bill was hanging out at his father’s bar in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Gargan later said that his mother was more straight-laced, a bit of a prude on the surface, but in reality, she ran with dad all her life and his.” Both parents had good senses of humor.

He grew up going to Sea Gate in the summer and fighting for the Irish kids from Bay Ridge against the Italian kids in empty lots. He played baseball and basketball for St. Francis Xavier grade school and St. James High. He ditched school in the spring to scale the Ebbets Field wall to watch the Dodgers and their stars of the 1910s.

When he was fourteen and working as an ice brusher at the Prospect Park skating rink, Gargan met a girl named Mary Elizabeth Kenny. He was so taken that he used his broom to knock her down! Gargan recalled that “She got up, her eyes spitting fire and her mouth not doing badly either. I knew I was in love.”

Gargan loved the theater. By high school he was playing in school productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. However, a teacher who’d been out to get Bill for his comedic behavior made life so miserable during Bill’s senior year that he dropped out.

Gargan became a message runner for a Broad Street brokerage firm, then a cop for a clothing store, then one for a Wall Street agency until he was fired for losing a tail. He sold Wesson Oil to grocers, sneaking away to watch plays. One day the lights went up and Gargan noticed his boss was sitting next to him. “Good show,” Gargan said, “you’re fired,” said his boss.

Bill’s brother Ed was an actor. While having lunch with Ed one day at the Lamb’s Club a man named Le Roy Clemens mentioned to Bill that a play he’d written was having tryouts. Bill read a line and was hired, beginning his career in Aloma of the South Seas. They opened in Baltimore in 1924. Gargan was a quick study, learning everyone’s parts as well as the stage manager’s. Within a year he was directing the Philadelphia production of the play. Aloma of the South Seas ran for forty weeks.

Gargan spent the next years playing all over the country with people like George Jessel and Richard Bennett. Jessel would be godfather to Bill’s first son Bill Jr, affectionately known as Barrie. Barrie was born on February 25th, 1929.

After the stock market crashed, Bill got a short-term job on stage in New York where he met William Bendix. Soon a casting director at Paramount called and after that Leslie Howard cast Bill in a play. Bill later said that Leslie helped make him a star.

That same year, on January 12, 1932 Gargan opened at the Broadhurst theater in New York with Leslie Howard in Philip Barry’s The Animal Kingdom. It was a smash hit. His success led MGM to call. They offered him the part of Sergeant O’Hara in the 1932 feature Rain, starring Joan Crawford and Walter Huston. He’d be paid fifteen-hundred dollars per week. That’s over thirty-three grand today. Bill bought out his contract with The Animal Kingdom, playing on May 2nd for the last time.

The next morning, Bill, Mary, and young Barrie left for Hollywood. Rain was shot on Catalina Island.