Limerick produces few giants in any sphere, apart from on the rugby field. But the locals of the Shannonside city have always had a way with words. From the poet of the proletariat, Mike Hogan (the nineteenth-century Bard of Thomond), to the more schooled and sophisticated Kate O’Brien, wordsmiths have always been appreciated.
Richard Harris considered himself a man of letters. He wrote poetry, told long rambling stories in drunken stupors, and involved himself heavily in the fight for a university for his town. But in local literary circles, at least, Harris is best known not for his verse, or his championing of academia, but for a feud with Limerick’s most famous man of letters. His public clash with Frank McCourt – which broke out into physical violence between the two middle-aged men – was the stuff of legend and propelled both into the headlines.
And it was all because of his intense love of his native place – and his desire to put in his place any man who dared criticise Limerick.
Frank McCourt was born less than six weeks before Richard Harris in America, but he was raised in Limerick when his family came home after failing to make their fortune. McCourt and Harris grew up side by side without ever meeting. In some ways their stories paralleled each other: both walked the same streets, snuck into the same cinemas, and studied the same curriculum for the same exams in school; both encountered the scourge of TB in their teens (Harris personally, McCourt in the person of his first love); and both left Limerick as young men to earn their fortunes.
But there was one massive difference: McCourt was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was an unemployed alcoholic, and he grew up in poverty in the lanes around Hartstonge Street, from where Harris’s great-grandfather and grandfather had founded their business empire. The lanes were infamous in Limerick. As the elegant Georgian buildings of Newtown faded into genteel poverty many were converted to tenements. Some families had to share a single room with a second or third family, and several families would frequently share a single outside toilet. Sanitation was poor, and heating was provided by the weight of bodies in a small space. Children would miss school so that they could spend the morning scrabbling on the ground near the docks, picking up lumps of coal that had fallen from the carts of the hauliers.
This was where McCourt grew up. His father drank every penny that came into the house, and his mother struggled to cope with her young children. It was miserable, but it gave McCourt the material for one of the most successful memoirs of the last century, Angela’s Ashes. The opening lines summed up the story:
When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
The book was published in 1996 and propelled McCourt from another Irish dreamer in the Big Apple to a literary giant. The book was a worldwide bestseller and launched the genre of misery memoirs, which accounted for 9 per cent of the UK book market by 2009. It sold five million copies, was adapted into a film, and made McCourt a rich man in his final years; in 1997 it won him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. It was also the most controversial book to come out of Limerick.
McCourt’s brother Malachy was a larger-than-life figure – a writer, an actor and a politician; he ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York in 2006, representing the Green Party. He had a number of roles in various US soaps, and a number of film credits. One of his most significant movie credits was The Molly Maguires, in 1970. Appearing beside him – considerably further up the billing – was, of course, Richard Harris.
During the production Harris and Malachy McCourt became firm friends. They were both raconteurs and drinkers, and shared boozy nights on set. The friendship endured after the shoot ended. Malachy owned a bar on Third Avenue in Manhattan. Called Malachy’s, it became a bit of a legend, attracting celebrities who mingled with the regular patrons in an atmosphere of unmatched conviviality. It was as close to the atmosphere of an Irish watering hole as New York could manage, and became a favourite hang-out of Harris’s whenever his work took him to America. Harris, ever up for a laugh, even stood behind the bar and pulled pints on occasion.
Through his friendship with Malachy, Harris got to know Frank, the older brother. Frank was a smaller, quieter man, though still fond of a pint and capable of raising hell when the spirit moved him. From the start there was tension between the two. Harris found McCourt to be bitter and angry. He also felt that McCourt did not like him because of his more privileged background. As he told Radio Limerick One, in a lengthy interview:
I knew Frank in his New York days and I found him to be probably the ugliest and the most bitter human being I have ever met in my entire life. Frank was full of bitterness. I don’t think I ever confronted a man that was so angry. Every fibre of his being was in rebellion against something.
I believe he hated me with a passion because according to him I came from an elitist part of Limerick, and because I became so successful. Though he would use my success to promote himself, he very much resented my success.
