1. Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (BFI Publishing: London 2006), p. 7.
2. W.B. Yeats to Edith Shackleton Heald, 4 September [1938], unpublished letter, ‘The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Past Masters: English Letters Collection’, Online database, OUP: Oxford.
3. Stanley Weintraub (ed.), Literary Criticism of Oscar Wilde (University of Nebraska Press 1968), p. 190.
4. Ibid. p. 182.
5. See James Pethica, ‘“Our Kathleen”: Yeats’s Collaboration with Lady Gregory in the Writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan’ in Deirdre Toomey (ed.), Yeats and Women (Palgrave: London 1997).
6. W.J. McCormack, Fool of the Family: A Life of J.M. Synge (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/New York: New York UP 2000), p. 362.
1. For details of the Screen Directors Guild meeting, see Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford (Faber and Faber: London 2003), pp. 479–84. And for a different, and standard, reading of this episode and of Ford as a director of Westerns, see Jim Kitses, Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood (BFI Publishing: London 2004), p. 29.
2. Robert S. Birchard, Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood (UP of Kentucky: Lexington 2004), p. 343.
3. David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David Selznick (Alfred Knopf: New York 1992), p. 179.
4. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 191.
5. Edward Bernds, quoted in ibid. p. 483.
6. Ibid. pp. 139–42.
7. Maureen O’Hara, ’Tis Herself: A Memoir (Simon and Schuster: New York 2004), p. 60.
9. It is a pleasure to credit this observation to Darcy O’Brien, actor George O’Brien’s son, a novelist and distinguished scholar of Irish literature, and my own teacher at Pomona College, California. The observation is recorded by McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 200.
10. Desmond King, The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (OUP: Oxford 2005), p. 67.
11. Ibid. p. 60.
12. Emile Durkheim, Division of Labour in Society, trans. W.D. Halls (Macmillan: London 1984), pp. 304–8.
13. Herbert J. Gans, ‘Symbolic Ethnicity’ in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Ethnicity (Oxford UP: Oxford 1996), pp. 146–52.
14. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 104; McBride, Searching for John Ford, pp. 549, 650.
15. Brian Spittles, John Ford (Longman: Harlow, Essex 2002), p. 20.
16. John Ford to Bob Ford [September 1937?], Bill Brown’s Physical Training Farm, John Ford papers, Lilly Library. Bob Ford was the son of the actor and director Francis Ford.
17. Daddy to Dear Ma [26? June 1943], Office of Strategic Services stationery, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
18. Mary [Ford] to My dearest Jack, 1 June 1943, Lilly Library; the reference is to John Wayne, whose marriage to Josie Saenz was falling apart because of his affair with 17-year-old Mexican actress Esperanza Bauer (1926–61).
19. One threatened exception to Ford’s escape from slanderous publicity was avoided in early 1942. Ollie Carey warned Ford that a writer named Tom Wood was preparing a scurrilous article about him. Ford wrote to John Wayne and Ward Bond, asking them to threaten Wood that if one derogatory word was published about Ford, they would ‘kick the shit out of [him] regularly each and every day of the week’ (Ford to Wayne, 12 January 1942, Lilly Library). He also asked his agent, Harry Wurtzel, to hire a lawyer to put Wood on notice that his work would be examined carefully for libel (Ford to Wurtzel, 12 January 1942). It is not clear what Ford feared Wood would say. Wurtzel got the story, and sent it to Ford for clearance before its publication in Liberty in the last week of February (Wurtzel to Dear Pappy, nd, Lilly Library).
20. Leonard Mosley, Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon (Little, Brown and Co.: Boston 1984), p. 242.
21. Mimi [Doyle] to My Darling [December 1938?], Monday, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
22. Katherine Hepburn to Dearest Sean [John Ford], [?March 1937], Marriot Apartment Hotel, Indianapolis, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
23. [Katherine Hepburn] to Dear Sean [John Ford], 10 April 1937, Havana Special, Pennsylvania Railroad stationery, Lilly Library.
24. The original name of ‘Eve March’ was Adalyn Doyle. She got a start in Hollywood as a stand-in for Katherine Hepburn, and, though only 5’ 3” tall, was said to resemble Hepburn. Darryl Zanuck groomed Doyle for feature roles, beginning with a small, uncredited part in Advice to the Lovelorn (1933) (New York Times, 8 October 1933).
25. Mimi to My Darling [December 1938?], John Ford papers, Lilly Library; William J. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Katherine Hepburn (Faber and Faber: London 2006), p. 253.
26. [Frances Rich] to Dearest Pal, 30 April 1937, Cranebrook Academy of Art, Michigan, Ford Papers, Lilly Library. Rich gossips about Ford’s romance with Hepburn and confesses that she herself is aiming to sleep with Erro Saarinen, the architect and sculptor, before the week is out. There is no sign that Ford and Rich were a couple.
27. McBride, Searching for John Ford, pp. 649–50.
28. Ibid. p. 383, Ford to Spig Wead, 11 February 1944, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
29. [John Ford] to My Darlin’ (My loved one, my heart, Maisin!), 19 November 1950, 5 December 1950 and 19 January 1951; O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, pp. 144, 147, 149.
30. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 190. Tyrone Power is suspected to be the man.
31. Ibid. p. 197.
32. Ibid. p. 131.
33. ‘A Footnote in the Decathalon’, New York Times (30 June 1996).
34. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 651.
35. There is a continuing debate about whether Stepin Fetchit was degrading to African-Americans or satirically exploitative of white prejudices, on the lines of Baron Sasha Cohen. On 14 February 1945, Stepin Fetchit wrote to ‘Commander John Ford’ to say: ‘It would be a life-saver and opening of corporal grace again if you could arrange anything for me.’ A year later, Ford suggested to Darryl Zanuck that they cast Stepin Fetchit in My Darling Clementine as ‘bellboy, porter, night clerk, waiter, bootblack, bartender and chambermaid at the hotel’. Zanuck replied the following day, 5 February 1946, that Walter White, head of the NAACP, had singled out Stepin Fetchit as one who always portrayed the blacks as ‘lazy, stupid, halfwit[s]’ and they were furious about it.
Everyone who knew him well could agree that Stepin Fetchit was an intelligent, furiously industrious actor with a well-schooled skill in physical comedy, but those who saw his work were not sure who the joke was on. Woody Strode himself recalled defending Fetchit to other black actors in 1965: ‘He was one of our greatest comedians and the first black actor to get star billing. I took a stand for him. I said, “If it hadn’t been for Stepin Fetchit, I wouldn’t be here. Somebody had to start it.” They’re going to do his story some day and all this history will come out. John Ford loved the guy; so did Will Rogers. In fact, John Ford directed a couple of pictures in which Will and Step shared top billing. As a child [in Los Angeles], the only black movie star I had ever heard of was Stepin Fetchit. He made two million dollars during the 1930s. He owned sixteen cars. I saw him when I was a kid; he was driving a pink convertible Rolls Royce.’
36. Peter Bogdanovich, John Ford (University of California Press 1978), p. 97.
37. Ibid. p. 104. Ford also told Bogdanovich that it was the American audience that liked ‘to see Indians get killed. They don’t consider them as human beings – with a great culture of their own – quite different from ours’ (pp. 94–5). This is well said, but it ignores Ford’s own role through scores of mass-culture cowboy films made before 1964, which fed the audience’s readiness to treat native Americans as not really human.
38. Emile Durkheim quoted in John Rex, ‘Multiculturalism in Europe’ in Hutchison and Smith, Ethnicity, p. 245.
39. Christopher Robbins, The Empress of Ireland: Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship (Scribner: London 2004), pp. xi–xii.
40. Ibid. p. 335.
41. Hutchison and Smith, Ethnicity, pp. 6–7.
42. W.B. Yeats to Edmund Dulac, 6 July [1935], Past Masters, Oxford UP.
43. Brian Desmond Hurst to Dear Jack, 16 July 1951, Renown Film Productions, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
44. Barbara Naomi Cohen-Stratyner, The Biographical Dictionary of Dance (Shirmer Books: New York 1982), pp. 452–4.
45. Spencer Tracy’s homosexual life, to the degree that it existed, is documented in William J. Mann’s biography Kate.
46. Clifton Webb specialized in playing sinister sissies. He was blackballed by the Hays Committee for being homosexual, and was not able to work for many years, until Otto Preminger won permission to use Webb in Laura. Webb was nominated for an Oscar in the film, which reactivated his Hollywood career. See Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (Harper and Row: New York 1987), pp. 45, 59, 94.
