Joe Donahue

Joseph Arthur Donahue was born on January 3, 1899, in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children born to Irish immigrants Julia Buckley and Dennis Donahue. He was the younger brother of Jack Donahue, a successful dancer and comedian in vaudeville and on Broadway, by ten years. Joe Donahue went on to work as an American dancer, Broadway performer, and film actor before his death on January 3, 1943.

Donahue claimed to have begun dancing at the age of 12, though his early adult years were interrupted by the First World War, during which he worked as a shipfitter at the Boston Navy Yard. By 1919 he had begun performing, occasionally serving as his brother's understudy. His Broadway career ran from 1923 to 1928 and included appearances in the revue America and the musical Lady Butterfly. He also understudied his brother in the 1925 musical Sunny, which starred Marilyn Miller.

When Jack Donahue became terminally ill in 1930, Miller invited Joe to take over his brother's role in the screen adaptation of Sunny. That film appearance launched a brief Hollywood career, during which Donahue appeared in four additional films: Party Husband and The Reckless Hour, both released in 1931, followed by Expensive Women and The Boudoir Butler in 1932.

After his film work concluded, Donahue returned to vaudeville, where he was billed variously as "The World's Greatest Dancer" and as "Jack Donahue's Little Brother." His professional success proved short-lived. He died at City Hospital in Boston on his 44th birthday, January 3, 1943, with pneumonia listed as the cause of death.