Bernard Gorcey was born in Russia. He immigrated to the United States with his family and was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan attending school at The Educational Alliance where he performed in the Children's Educational Theatre. He was mentored by Mark Twain who introduced him to producers and impresarios on Broadway who subsequently cast him in his first role in the show Tom Jones in 1907 and toured with the show in the U.S. and Canada through April 1908.

Thereafter, Bernard found no work as a character actor and was forced to join his family in Long Branch New Jersey where he partnered with his father to run a tailoring business for four years. He returned to the Broadway stage in 1912 starring in several prominent roles produced by notable figures such as Arthur Hammerstein. He toured around the nation with these shows returning to New York to marry Josephine Condon of Boston

Bernard enjoyed continued successes on Broadway and toured several times around the country with these shows. He and Josephine had three sons, Fred in 1915, Leo in 1917 and David in 1921. In 1922, Bernard enjoyed his greatest hit on Broadway in Abie's Irish Rose, a show that broke records, running some 2,327 performances. Popular lore has Bernard participating over the entire run. But he left the show and joined Arthur Hammerstein and other theatrical notables for a long stretch of successes through 1928.

In 1928, Bernard enjoyed his first screen success, traveling to Hollywood to film Abie's Irish Rose. Hollywood was slow to recognize his value. During this time, he was in demand on the Vaudeville circuits as well as in radio. He returned to the stage in several efforts in New York and around the country (meeting a young Archie Leach/Cary Grant in summer stock in St. Louis) while continuing to experiment with film. He shot several shorts across the Hudson River with the budding Fleischer Brothers organization between 1931 and 1934.

It was only in 1940 that Bernard saw his breakthrough into major filmdom when he took a significant role in the Charles Chaplin film The Great Dictator. Thereafter he relocated to Hollywood, finding sporadic work with major studios and stars as he developed his reputation as a unique character actor. He can be seen along-side his son, Leo and with Ida Lupino and John Garfield, in Out of the Fog, with Paul Henreid, Thomas Mitchell and Laird Cregar in Joan of Paris, and with Bela Lugosi in Black Dragons.

He became associated with the efforts of his son Leo Gorcey's film franchise that morphed from the Dead End Kids into the East Side Kids at Monogram Studios in 1943. But he did not begin his signature role of Louie, the Sweetshop owner in the Bowery Boys series until the second of those, In Fast Company, in 1943. Joining sons Leo and David, he completed forty of the films in the series, interspersing these with cameos in major studio pictures and appearances in television with Joan Davis in her I Married Joan series with Jim Backus.

Bernard was the victim of a traffic accident in August 1955 and died at age 69 on September 11th of that year.