47. Robbins, Empress of Ireland, pp. 337–8.
48. Abbey Theatre Minute Books, 14 June 1935, NLI, Acc 3961, vol. 4.
49. Daddy to Dear Ma [John Ford to Mary Ford], [August 1942?], John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
50. John Ford to Darling Mary, 23 June 1944; Ford to My darlings, 27 June 1944; Ford papers, Lilly Library.
51. Brian [Desmond Hurst] to Dear Jack [Ford], [24 September 1947], John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
52. Michael Killanin to My dear Jack [December 1947?], House of Lords, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
53. John Ford to Maureen O’Hara, 10 January 1951, O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 149.
54. Jack to Brian [Desmond Hurst], telegram, 6 April 1951; Hurst to Ford, 9 April 1951; John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
55. Michael Killanin to My dear Jack, 20 October 1951, Spiddal House, John Ford papers, Lilly Library. Ford told Maureen O’Hara that he had her and John Wayne in mind for The Demigods, which seems bizarre (O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 180); the proposed cast list was later amended to O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald, with an ‘extremely handsome … preferably blonde’ boy yet to be sourced (Ford to Killanin, 9 September 1952). After the producers encountered difficulty with the purchase of rights, the film of Stephens’s novel was never made.
56. Ford to Michael Killanin, 25 October 1951, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
57. John Ford to Michael Killanin, 3 December 1951, John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
58. John Ford to Michael Killanin [c.20 August 1952], John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
59. Adrian Frazier, ‘“Quaint Pastoral Numbskulls”: Siobhan McKenna’s Playboy film’ in Adrian Frazier (ed.), Playboys of the Western World: Production Histories (Carysfort Press: Dublin 2004), pp. 59–74.
60. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 671.
61. Ford says the plot was changed to comply with film censorship: ‘Even today, you can say s--- and f--- on the screen, but you can’t have a priest living with a woman,’ in Bogdanovich, John Ford, p. 86.
62. Max Weber, ‘The Origin of Ethnic Groups’ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, p. 35.
63. Ibid. p. 45.
64. Ruth Vasey, The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939 (University of Exeter Press 1997), p. 108; Gregory D. Black, The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940–1975 (CUP: Cambridge 1997), pp. 10–12.
65. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (Chappel & Co.: London 1978), p. 245.
66. Gaylyn Stuldar and Mathew Bernstein (eds), John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era (Indiana UP: Bloomington and Indianapolis 2001), p. 228. They were quoting from Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of American Film: A Critical History (Harcourt Brace and Co.: New York 1939).
67. Dudley Nichols to Lindsay Anderson in Andrew Sarris, ‘You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet’: The American Talking Film: History and Memory 1927–1949 (OUP: Oxford 1998), p. 169.
68. Bogdanovich, John Ford, p. 52. According to Ford, he did not require Nichols to put in ‘“scene so-and-so, camera moves in, zooms in, pans”. None of that stuff, because it’s none of the [screenwriter’s] business.’ It soon became an axiom of Nichols’s business as scenarist ‘to write as a camera’, i.e. his scenarios did indicate the close-ups, medium shots, or long shots. Furthermore, he made it clear that the emphasis of the film would be on how the hero reacted to situations. These aspects – writing as camera, essential reaction-shots – characterize the script Nichols produced for The Informer. For an analysis of Nichols’s occasional pieces on screenwriting, see Patrick F. Sheeran, The Informer (Cork UP: Cork 2002), p. 68.
69. Andrew Sarris, ‘You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet’: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927–1949 (OUP: NY, Oxford 1998), p. 169.
70. For a discussion of this ideal and its achievement in The Informer, see Sheeran, The Informer, p. 66.
71. Bogdanovich, John Ford, p. 59.
72. ‘A Producer’s Lot is Not …: Cliff Reid, Who Has The Informer to his Credit, Confesses that Making Nine Films At Once Has Its Woes’, New York Times (28 July 1935).
74. Douglas W. Churchill, ‘John Ford: The Man Behind The Informer’, New York Times (5 January 1935). In the John Ford papers, Lilly Library, there are unaccustomedly truthful statements by Ford, in answer to questions in writing from William Hawks (30 May 1946), including this one: ‘I tried to peddle [The Informer] from studio to studio. I tried unsuccessfully for four years … Eventually, through the offices of J.R. McDonough, Executive Producer, and Cliff Reid, RKO bought it.’
75. Bogdanovich, John Ford, p. 61; McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 220.
76. Elia Kazan once asked Ford where he got his ideas about how to stage scenes. ‘He said from the set. Not from the script, not from the actors, not from the theme. From the set. The settings he chose were already poetry.’ Stuldar and Bernstein, John Ford Made Westerns, p. 293.
77. Sunrise photo from Village Voice article (8 September 2004), and credited to Photofest/Film Forum.
78. O’Flaherty, like O’Casey a communist, actually laid the plot in the Civil War of 1922, immediately after the Anglo-Irish Treaty brought about the departure of the British. The hero betrays the anti-Treaty forces to the new Irish government, not to the British. The film, however, places the story in the IRA’s war against the British.
79. Ford, 1936 interview with Howard Sharpe, in Gerald Peary and Jenny Lefcourt (eds), John Ford Interviews (UP of Mississippi: Jackson 2001), pp. 16–17.
80. In the fairly rapid boil of the Californian melting pot, one could not certify an American’s Irishness by hair or skin colour, body type, accent, place of birth or religion, so any white-skinned person with a Scottish or Irish surname (and McLaglen could be either) would be entitled by Ford to the benefit of the doubt.
81. Philip Liebfred, ‘Victor McLaglen’, Films in Review, 41, 4, 214–20.
82. Sheridan Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj: The British Film Colony on Screen and Off (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 1983), p. 140.
83. Churchill, ‘The Man Behind The Informer’.
84. Dudley Nichols said the fog was intended in his screenplay to be ‘symbolic of the groping primitive mind; it’s really a mental fog in which he moves and dies’. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 219.
85. Sheeran, The Informer, p. 40.
86. Ibid. p. 69.
87. Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics of the New Deal (Temple UP: Philadelphia 2001), p. 49. See also Sheeran, The Informer, p. 61, and Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, p. 181.
88. ‘Stormy Advices from Hollywood’, New York Times (29 December 1935).
89. Emanuel Eisenberg, interview with John Ford in New Theatre (April 1936); also in Peary and Lefcourt, John Ford Interviews, pp. 11–12.
90. Bogdanovich, John Ford, pp. 63–4.
91. With some reporters, Ford backtracked and denied that ‘McLaglen was tricked into doing some of the scenes … That’s absurd. Vic is a superb actor.’ Churchill, ‘The Man Behind The Informer’.
92. Peary and Lefcourt, John Ford Interviews, pp. 13–14.
93. Ibid. p. 14.
94. ‘We never worked for Max Reinhardt/Or the Moscow Theatre of Art’ are the opening lines. John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
95. Howard Sharpe interview with Ford for Photoplay (1936), in Peary and Lefcourt, John Ford Interviews, 16.
96. Ibid. p. 17.
97. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 69.
98. Peary and Lefcourt, John Ford Interviews, p. 12.
99. ‘The Informer, RKO, Screenplay by Dudley Nichols from the Novel by Liam O’Flaherty, 18 December 1934’, Arts Library Special Collections, UCLA. My friend the late Pat Sheeran of the National University of Ireland, Galway, gives an interesting analysis of the respective contributions of Ford and Nichols to The Informer in his book on film treatments of O’Flaherty’s novel (Sheeran, The Informer, pp. 63–72). According to Dan Ford’s book on his grandfather (Pappy: The Life of John Ford, Da Capo Press: New York, 1979), in a series of meetings at the director’s Odin Street home, Ford shouted at Nichols, insulted him, insisted on Ford’s superior knowledge of Ireland, and virtually dictated the script, so he is the real author of The Informer. However, Nichols himself said several times that he wrote the script at ‘white heat’ and there was never a second draft. Neither account is convincing. Nichols wrote a long draft, dated 18 December 1934, and then, before shooting began in February 1935, produced a tighter final version (both drafts are in the Special Collections, Arts Library, UCLA). It is reasonable to conclude that the changes between the first and second drafts were the consequence of discussions between Ford and Nichols on the Araner voyage.
100. Lindsay Anderson, ‘John Ford: his work is a portrayal of the righteous man’, Films in Review (2, 2, February 1951), 7.
101. Sklar, Movie-Made America, p. 191.
102. Garry Wills entitles a chapter on Ford ‘Sadist’ in his John Wayne’s America (Simon and Schuster: New York 1997), pp. 67–76.
103. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 217.
