[2] There he became a stalwart, appearing in plays by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge (for whom he created the role of Shawn Keogh in The Playboy of the Western World).

In 1924, he and Abbey colleague Dudley Digges appeared in Sutton Vane's Outward Bound, along with Alfred Lunt, Leslie Howard, Margalo Gillmore, and Beryl Mercer.

Perhaps his best-known role was in The General Died at Dawn, wherein he plays a character named Leach, a sinister thief who, holding a gun on Cooper, says: "I may be fat, but I'm agile."

One of his more recognizable roles was in Gone with the Wind (1939), in which he played John Gallegher, the seemly jovial mill owner who whips his convict labor into "co-operation".

[4] Kerrigan made his final Broadway appearance later that year, however, in Guthrie McClintic's revival of The Playboy of the Western World, this time playing Michael James Flaherty.