Twice-widowed, he married once more to Catherine de Hueck Doherty, founder of the Madonna House Apostolate, and later was ordained a priest in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
There's nothing on earth lower than a press agent — unless maybe it's a copyreader.” To illustrate the point to his son, he recalled what had happened to him when he covered the Pancho Villa insurrection in Mexico for the Chicago Tribune: “I sent back a singing line about a forgotten, flea-bitten little Mexican town, and I described it this way: ‘Half a dozen ‘dobe huts and half a hundred hounds.’ And what do you suppose the copyreader changed it to?
‘Six adobe houses and 50 dogs!’”[2] After three years in Hollywood, Eddie moved his family to New York, where he went to work for Liberty magazine.
[3] He eventually discovered Friendship House in Harlem and its Russian foundress, Baroness Catherine de Hueck, who was caring for the poor and devoting her life to interracial justice.
It fostered study clubs, credit unions, co-operative associations, and other advanced ideas of self-help for the [African-American] poor.
[5] In 1944, Doherty's screenplay for the World War II film The Sullivans was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story.
The movie tells the story of the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who were killed in action when the USS Juneau was torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
He continued to live and work at Madonna House, writing books, celebrating the liturgy, and serving as a father figure to the young community.