104. Robert Parrish, Growing up in Hollywood (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich: New York and London 1976), pp. 132–3.
105. John Ford to Mary Ford [22 May 1942], the Carlton, Washington DC, John Ford papers, Lilly Library. Ford was speaking of a naval officer under his command.
106. Dudley [Nichols] to Dear Sean [John Ford], 26 March [1939], John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
107. New York Times (30 April 1935).
108. Scott Eyman, Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (Simon and Schuster: New York 1999), p. 179.
109. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 328.
110. Charles Ramirez Berg, ‘The Margin as Center: The Multicultural Dynamics of John Ford’s Westerns’ in Stuldar and Bernstein, John Ford Made Westerns, p. 75.
1. Photograph of Barry Fitzgerald and Eileen Crowe in Juno and the Paycock, Chicago Sunday Tribune, 26 February 1933; reviewed in Chicago American, 1 March 1933.
2. ‘Juno at Ambassador’, Daily News (6 December 1937).
3. The first tour began on 3 October 1931; Robert Hogan and Michael J. O’Neill (eds), Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 1, 1926–1931 (Proscenium Press: Dixon, California, 1968), p. 79.
4. Barry Fitzgerald to Sean O’Casey, 8 October 1931, On board Cunard RMS Aquitania, David Krause (ed.), The Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1 (Macmillan: New York 1975), pp. 436–7.
5. Peter Judge (aka F.J. McCormick) was one such lonely family man. On 26 April 1935 he wrote to Joseph Holloway from Kansas City, Missouri: ‘Naturally, after seven months away from the children, I’m anxious to see them, and will get back to the life I like best – Dublin – Dublin – Dublin!’ Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, 1932–1937 (Proscenium Press: Dixon, California, 1969), p. 43.
6. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, pp. 574–5.
7. Richard Hayes, a government nominee to the board, apparently did not join until 1934; Robert Welch, The Abbey Theatre 1899–1999 (OUP: Oxford 2000), p. 119.
8. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, pp. 341–2.
9. ‘The Theatres’, The Times (10 February 1930), 10.
10. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, p. 397; Daniel Murphy (ed.), Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2 (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1975), p. 257.
11. In Hitchcock’s film (an inept piece of work), Barry Fitzgerald does not play, as he ought to have done, Captain Boyle opposite Allgood’s Juno Boyle (that role is taken by Edward Chapman), but a newly invented narrator called ‘the Orator’.
12. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, p. 397; interview with Barry Fitzgerald, The Chicago Daily News, 15 March 1933, Abbey Theatre scrapbook, NLI.
13. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 534.
14. Ibid. p. 556.
15. Both Shields brothers were in The Whiteheaded Boy during the 1932/33 tour.
16. Lennox Robinson to Sean O’Casey, Thursday [nd], NLI MS 27,024.
17. In June 1932 Fred Johnson, a longtime veteran of the Abbey and a teacher as well in the Abbey school of acting, asked for a sizable raise from his two pounds a week; Lennox Robinson, manager at the time, admitted the merit of his request, but could only offer him two pounds ten shillings; Lennox Robinson to Fred Johnson, 27 June 1932, Fred Johnson papers, NLI MS 27,613. For thin audiences, see Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 579.
18. Gabriel Fallon, ‘The celluloid menace’, Capuchin Annual (December 1937), 248–50.
19. Annie Horniman purchased the Mechanics Institute on Abbey Street in 1903, and it opened to the public as the Abbey Theatre on 27 December 1904.
20. ‘Two Actors Relive the Great Days at the Abbey Theatre’, The Times (28 January 1963), 5.
21. Gabriel Fallon, ‘The ageing Abbey – II’, Irish Monthly, 66 (1938), 344.
22. Ann Saddlemyer, Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1982), pp. 269–71; Adrian Frazier, Behind the Scenes (University of California Press 1990), pp. 176–9, and passim.
23. Joseph Holloway, 23 February 1930, ‘Diaries of a Dublin Playgoer’, National Library of Ireland.
24. Storm in a Teacup was James Bridie’s Scottish version of the German extravagant comedy Sturm im Wasserglass, concerning how a dispute over a dog licence turns into a crisis in local government; ‘Royalty Theatre’, The Times (6 February 1936), 12.
25. Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 60.
26. Allgood also took leave from the Abbey for a stint with the Liverpool Repertory Theatre in 1914; Sara Allgood to Joseph Holloway, 27 January 1914, Joseph Holloway papers, NLI MSS 22,404.
27. The Times (18 November 1926), np.
28. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 323; for £200-debt, see p. 33.
29. Ibid. p. 257.
30. G.B. Shaw to Yeats [November 1915] in John Cronin (ed.), Selected Plays of St John Ervine (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1988), p. 8.
31. Ibid. p. 8.
32. Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, p. 187.
33. ‘Obituaries: Mr Arthur Sinclair’, The Times (17 December 1951), 8.
34. From business stationery of Arthur Sinclair, Arthur Sinclair to Mr Robertson, 12 February 1918, Manning Robertson papers, NLI.
35. When Old Man Murphy played in Dublin, 27 February 1932, Holloway had bitter remarks for both Allgood sisters: of Sara – ‘once an artist, now a clown’, and of Molly – ‘her acting has deteriorated into that of a harsh-tongued shrew’ (Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 6).
36. The Times (26 July 1921), 8.
37. From a discussion of Sinclair’s acting by Brinsley MacNamara, Dudley Digges, Maire Quinn and Joseph Holloway, recorded in Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 74.
38. Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
39. The Chicago Daily News (15 March 1933), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
40. In the interview, Fitzgerald says his brother was thirteen years old in 1912, but this must be a mistake, because Arthur Shields was born on 15 February 1896, in Dublin.
41. The Chicago Daily News (15 March 1933), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
42. Christopher Fitz-Simon, The Boys: A Biography of Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards (Nick Hern Books: London 1994), p. 42.
43. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 263.
44. Gabriel Fallon, Sean O’Casey: The Man I Knew (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London 1965), p. 54.
45. Seán Ó Cathasaigh to Lennox Robinson, 23 April 1922, Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, p. 102.
46. Fallon, Sean O’Casey, p. 82; Philip B. Ryan, The Lost Theatres of Dublin (Badger Press: Westbury, Wiltshire, 1998), p. 23.
47. As a young man J.J. O’Leary had worked with Fitzgerald in the Irish Land Commission. When Fitzgerald left for the stage, O’Leary left for Fleet Street. He came back to Dublin and bought Cahill’s, a major printing works in Dublin, producing everything from bus timetables to bibles. One of its products was The Irish Digest, which was edited by Sean O’Faolain. O’Leary then materially assisted O’Faolain in getting The Bell up and running. The atmosphere of the new Irish patron of letters, O’Faolain remarked defensively in a letter to Frank O’Connor, was not like that of Yeats and Edward Martyn – ‘no grand manner hanging around’ – but it was the world of the new Ireland, with the beggars raised up by Daniel O’Connell coming into power. See Maurice Harmon’s Sean O’Faolain (Constable: London, 1994), pp. 127, 130, 150.
48. ‘Two Actors Relive the Great Days’, op. cit.
49. The Chicago Daily News (15 March 1933), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
50. Allan Wade (ed.), The Letters of W.B. Yeats (Macmillan: New York 1955), pp. 740–1.
51. Yeats thought O’Casey’s depiction of the middle-class character of Nora Clitheroe in The Plough and the Stars was shallow because ‘O’Casey is there writing about people he does not know, people he has only read about,’ as if O’Casey were on much more familiar terms with the wastrels, unmarried mothers, prostitutes, drunks and old-age pensioners who make up the rest of the cast. Yeats’s misapprehension of the sphere of O’Casey’s social knowledge was to have serious consequences in the handling of his next play, The Silver Tassie. Yeats believed the representation of Irishmen who went to World War I was outside O’Casey’s experience, and thus outside his ability to dramatize – in both cases, not true. See Yeats to George O’Brien, 10 September 1925, quoted in Robert Hogan and Richard Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, 1921–1926, A Documentary History (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1992), p. 283.
52. Sean O’Casey, Three Plays (St Martin’s Press: New York 1957), p. 90.
53. Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama (CUP: Cambridge 1999), p. 122.
54. Grene, Politics of Irish Drama, p. 113.
55. O’Casey, Three Plays, p. 61.
56. ‘Two Actors Relive the Great Days’, op. cit.
57. Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 294.
58. Fallon, Sean O’Casey, pp. 87–9.
59. Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 288.
60. Four streetwalkers were shooed off from the Abbey entrance by a policeman as the distinguished patrons left the first night of The Plough and the Stars; Joseph Holloway’s diary, quoted in Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 287.
