An Irish Cop’s Second Act

By Tom deignan

AT the age of 29, John F. O’Donohue had already put nearly a decade into the New York City Police Department. Yet he still craved new experiences.

So, as you listen to him tell a story about perhaps the shortest pro boxing career in the history of New York, you have to at least give him credit for trying something different.

O’Donohue (whose mother came from Sligo and dad from Kerry) was in a pub with a boxer. Perhaps this was not the place to set up a new career in the fight game. But the fighter eventually agreed, at O’Donohue’s request, to set up a match.

O’Donohue trained intently but a few weeks later, when it was time for the big fight, the match was over before the second round ended.

“I remember how the guy at the Post wrote it up,” O’Donohue recalls. “He said, ‘John O’Donohue is 29 and is not destined to reach his 30th birthday if he keeps this up.’”

Now 50 and retired from the NYPD, O’Donohue eventually took another risk which turned out much better.

When O’Donohue left drink behind for good, he began attending off-Broadway plays regularly. It struck O’Donohue: “I could do that.”

“I saw acting as an avenue to release some of my feelings and so off I went to acting school,” said O’Donohue, who was born and raised on West 106th Street in Manhattan between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues.

Acting was not something this career cop had ever given serious thought. But now, over a decade after he dove into this volatile new career he is a working thespian.

He is perhaps best known for his recurring role as Sgt. Eddie Gibson on NYPD Blue and has also appeared on a host of TV crime shows such as CSI and Third Watch. He will be seen later this year in Ed Burns’ (whose dad was a cop) latest comedy The Groomsmen, shown recently at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Now, O’Donohue is teaming up with another son of Irish New York for a wacky night of theater. O’Donohue is among the stars of All Dolled Up, a play at the Acorn Theater on West 42nd Street written by Hell’s Kitchen native Bobby Spillane.

The play, which just opened this week, is about a gangster world underling who reveals that he likes to dress in women’s clothes every now and then.

O’Donohue plays the crime boss, a character loosely based on the mentally-challenged kingpin Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, who used to stroll around his neighborhood in a bathrobe, mumbling. Some said he hoped to earn him some leniency when he went on trial.

All Dolled Up is the brainchild of Spillane, who still remembers when Hell’s Kitchen was one of the most heavily Irish districts in New York.

It is still home to the McManus Democratic club on West 44th Street. Spillane himself is a member of the famously political clan by way of his mother. Spillane’s father, meanwhile, was a neighborhood legend who was killed when Spillane was just 12 years old.

Spillane once wrote a haunting remembrance of his father for the New York Daily News. The front-page article was headlined “My Dad, the Last Gentleman Gangster.”

For all of its New York street cred, however, it’s worth noting that O’Donohue met Spillane while both were living in LA. When they returned to New York, they ran into each other in midtown and Spillane mentioned All Dolled Up.

Hollywood and the New York stage are a long way from where John O’Donohue started out. He attended Chelsea Vocational High School but went into the Navy before he finished. His father was a doorman.

O’Donohue himself married a girl named Agnes whose own parents were immigrants and who lived just a few blocks over from the O’Donohues.

“The neighborhood, at the time, was pretty much Irish immigrants and Puerto Ricans. It was like West Side Story without the singing and dancing,” said O’Donohue, whose son Sean is also a police officer.

O’Donohue’s parents came to the U.S. simply because there were few economic opportunities in Ireland.

“I went to Kerry with my son and we looked at this beautiful place. I understand why they came but it’s hard to imagine people leaving all that beauty,” he says.

Sean O’Donohue himself ended up marrying an immigrant from Monaghan. She worked at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is Sean O’Donohue’s post. All of which sounds like something only Hollywood could make up.

Speaking of which, has O’Donohue’s son expressed an interest in acting?

“No, not yet,” says O’Donohue.

Maybe boxing will be Sean’s second act.

For information about All Dolled Up call 212-714-2442.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)