The Columbia stock company was called upon to play incidental roles in practically everything the studio produced: important films, low-budget "B" pictures, short subjects, and serials.

(Some of these players graduated to stardom, like Lloyd Bridges, Bruce Bennett, Adele Mara and Ann Doran.)

Tyrrell and fellow stock player Eddie Laughton often appeared together in Columbia movies (frequently as mobsters waiting in a getaway car).

One of Tyrrell's biggest roles was probably in the 1939 serial Mandrake the Magician, in which he played a masked crime lord's right-hand man.

After spending several months at Kingsbridge Veteran's Hospital in the Bronx, New York, possibly due to some of his health problems, John Tyrrell died of complications from an undisclosed illness on September 20, 1949, at age 48.