61. M.J. Dolan to Lady Gregory, 1 September 1925, quoted in Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 282.
62. O’Casey to Lennox Robinson, 10 January 1926, Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, pp. 283–4.
63. By mid-1936 Fallon had become a sectarian nationalist, follower of Daniel Corkery, and president of the Catholic theatre guild. See, for instance, ‘Sitting at the play: those dramatists of Inish’, Irish Monthly, 64 (August 1936), 614.
64. O’Casey, Three Plays, p. 215.
65. Ibid. p. 179.
66. W.B. Yeats to Lady Gregory, 15 January 1926, Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 286.
67. George O’Brien to Lennox Robinson and W.B. Yeats, 13 September 1925, Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, pp. 283–4.
68. W.B. Yeats to George O’Brien, 10 September 1925, Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 283.
69. From the Irish Times review of The Plough and the Stars, reprinted in Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 289.
70. O’Casey, Three Plays, p. 162.
71. Ibid. p. 195.
72. F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (Fontana Collins: London 1973), p. 366.
73. Fallon, Sean O’Casey, p. 86.
74. Ibid. p. 90.
75. Irish Independent (13 February 1926), Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 306.
76. Fallon, Sean O’Casey, p. 91; Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, pp. 295–302.
77. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 63.
78. As quoted from The Manchester Guardian in R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, II. The Arch-Poet (OUP: Oxford 2003), pp. 305–6.
79. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 67.
80. ‘Two Actors Relive the Great Days’, op. cit.
81. Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 64; Fallon, Sean O’Casey, p. 94.
82. Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 309.
83. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, pp. 178, 179.
84. Ibid. pp. 177–80.
85. Review of New York performance, 29 October 1932, Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
86. Pittsburgh Press (15 December 1932), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
87. O’Casey, Three Plays, p. 31.
88. Lennox Robinson and Arthur Duff, 27 August 1935, Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 46.
89. Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 188.
90. Chicago Herald-Examiner (8 March 1933), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
91. Recollection of Shelah Delaney, Hogan and Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, p. 293.
92. Ford finished the script with Dudley Nichols in January 1935. The Informer was released 1 May 1935; McBride, Searching for John Ford, pp. 220, 221, 224.
93. Ibid. p. 200.
94. Ford, Pappy, p. 72.
95. Barry Fitzgerald to Sean O’Casey, 11 September 1932, Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, p. 447.
96. RKO papers, Arts Library Special Collections, UCLA.
97. Abbey board meeting of 28 February 1936; Abbey Theatre Minute Books, Acc 3961, vol. 4.
98. Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 60. On 16 March 1936 Fitzgerald played his last role at the Abbey, a small part in Teresa Deevy’s Katie Roche.
99. Barry Fitzgerald to Sean O’Casey, 8 October 1931, Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, pp. 436–7.
100. Barry Fitzgerald to Sean O’Casey, nd, Sean O’Casey, Rose and Crown (Macmillan: London, 1952), p. 151.
101. Barry Fitzgerald to Sean O’Casey, 11 September 1932, Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, p. 447.
102. O’Casey did not improve matters by lambasting sanctimonious Roman Catholics in one-and-a-half closely printed columns of The Irish Press. Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 1, pp. 578–9.
103. Gabriel Fallon, ‘Sitting at the play: yellow moons and purple cathedrals’, Irish Monthly (11 May 1936), 453–7. For Lady Gregory’s opinion that Fitzgerald was ‘wasted’ in a serious role, see Murphy, Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 2, p. 571.
104. Gabriel Fallon, ‘The genius of Barry Fitzgerald’, The Leader, 74, 2 (February 1937), 40–1.
105. F.J. McCormick, quoted in Gabriel Fallon, ‘Sitting at the play: darkness before dawn’, Irish Monthly, 64 (September 1936), 673.
106. Conversation with Eileen Crowe, 6 September 1936, in Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 60.
107. Robert Frost, ‘Provide, Provide’, The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (Henry Holt and Company: New York 1979), p. 307.
108. Conversation with Eileen Crowe, 6 September 1936, in Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 2, p. 63.
109. ‘New films in London’, The Times (8 February 1937), 10.
110. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 243.
111. RKO papers, Arts Library Special Collections, UCLA.
112. O’Casey, Three Plays, p. 178.
113. Preview reports from RKO employees, RKO papers, Arts Library Special Collections, UCLA.
114. Ford to O’Casey, 9 March 1936, Lilly Library.
115. Wade, Letters of W.B. Yeats, p. 741.
116. Abbey Theatre Minute Books, 2 October 1936, 6 October 1936, NLI Acc 3961.
117. Hedda Hopper typescript of interview with Barry Fitzgerald, 22 January 1945, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
118. The contract for Ebb Tide is archived at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.
119. For an account of the making of Bringing up Baby, see Richard B. Jewell, ‘How Howard Hawks Brought Baby Up: An Apologia for the Studio System’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (OUP: Oxford 2004), pp. 581ff.
120. ‘Cliché Expert’, New York Times (4 March 1938). Howard Hawks himself concluded that the problem with Bringing up Baby – it lost more than $350,000 – was that ‘There were no normal people in it. Everyone you met was a screwball.’ See Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (Grove Press: New York 1997), p. 256.
121. McCarthy, Howard Hawks, p. 252.
122. ‘Juno at Ambassador’, Daily News (6 December 1937), previously quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
1. L.B. Shields, ‘Saturday’s Child Has Far to Go …’, book proposal by Shields’s third wife, Shields Archive, NUI Galway. This is the source of much of the information here about Shields’s early life. The romanticism of the Irish nationalists of the period is beautifully expressed by Joseph Campbell in his prison diary: ‘I praised the quiet, deep, simple Russian-like Western lads … Even though they have no education, they seem to be so right – to have faith – to believe implicitly in the idea of Cathleen ni Houlihan. They have such a sure contact with the realities – earth, sky, tradition.’ See Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin (ed.), ‘As I was Among the Captives’: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary, 1922–1923 (Cork UP: Cork 2001), p. 59.
2. Frank Fay had been brought back to the Abbey in order to give voice lessons, but he was still angry with the company for the way he and his brother had been forced out by Annie Horniman. Shields was something of a pet in the school, and Fay tried to persuade him to leave it and join Fay in a travelling company: ‘The O’Brien and Ireland Company’; when Shields refused, the two fell out. ‘Frank was a great speaker of verse; unfortunately, he was a very tiny little man, with a big nose, and it sometimes seemed ridiculous, very ridiculous.’ From an early 1960s’ interview with Herbert J. Gans, Shields family papers.
3. Arthur Shields played Mr Butterfield in The Lord Mayor by Edward McNulty on 13 March 1914; see Lennox Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre (Kennikat Press: Port Washington, New York 1951, 1968), p. 110.
4. From an early 1960s’ interview with Herbert J. Gans, Shields family papers.
5. It was the misfortune of the author of this play, T.H. Nally, that his opening night was the beginning of the Easter Rebellion. It was the end of his career as a playwright.
6. Statement by Lt. Col. Charles Saurin, Collins Barracks, 27 February 1926, Shields family papers. Unless otherwise noted, this statement is the source for the details of Shields’s involvement in the Easter Rising.
7. Donal Nevin, James Connolly: A Full Life (Gill and Macmillan: Dublin 2005), p. 643.
8. Ibid. p. 644.
9. Ibid. p. 652.
10. Saurin, Statement.
11. Desmond FitzGerald, The Memoirs of Desmond FitzGerald (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London 1968), p. 142.
12. Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising (Sutton: Phoenix Mill, 1999, 2004), 225.
13. Max Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion (Gill and Macmillan: Dublin, 1963, 1995), 259.
14. Saurin, Statement.
15. Seán O’Mahony, Frongoch: University of Revolution (FDR Teoranta: Dublin 1987), p. 44.
16. Arthur Shields to family, 30 [May 1916]; Charlie Saurin to Dear William, 5 June 1916; Arthur Shields to family, 12 [July 1916]. For the ‘pray in Gaelic’ remark, see Homer D. Swander’s article: ‘Sometime after [Shields] resigned [from the Abbey], he remarked that he “couldn’t have done otherwise very well. If you could say your prayers in Gaelic, you could have got on awfully well at the Abbey. I don’t have many prayers, and I don’t have any Gaelic.”’ Homer D. Swander, ‘Shields at the Abbey’, unpublished article, Shields family papers, T13/A/399.
