An Essanay chap who often played "a modern man of the age." I don't know what that means, exactly. A go-getter? A man alienated from the new age of machines and liberated women?

In 1917 a reporter asked him if he'd volunteer to fight in the war. Kerrigan made the mistake of speaking his mind:

I am not going to war. I will go, of course, if my country needs me, but I think that first they should take the great mass of men who aren't good for anything else, or are only good for the lower grades of work. Actors, musicians, great writers, artists of every kind—isn't it a pity when people are sacrificed who are capable of such things—of adding to the beauty of the world.

Said Wikipedia: "his popularity plummeted, never to fully recover"

But the same entry says the fall-off in fandom was "more due to his living with his mother and partner James Vincent in the same house."

Captain Blood was a mild hit. Didn't help.Whatever cred he got from The Covered Wagon fast evaporated.