Gorcey is best known for portraying "Chuck Anderson" in Monogram Pictures' film series The Bowery Boys, and "Pee Wee" in its antecedent The East Side Kids.

When Gorcey was 10 years old, he was signed by the Vitaphone studio in New York to co-star in its Penrod and Sam series of short subjects, based on the Booth Tarkington stories.

When Universal Pictures launched its Dead End Kids knockoff The Little Tough Guys, David Gorcey was hired.

He occasionally appeared apart from the gang, in such films as The Babe Ruth Story (1948), and Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950).

Later in life, he became a minister ("Father David") and founded a halfway house to help recovering alcoholics and people with substance abuse problems.