17. St John Ervine [signed], Abbey Theatre Regulations, Shields family papers.
18. Shaw to W.B. Yeats, quoted in Cronin, Selected Plays of St John Ervine, p. 8.
19. Shields, ‘Saturday’s Child’.
20. A.J. Leventhal, MS of article published in Envoy: A Review of Literature and Art (July 1950), Shields family papers.
21. Swander, ‘Shields at the Abbey’.
22. For the 11 March 1919 production of Brinsley MacNamara’s The Rebellion in Ballycullen, Yeats asked Arthur Shields to take over as stage manager (or ‘director’), and to play the lead. This was the first time Shields was charged with supervising a production, a job he often took later. He directed many of the productions of George Yeats’s Dublin Drama League, the Yiddish Theatre, and the Abbey itself. Not until 1927, however, was he formally made assistant producer. For some reason, Lady Gregory did not like him. Shields understood that to be the case, and did not know why it was so, but said in an early 1960s interview that it did not matter; she was a great woman. Her own plays, her courage in defending the Abbey’s independence, her admiration for his brother Barry Fitzgerald, and her advice and support for Sean O’Casey, all won his respect and affection. Interview with Herbert J. Gans, Shields family papers.
23. Daniel J. Murphy (ed.), Lady Gregory’s Journals, vol. 1, books 1–29, 10 October 1916–24 February 1925 (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1978), p. 57.
24. See James Pethica, ‘“Our Kathleen”: Yeats’s collaboration with Lady Gregory in the writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan’, Yeats Annual, 6, ed. Warwick Gould (London: Macmillan,1988), 3–31.
25. Herbert J. Gans interview, Shields family papers.
26. She was one of the women in Old Mag, a one-act Christmas play by Kenneth Sarr; Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, p. 137.
27. Harry Clarke’s father, Joshua, was a Protestant Englishman from Leeds. However, after he settled in Dublin as a stained-glass maker, and married Brigid McGonigal, he became Catholic. Harry Clarke maintained good relations with clients in both Churches. See Nicola Gordon Bowe, Harry Clarke: Exhibition Catalogue (Douglas Hyde Gallery: Trinity College Dublin, 12 November to 8 December 1979), pp. 1–11.
28. Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life (The Lilliput Press: Dublin 2002); Denis Johnston journal, 2 February 1926, TCD MSS 10066/165.
29. Merrion Square is a square in Dublin, with the National Gallery and National Museum on one side, terraces of handsome four-storey Georgian houses around the other three sides, and a landscaped garden behind a railing in the centre. On 19 November 1928 Arthur Shields took out a lease on a flat in No. 72 Merrion Square. At this time Yeats lived at No. 82; Æ (George Russell) at No. 89.
30. Denis Johnston journal, 13 October 1926, TCD MSS 10066/165.
31. Ibid. 5 August 1926.
32. Ibid. 10 November 1926.
33. Adrian Frazier, ‘McGuinness and the boys’, Dublin Review (Summer 2002), 72–86.
34. The play is reproduced in Curtis Canfield, Plays of a Changing Ireland (Macmillan: New York 1936).
35. Christopher Fitz-Simon, The Boys: A Biography of Micheal Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards (Nick Hern Books: London 1994), p. 78.
36. Denis Johnston journal, 5 August 1926, TCD MSS 10066/165.
37. Lennox Robinson, Tom Robinson and Nora Dorman, Three Homes (Michael Joseph: London 1938), pp. 217–18.
38. The story had already been published in the USA in 1920; Robinson may not have reflected that in Ireland it would surely cause trouble. See Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, II, p. 268.
39. Indeed, the story appears to be a spin-off of Moore’s heretical Irish tales in A Story-Teller’s Holiday (1919).
40. ‘Unclean Literature: Conference at Ballinrobe’, The Western People (31 October 1925), 5. See also Adrian Frazier, ‘Harry Clarke and modern Ireland’, Textual Practice, 16, 2 (2002), 314–15.
41. Christopher Murray (ed.), Selected Plays of Lennox Robinson (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks.; Catholic UP: Washington DC 1982), p. 167.
42. Swander, ‘Shields at the Abbey’.
43. ‘About Town’, Kansas City newspaper [April 1935?], Abbey Theatre scrapbook, NLI.
44. Arthur Shields to Lini Saurin, 24 November [1931], Ottawa, Ontario; Arthur Shields to Lini Saurin, 27 October [1931], Altoona, Pennsylvania, Shields family papers.
45. Denis Johnston journal, 31 December 1931, TCD MSS 10066/165.
46. Will Shields to Lini Saurin, 30 December [1931], The New Pfister, Milwaukee, Shields family papers.
47. Denis Johnston journal, 31 December 1931, TCD MSS 10066/165.
48. Information in this paragraph is taken from letters of Arthur Shields to Lini Saurin, who was looking after his son Adam in Ireland (Shields family papers).
49. ‘Dubbed “Best Character Comedian”, Barry Fitzgerald Sighs for Serious Roles’, New York World Telegram ([16?] December 1934), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
50. Arthur Shields to Lini Saurin, 30 January 1932, Shields family papers.
51. Ibid. 6 March 1932, Shields family papers.
52. Ibid. 26 March 1932, Shields family papers.
53. Harry C. Rudden, ‘The Abbey Players’, nd, Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
54. Profile of Arthur Shields in Philadelphia Public Ledger ([20?] November 1932), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
55. Edward L. Shaughnessy, Eugene O’Neill in Ireland: The Critical Heritage (Greenwood Press: New York, London 1988), pp. 64–5.
56. Clipping [December 1936?], scrapbook, Shields family papers.
57. ‘Youth for the Abbey Theatre’, clipping, 14 September 1933, Shields family papers.
58. Murray, Selected Plays of Lennox Robinson, p. 215.
59. Wade, Letters of W.B. Yeats, pp. 740–2.
60. Evening Mail, 13 August 1935.
61. Christopher Murray, Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work (Gill and Macmillan: Dublin 2004), p. 242.
62. Fallon, ‘Those dramatists of Inish’, Irish Monthly op. cit. 614–22.
63. ‘Shadow and Substance’, Irish Independent (26 January 1937).
64. Paul Vincent Carroll, Shadow and Substance (Macmillan: London 1938), p. 34.
65. The point at which the affair became public in Dublin is marked by a letter of W.B. Yeats to his wife George Yeats, published just as Hollywood Irish was going to the printer. On 16 March 1937, Yeats wrote: ‘Here is what happened at the Abbey which reduced Miss O Connor to such tears. Boss [Arthur Shields] has an impossible wife he has started an affair with Miss O Connor. Some virtuous member of the company sent an anonimous letter to Miss O Connor’s father who turned her out; & to Boss Shield’s wife who came to the theatre & slapped Miss O Connor. I have sworn not to tell how I know’ (W.B. Yeats & George Yeats: The Letters, ed. Ann Saddlemyer [Oxford University Press, 2011], p. 459; WBY’s spellings maintained throughout).
66. Aideen O’Connor to Eileen, 28 November 1937, Hotel Edison, Shields family papers.
67. Aideen O’Connor to Eileen, 31 January 1938, Shields family papers.
68. Aideen O’Connor to Eileen, 4 March 1938, Shields family papers.
69. Aideen O’Connor to Eileen [5 April 1938], Shields family papers.
70. Phyllis Ryan, The Company I Kept (Town House: Dublin 1996), p. 74.
71. James P. McGlone, Ria Mooney: The Life and Times of the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, 1948–1963 (McFarland & Co.: Jefferson, NC, and London 2002), p. 69.
72. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 28 April 1939, Abbey Theatre stationery, Shields family papers.
73. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, Abbey Theatre stationery, Shields family papers.
74. Private communication, Christine Shields; the books are now in the Shields family papers.
75. James Matthews, Voices: A Life of Frank O’Connor (Atheneum: New York 1983), p. 144.
76. Foster, Yeats: A Life, II, p. 631.
77. Matthews, Frank O’Connor, p. 145.
78. Shields, ‘Saturday’s Child’.
79. ‘Success of British Plays, New York Stage’, The Times (31 January 1939), 10.
80. Eddie Choate to Arthur Shields, 4 March 1939, Shields family papers.
81. ‘Abbey Players the Most Rehearsed in the World’, New York Post (6 November 1937), Shields family papers.
82. Eddie Choate to Arthur Shields, 9 March 1939, Shields family papers.
83. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 12 April 1939, Shields family papers.
84. Ibid.
85. Hugh Hunt to Eddie Choate, 27 April 1939, Shields family papers.
86. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 12 May 1939, Shields family papers.
87. Ibid.
88. Faulkner’s version is written in beautiful sentences (he could not help himself), but the story is grotesque, inappropriate (adultery, torture, miscarriage) and dispiritingly ironic; see Twentieth Century Fox papers, Special Collections, Arts Library, UCLA.
