 After acting in one show on Broadway in 1926 – a stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "An American Tragedy" – Moran made his film debut in 1928 when he did two silent films, "The Chinatown Mystery" and "Ships of the Night", but his film career didn't start in earnest until 1933, when he appeared as himself in "The Prizefighter and the Lady", and also in Mae West's "She Done Him Wrong", in which he played a convict.This was typical of the kinds of roles Moran was to play for the next 25 years – gangsters, henchmen, "plug uglies", bartenders, stage hands, sailors, guards, cops, bouncers, moving men, sergeants and other soldiers – roles which belied his personal gentleness and sensitivity.In the 1940s, Moran was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in every American film written and directed by Sturges with one exception.