John Bernard McCauley (1900-1980) was a beloved member of The Lambs who had a steller career as a song and dance man, then retired from the stage to work for the Actors Fund. He was elected to The Lambs in 1927 when Broadway was at its zenith in the Jazz Age.
He was born in New York on January 10, 1900. He attended local schools and as a teenager broke into silent pictures in the city, appearing in The Valley of Fear (1916) and Hearts of Men (1915).
Jack McCauley was admitted to Columbia University, with an eye on medicine. It was then that he met his longtime friends James Cagney, Herbert Fields, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers. He followed the path to show business after leaving the Columbia football team to appear in a friend’s show, “Nerves,” with rising star Humphrey Bogart, in 1924.
After appearing in “White Cargo” (1925) McCauley was cast in the less-than-respectable “Earl Carroll’s Vanities.” He was tagged as a song-and-dance man, appearing in such fare as “Hey Nonny Nonny!” (1932) and “High Button Shoes” (1947). McCauley was featured with Fred Allen, Clifton Webb, and Lilly Holman in the debut of the “Little Shows” at the Music Box Theatre in 1929. He co-starred with Carol Channing in the long-running “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1949).
In 1965 he retired from acting to become President of the Actors Fund and Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey. McCauley also played a part in the Percy Williams Home in East Patchogue, Long Island, a retirement home for actors founded by the Lambs.
He moved to Menlo Park, California, with his wife, Amy Revere McCauley, who was also an actress.
Jack McCauley died June 20, 1980, in Menlo Park. He was 80 years old. He is interred in Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Chicago.
Research by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (2026)