89. 5 April 1939, ‘Conference with Mr. Zanuck on Temporary Script of 11 March 1939’, Special Collections, Arts Library, UCLA.
90. ‘3 May 1939, Conference with Mr Zanuck on the Final Script of April 24, 1939’, Special Collections, Arts Library, UCLA.
91. Robert Parrish, ‘Témoignage sur John Ford’, Préscence du Cinéma 21 (March 1965), 18–20; quoted in Tag Gallagher, John Ford: The Man and His Films (University of California Press 1986), p. 175.
92. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 307.
93. Gallagher, John Ford, p. 175.
94. Jeremy Butler, ‘The star system and Hollywood’ in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), Oxford Guide to Film Studies (OUP: Oxford 1998), pp. 342–53.
95. McBride, John Ford, p. 270.
96. Robin Wood, ‘Drums Along the Mohawk’ in Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye (eds), The Movie Book of the Western (Studio Vista: London 1996), p. 178.
97. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 23 August 1939, Shields family papers.
98. Eddie Choate to Richard Maney, 6 December 1939, Shields family papers.
99. Memorandum, Eddie Choate to Arthur Shields, 20 January 1940, Shields family papers.
100. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 24 April 1940, Shields family papers.
101. Redilwoth Rust, ‘The unity of O’Neill’s S.S. Glencairn’, American Literature, 37, 3 (November 1965), 284.
102. Interestingly, after the American panic about immigration in the 1920s (issuing in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 that established quotas on national origins), in the late 1930s the USA was beginning to represent ‘group-based pluralism’ as a national strength. According to a 1938 publication, The Problems of a Changing Population, ‘Americans have come to realize that while we do not have a wealth of cathedrals, fine carvings, old family customs, or a national folk music and literature, we do possess an abundance of cultural diversity.’ Desmond King, The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (OUP: Oxford 2005), p. 92.
103. Stephen A. Black, Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy (Yale UP: New Haven: 1999), p. 116.
104. Eugene O’Neill, Complete Plays 1913–1920 (Library of America: New York 1988), p. 189.
105. Dudley Nichols to John Ford [no date], John Ford papers, Lilly Library.
106. Louis Shaeffer, O’Neill: Son and Artist (Little, Brown and Co.: Boston, Toronto 1973), pp. 504–5; Ford, Pappy, p. 154.
107. Eugene O’Neill put in his work diary for 12 February 1940: ‘Ford and Nichols up from Hollywood – much talk regarding Glencairn – like them both a lot.’ O’Neill loved the film (see Meta Sterne to Eugene O’Neill [June 1940], telegram; and Carlotta O’Neill to John Ford, 29 June 1940, John Ford papers, Lilly Library).
108. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 319.
109. While it was Ford’s stated practice that ‘Everything’s all right with a movie as long as the audience isn’t conscious of the machine,’ he gave Gregg Toland a free hand to impose his artistry on every scene of The Long Voyage Home. See Robert L. Carringer, The Making of Citizen Kane (University of California Press 1985), pp. 75–86, and for the Ford quotation, Joseph Hone, ‘Autobiography’, p. 15. This was later published by The Lilliput Press in 2009 as Wicked Little Joe.
110. O’Neill, Plays, p. 511.
111. Fintan O’Toole, The Ex-Isle of Erin (New Island Books: Dublin 1997), p. 137.
1. Sara Allgood to Joseph Holloway, 27 January 1914, Holloway MSS, NLI.
2. Sara Allgood, ‘Memories’, Belfast Public Record Office, p. 96. In February 1914, Allgood was also in James Sexton’s The Riot Act, produced by Liverpool Repertory Company; see The Times (4 February 1914), 6.
3. Joseph Holloway, diary for 15 April 1939, Hogan and O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, vol. 3, 1938–1944 (Proscenium Press: Dixon, California, 1970), pp. 25–6.
4. The London production of Juno was at the Royalty Theatre; see The Times (18 November 1925), 12.
5. The three Hitchcock films in which Allgood appeared were Blackmail (1929), Juno and the Paycock (1930) and Sabotage (1936). For Douglas Byng, see Allgood, ‘Memories’, p. 98.
6. Retitled Storm over Patsy, the play opened on 8 March 1937 at the Guild Theatre and ran for forty-eight performances.
7. A capable actor, hoofer and crooner, Dowling had been given his start as a Broadway producer in 1919 with the Ziegfield Follies. In 1926 he discovered a 200-pound 19-year-old singer, Kate Smith (1907–86), whose rendition of ‘God Bless America’ became a second national anthem. Now he was breaking into the production of serious literary theatre, a move that would lead him to introduce Tennessee Williams to Broadway with The Glass Menagerie in 1945.
8. Ryan, The Company I Kept, p. 62.
9. Katie Roche by Teresa Deevy opened at the Ambassador Theatre on 2 October 1937, and was a failure both with the audience and the critics; it was taken off after five nights. However, Lennox Robinson’s The Far Off Hills, which replaced it on stage, ran for six weeks. Aideen O’Connor to Maeve O’Connor, 18 November 1937, Shields family papers, NUI Galway.
10. May Higgins, ‘Biographical notes’, F.R. and May Higgins papers, NLI.
11. F.R. Higgins to May Higgins, 24 October 1937, F.R. and May Higgins papers, NLI.
12. F.R. Higgins to Eric Gorman, 10 November 1937, Hotel Edison, New York, F.R. and May Higgins papers, NLI. Eddie Dowling’s birth name was Joseph Nelson Goucher.
13. In a communication acceding to this arrangement, the Abbey Board – Frank O’Connor, Ernest Blythe, Walter Starkie, and Richard Hayes – expressed its amazement that Higgins had not simply approved the original offer of an Abbey production of the play on Broadway. Abbey Minute Books, 17 November 1937, Acc 3961, NLI.
14. New Yorker Carl Van Vechten was many things: novelist, dance critic, impresario (‘the Harlem Renaissance’ was of his manufacture) and friend of an astonishing range of people, including Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, George Moore and Zora Neale Hurston. He was also a gifted amateur photographer.
15. Van Vechten spoke with Allgood after a 21 March 1938 performance. Carl Van Vechten to Dorothy Peterson [22 March 1938], Bruce Kellner (ed.), Letters of Carl Van Vechten, (Yale UP: New Haven 1987), p. 159.
16. J.M. Synge, Plays: Book I, ed. Ann Saddlemyer, in vol. III, J.M. Synge: The Collected Works (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross: Bucks. and Catholic University of America Press: Washington DC 1982), p. 27.
17. William Hazlitt, Essays (Blackie and Son: London, Glasgow, and Bombay: 1906), p. 41. My thanks to Mary O’Malley.
18. C.S. Andrews, Dublin Made Me: An Autobiography (Mercier Press: Dublin and Cork 1979), pp. 99, 124. See also the witness statement of Mairín Cregan to the Bureau of Military History, reported in Annie Ryan, Witnesses: Inside the Easter Rising (Liberties Press: Dublin 2005). She recalls going with her friends, future leaders of the Free State, to the Abbey Theatre every Saturday night during her university years prior to the 1916 Rising (p. 46). Many more examples could be adduced of future political leaders who had been patriotically inspired by the plays and players of the Abbey Theatre.
19. In The Old Woman Remembers, Allgood as Shan Van Vocht recited the sad proud history of Ireland, lighting one candle for every hundred years of suffering, seven candles in all (Abbey Theatre, 31 December 1924).
20. ‘Abbey Theatre Ceremony’, unidentified newspaper clipping (29 September 1932), Abbey Minute Books, NLI.
21. W.B. Yeats to Frank Fay, 13 August 1906, quoted in Saddlemyer, Theatre Business, p. 139.
22. ‘Abbey Theatre Ceremony’, unidentified newspaper clipping (29 September 1932), Abbey Minute Books, NLI.
23. W.B. Yeats, Explorations (Macmillan: New York 1962), p. 364.
24. Speaking literally, this was not the case with Riders to the Sea, since Synge drafted the play in the summer of 1902 before he became familiar with Sara Allgood.
25. Hazlitt, Essays, p. 41.
26. The story here of Allgood’s early life is taken from her unpublished ‘Memories’ (Belfast PRO, op. cit).
27. See the obituary of G.H. Mair, The Times (4 January 1926), 14. After the outbreak of war in 1914, Mair worked ‘in a confidential capacity’ for the Ministry of Information and was he was the assistant director in the League of Nations Secretariat. Mair and Allgood had a son and a daughter.
28. Sean O’Casey to Frank McCarthy, 6 December 1950: Krause, Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 2, p. 758.
29. According to other sources, Sara Allgood married Henson in Melbourne at a registry office in September 1916, and in a religious ceremony at Central Methodist Mission in Sydney in January 1917. See Elizabeth Coxhead, Daughters of Erin: Five Women of the Irish Renascence (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks. 1979), p. 202.
30. ‘Births’, The Times (14 March 1918), 1.
31. Coxhead, Daughters of Erin, p. 206.
32. Choate-Shields Productions contracts, 15 January 1940, Shields family papers, NUI Galway.
33. Eddie Choate to Robert Edmond Jones, 8 February 1940, Shields family papers, NUI Galway.
34. Charles Drazin, Korda: Britain’s Only Movie Mogul (Sidgwick and Jackson: London 2002), p. 233.
35. Philip Dunne, ‘How Green Was My Valley’: The Screenplay for the Darryl F. Zanuck Film Production, Directed by John Ford (Santa Teresa Press: Santa Barbara, California 1990), p. 20.
36. Ibid. p. 25.
37. Ibid. p. 26.
38. Chicago Herald-Examiner (8 March 1933), Abbey Theatre scrapbooks, NLI.
39. Dunne, ‘How Green Was My Valley’, p. 27.
40. On 16 May 1941, Sara Allgood wrote to Joseph Holloway to thank him for writing of her in the newspaper as being in the company of Duse and Bernhardt; Robert Hogan and Michael J. O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Abbey Theatre: A Selection from his Unpublished Journal, vol. 3 (Southern Illinois UP: Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois; Feffer and Simons: London and Amsterdam 1967), p. 60.
41. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 23 August 1941, Shields family papers, NUI Galway.
42. Dunne, ‘How Green Was My Valley’, p. 32.
43. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, p. 197.
44. Dunne, ‘How Green Was My Valley’, p. 31.
45. Ibid. p. 32.
46. ‘Fox has signed Sara Algood to a term contract’, New York Times (29 August 1941).
47. Allgood, ‘Memories’, p. 106. For details on Hollywood contracts, see Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–39 (Scribner’s Sons: New York 1993), p. 145.
48. Allgood, ‘Memories’, p. 108. It is unclear what director dismissed Allgood; perhaps Reuben Mamoulian or William Wellman. According to The New York Times of 30 October 1941, Allgood was to play opposite Henry Fonda in Rings on her Fingers (directed by Reuben Mamoulian), but does not appear in the final cast. She was also initially to be in the cast with Fonda in The Oxbow Incident (directed by William Wellman) and then replaced by Florence Bates (New York Times, 17 June 1942). My guess is that it was Mamoulian, because, under Wellman’s direction, Allgood performed adequately as the matron of a women’s prison in Roxie Hart, before filming began on The Oxbow Incident.
49. Allgood, ‘Memories’. Allgood does not identify the director or film in question.
50. Charles Affron, Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life (University of California Press 2002), p. 303.
51. Sara Allgood played Pegeen Mike only when her sister Molly was not in the cast; when she was, Sara played the Widow Quin, as in the opening production in 1907.
52. In the 1860, in a population survey of Jersey City, NJ, 76 per cent of the Irish female workforce was employed in domestic service. Generally, an Irish maid washed on Monday, swept on Tuesday, courted on Thursday, cleaned on Friday, and baked on Saturday; every day of the week, she cooked, served food, answered the door, and took messages. She never made enough money, obviously, to retire at ease. See J.P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame 1992), passim.
53. A wish reported in a letter from Gabriel Fallon to Maire [nic Shiublaigh], 20 November 1947, NLI MS 27631.
1. Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (Phoenix: London 1976, 1995), p. 672.
2. Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics of the New Deal (Temple UP: Philadelphia 2001), p. 114.
3. Matthew J. Bruccoli (ed.), The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western (Simon and Schuster: New York 1941, 1993), p. 150.
4. Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj, p. 212.
5. Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince (Ivan R. Dee: Chicago 1981), p. 326.
6. Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj, p. 142.
7. The first years of Aideen O’Connor and Arthur Shields in Hollywood were spent at 1843 North Cherokee; the North Sierra Bonita house was purchased in 1946.
8. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 1 September 1942, Shields family papers.
9. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 24 April 1940, Shields family papers; and 6 April 1940 contract for Aideen O’Connor for a play at the time entitled Thumbs produced by a man called Cooper. This may be Irving Cooper’s production of Grey Farm, a melodrama by Terence Rattigan (3 May–1 June 1940, at the Hudson Theater).
10. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 20 January 1942, Shields family papers.
11. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 25 May 1942, Shields family papers.
12. Guy Mehigan to Arthur Shields, 13 June 1945, Shields family papers.
13. Joplin Globe (8 May 1945), 12.
14. ‘Coming Your Way’, Radio Life (4 November 1945).
15. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 12 January 1943, Shields family papers.
16. US military records for World War I give 11 October 1890 (and not 1888) as Angus Taillon’s birthdate; his birthplace is recorded there as Alexandria, Ontario.
17. Reno Evening Gazette (17 November 1920); Variety (13 May 1953).
18. ‘Fitzgerald Authors Own Starring Subject’, Los Angeles Times (21 November 1950). It appears the film was never made.
19. ‘Barry Fitzgerald Finds Stand-in Dead’, Los Angeles Times (9 May 1953).
20. Edward G. Robinson, with Leonard Spiegelgass, All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography (W.H. Allen: London 1974), p. 218.
21. Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi, lines 300–5.
22. Paramount Inter Office Communication, 2 July 1943, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
23. Wes D. Gehring, Leo McCarey: From Marx to McCarthy (The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Lantham 2005), passim. See also Lawrence McCaffrey, ‘Going My Way and Irish-American Catholicism’ in Ruth Barton (ed.), Screening Irish-America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television (Irish Academic Press: Dublin 2009), pp. 186–7.
24. Gehring, Leo McCarey, p. 183.
25. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience, passim.
26. Joe Breen to Luigi Luraschi, Paramount Pictures (12 August 1943), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For a further account of censorship and Going My Way, and much more about Breen himself, see Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen & The Production Code Administration (Columbia UP: New York 2007), pp. 191–4.
27. Luigi Luraschi to Frank Butler and Leo McCarey (19 August 1943), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
28. James Agee, Agee on Film, vol. 1 (Grosset and Dunlap: New York 1969), p. 347.
29. John Ford to Bing Crosby [February 1944?], Lilly Library.
30. John Cavanaugh to Leo McCarey, 9 March 1944, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
31. Gehring, Leo McCarey, p. 175.
32. Warren G. Harris, Cary Grant, A Touch of Elegance (Doubleday: New York 1987), pp. 125–7.
33. Graham McCann, Cary Grant: A Class Apart (Columbia UP: New York 1996), p. 161.
34. Ibid.
35. George Moore, Salve (William Heinemann: London, 1912), p. 331.
36. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience, p. 143.
37. Aideen O’Connor to Eddie Choate, 23 August 1941, 1843 North Cherokee, Shields family papers.
38. Sheaffer, O’Neill, pp. 592–3.
39. Arthur Shields, quoted by Homer Swander, ‘Shields at the Abbey: A Friend of Cathleen’, article, Shields family papers.
40. Black, Eugene O’Neill, p. 492.
41. Sheaffer, O’Neill, p. 595.
42. Hone, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 14–16.
43. ‘Shirley Temple Gets Coaching’, Los Angeles Times (9 April 1949).
44. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 14 March 1949, Shields family papers.
45. Vernon Jacobson [lawyer for Arthur Shields] to Edmund Granger, Oriental International Films, 17 September 1951.
46. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 2 July 1950, Shields family papers.
1. Una [Aideen] O’Connor to My dear Daddy, 23 March 1935, Shields family papers, NUI Galway.
2. For the attendance of Heather Angel and Joan Crawford at the Abbey plays, see Joan Harvey, ‘Hollywood Beauty Gossip’, Los Angeles Times (20 March 1935); for the Abbey schedule, Los Angeles Times (1 March 1935).
3. An article in the Los Angeles Times alludes to talk of a Hollywood film starring the Abbey players, but says the idea is ‘sheer nonsense’ (16 March 1935).
4. Gerry McNee, In the Footsteps of the Quiet Man (Mainstream Publishing: Edinburgh and London 1990, 2004), p. 23.
5. Killanin, interview in McNee, In the Footsteps of the Quiet Man, p. 50.
6. Liam O’Flaherty to My dear Jack [15 March 1939], Lilly Library.
7. Maurice Walsh, The Quiet Man and other stories (Appletree Press: Belfast 2002), p. 140.
8. Ibid. p. 145.
9. Ibid. p. 149.
10. My thanks to Cormac O’Malley. See also Richard English, Ernie O’Malley: IRA Intellectual (OUP: Oxford 1998), pp. 30–7.
11. McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 337.
12. Frederick S. Foote, Lt. Comdr, USNR, medical history of John Ford, 4 June 1942, Lilly Library.
13. James S. Simmerman, Major, 13th Armed Regiment, report on service of Commander Ford, 8 July 1943, Lilly Library.
14. OSS record of recent travel, John Ford, 24 January 1944, Lilly Library.
15. OSS record of recent travel, John Ford, 1 September 1944, Lilly Library.
16. Unsigned to Col. William J. Donovan, 15 June 1942, Lilly Library.
17. Elmo Roper to Dear John, 9 July 1942, Lilly Library.
18. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, pp. 100–1.
19. As André Bazin noted, ‘The world conflict not only provided Hollywood with spectacular scenes, it also provided, and indeed, forced upon it, some subjects to reflect upon, at least for a few years.’ André Bazin, What is Cinema?, vol. 2 (University of California Press 1971), p. 151.
20. Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, John Wayne: American (The Free Press: New York 1995), p. 360.
21. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, p. 136.
22. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Atheneum: New York 1992). According to his own son, James W. Bellah, author of the story on which the film was based, was a ‘fascist, a racist, and a world-class bigot’ (Roberts and Olson, John Wayne: American, p. 324). These qualities suffice to explain the story’s righteous defence of aggression. The fact that the remark comes from Bellah Jr may suggest something about the theme of bringing a son to heel.
23. No doubt when released on 15 November 1950, just as Chinese Communist forces were overrunning divisions from the USA and South Korea, and especially after President Truman threatened on 30 November 1950 to use atomic weapons against the Chinese army, Rio Grande was seen in light of debates about the conduct of the Korean War. It could have been predicted from the movie that Ford would support General Douglas MacArthur’s aggressive strategy, and he did. See McBride, Searching for John Ford, p. 504.
24. For a wide-ranging discussion of post-war Hollywood movies in this light, see Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (Henry Holt: New York 1983), pp. 251ff.
25. After the song, Kathleen says goodnight to Kirby, and apologizes for taking his bed, and he in turn apologizes for having more forcefully dispossessed her fifteen years earlier. ‘You’ve grown more thoughtful.’ But has he? His broody sucking on a cigar is the movie’s main way of suggesting that he thinks.
26. In fact, the 1875 song was by a German-American, Thomas P. Westendorft, and makes no direct reference to Ireland.
27. The interior scene involving Mimi Doyle was filmed in the Republic studio; there is no evidence that she made the trip to Ireland.
28. Lee Lukather to Noel Huggard, Ashford Castle, 28 February 1951, Lilly Library.
29. Frank Nugent, ‘Pubs, Pictures, and “Nice Soft Days” in Eire’, New York Times (8 August 1951).
30. Arthur Shields to Christine Shields, 9 June 1951, Shields family papers.
31. In the script, it is assumed that Denis O’Dea would play Mickeleen O’Flynn, driver of the sidecar. O’Dea agreed to be in the film on 22 December 1950; by 22 May 1951, the cast had been set and O’Dea was not in it. The version must have been written in the interval, and probably closer to December than May. Frank Nugent, undated draft, ‘The Quiet Man’, Lilly Library.
32. In an influential monograph on The Quiet Man (Cork UP: Cork 2002), Luke Gibbons makes a case that the ‘quiet’ of The Quiet Man is a false quiet, just a surface; underneath it, sectarian conflict seethes, and the IRA is a constant and respected presence biding its time before it renews the Republican mission. The flashback in which Sean Thornton kills a man in the ring is said to be a ‘displacement’ of the ‘violence simmering … under the Irish landscape’ (p. 50), rather than simply a replacement of it. In all outward show, Ford removed the Troubles – present in some early drafts of the scenario – from the finished film. Gibbons also argues that Sean Thornton was a trauma victim, injured psychically not just by the accident in the boxing ring, but by American capitalism.
33. Edward A. Hagen also comments on Sean Thornton as a returning veteran in ‘From “Peace and Freedom” to “Peace and Quiet”: The Quiet Man as a Product of the 1950s’ in James Silas Rogers and Matthew J. O’Brien, After the Flood: Irish America 1945–1960 (Irish Academic Press: Dublin 2009), pp. 102–3.
34. George Moore describes the construction of the castle extension and gardens in ‘A Castle of To-Day’, Parnell and His Island (1887). The history of English gardens in Ireland is learnedly discussed in relation to The Quiet Man in Eamonn Slater, ‘The Hidden Landscape Aesthetic of The Quiet Man’, Seán Crosson and Rod Stoneman (eds), The Quiet Man … And Beyond (Liffey Press: Dublin 2009), pp. 139–58. Ford expresses his early intention to make The Quiet Man a ‘travelogue’ in a letter of 9 August 1946 to Lord Killanin (McNee, In the Footsteps, p. 32).
35. Luke Gibbons argues that the viewer is intended by Ford to detect the film’s artifice, and so Ford arranged that the joins between the assembled parts be made in a deliberately clumsy fashion (Gibbons, The Quiet Man, p. 19). What is obvious about ‘Innisfree’ is that it is jam-packed with beauty spots from far and wide on the Western seaboard (see the screenplay instructions from Ford to Nugent in Des MacHale, Picture the Quiet Man [Appletree Press: Belfast 2004], p. 134.).
36. O’Toole, The Ex-Isle of Erin, p. 21.
37. McNee, In the Footsteps, p. 132.
38. Fitzgerald himself made this point about Captain Boyle: ‘He was a Dublin original, a strutting Paycock, fond of his drink and vociferous with malapropisms.’ ‘Star System Opposed by Celebrated Irish Comedian’, Los Angeles Times (3 March 1935). Fitzgerald gets the same sort of O’Casey quality into his pronunciation of the syllables of Sean Thornton’s supposed American home city: ‘Pittsburgh, Massachusetts’ and his disgusted one-word comment on America: ‘Pro-hi-bi-tion!’
39. Synge, Playboy of the Western World, p. 67.
40. MacHale, Picture the Quiet Man, p. 131.
41. McNee, In the Footsteps, p. 133.
42. Roberts and Olson, John Wayne, p. 365.
43. At the end of The Quiet Man, Mary Kate significantly throws the stick away – the same stick that the old woman gave Sean ‘to beat the lovely lady with’, and that, after her rebuke from the parish priest, Mary Kate herself handed to Sean for that purpose.
44. For an interesting meditation on these complexities from the point of view of a contemporary Irish feminist, see Dióg O’Connell’s ‘Feminist Icon or Prisoner of Patriarchy: An Exploration of Mary Kate’s Character in The Quiet Man’, The Quiet Man … and Beyond (pp. 203–13).
45. It is tempting to suggest that this scene of the Innisfree villagers pretending to be Protestants is John Ford’s inside joke on the Abbey custom of Protestants pretending to be Catholics, with a kind of triumphalist smirk at the fact that there were scant few Protestants left in Ireland after thirty years of Catholic and Gaelic self-rule, but the tone of the scene is in fact simple and cheerful. There is, however, a Hollywood inside joke on the name of the Innisfree pub, Cohan’s. ‘We pronounce it,’ Mickeleen says, ‘Co-Hans,’ a slightly anti-Semitic, because unnecessary, correction. Would Mickeleen be likely to know much of Cohens or Cohns? Or that a prominent Hollywood producer was Harry Cohn? Shortly after completing The Quiet Man, John Wayne formed a production company with Robert Fellows, saying, ‘It had to be better than working with men like Yates and Cohn’. Ronald L. Davis, Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1998), p. 164.
46. See Kevin and Emer Rockett, Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography (Four Courts Press: Dublin 2004), p. 13.
47. ‘Former Players High Hopes for the Future’, Irish Independent (20 July 1951), 7.
1. Laurie Bailey Shields, Notes for a proposed biography, Shields family papers.
2. Arthur Shields to Eddie Choate, 27 August 1951, Shields family papers.
3. J.J. Molloy to Arthur Shields, 7 July 1959, Shields family papers.
4. Arthur Shields to Father Lynch, 24 January 1960, Shields family papers.
5. Arthur Shields to Laurie Shields, 7 November 1959, Shields family papers.
6. John Ford to Michael Killanin, 9 September 1952, Lilly Library.
7. Homer Swander, ‘Shields at the Abbey’, p. 2.