Their first meeting was not auspicious:
I first met Frank years ago in his brother’s pub in New York, and he was very derogative and derisive in his attitude and remarks about Limerick. I was in discussion about Limerick with Malachy when Frank raised his fist and hit me a terrible belt on the nose. Like a hare running from a hound he raced towards the exit door, and ran out of the pub. I said to Malachy: ‘I am afraid your brother is not really a Limerick man.’ When Malachy asked why not, I told him that I have never yet been confronted by a Limerick man who ran away from a fight.
We don’t do that in Limerick. We stand and fight. To run from a fight is not part of the Limerick character at all.
McCourt’s memory of the event is different. He admitted striking Harris, but said: ‘He provoked me. But we reconciled a long time ago.’ Harris and Malachy did not fall out over Frank’s performance that night, though later their friendship did deteriorate.
Frank had ambitions both as a writer and a performer, and with Malachy he put together a two-man show about his early life in Limerick. A Couple of Blackguards actually played in Limerick, to reasonable reviews. But even then there were questions about the accuracy of Frank’s memories. Their mother described the work as a ‘pack of lies’. Harris recalls:
I knew Angela McCourt quite well. I visited her regularly, and I spent a lot of time with her, and they (Frank and Malachy) treated her really badly. The way they spoke about their mother made me very angry. They had an obvious disdain for her, and I remember on one occasion in the pub where I grabbed Malachy by the neck, and shouted that she is your mother, and you cannot treat her like this.
Malachy’s only answer to me was that they were bringing her lots of beer and cigarettes in the hope that she would die, because she was costing them rent money.
After that, the relationship between the brothers and Harris began to go rapidly downhill.
When Angela died in 1981 her sons decided to cremate her and take the ashes back to her native Limerick. She had wanted to be buried in her home town, but the brothers were unwilling to pay the cost of flying the coffin home. Cremation was a compromise – a compromise that Harris felt would have repulsed their mother.
The scattering of the ashes in Limerick is described in the book – but Harris maintained that this was another example of fiction. He said that both brothers went on the piss in New York before their flight. They got on separate flights, and one plane was diverted back to New York. Between all the jigs and reels, Angela’s ashes got left behind.
‘It is a commonly held opinion among the Irish in New York that Angela’s ashes are buried away in some far distant remote lost property corner of Kennedy Airport,’ Harris claimed.
In another interview he said:
You ask McCourt what happened to his mother’s ashes. I know he fucking lost them. When his mother died he hadn’t a bob to rub together. He wanted to ship her ashes to Limerick to be scattered over the family grave. I was touring in Camelot and helped him out with cash to pay for the shipping.
This generosity would have been in keeping with Harris’s character, despite his simmering feud with the fellow Limerick man.
‘Frank went to a cheap shipper in Queens, and he lost his mother’s ashes. He fucking lost them.’
Frank McCourt strongly denied the allegation, saying: ‘That is not true. We brought the ashes and spread them in Mungret graveyard.’ Yet he did admit to journalist John McEntee some years later that there was some truth in Harris’s account: ‘Yes, we did lose our mother’s ashes. I had too much to drink in a Manhattan bar, and we left them behind. But we did eventually retrieve them.’
The tension between the men simmered beneath the surface for years. Harris was not often enough in New York, and neither man was often enough in Limerick, for the embers to fan into flame. But it exploded when McCourt’s memoirs came out.
The book was published in September 1996 and the protesters began to attack it almost immediately, seeing it as an affront on the city. Book signings were disrupted and protesters tore up copies of the book.
Richard Harris was never a man to jump on a bandwagon unless he held the whip in his hand and was driving it. He immediately wrote a letter to the Irish Times denouncing this attack on his beloved city. The simmering feud had become public, and escalated sharply when director Alan Parker announced that he was going to make a film of the book and shoot it on location in Limerick.
The resulting production will probably be best remembered as the wettest film since 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Every scene seemed to be flooded with driving rain, and the misery was painted thick. Limerick people had mixed views about the whole thing. While they welcomed the money that the filming brought to the town, no one was looking forward to the final product.
Harris agreed to appear with local shock-jock Gerry Hannon to discuss the film. Hannon had a show on pirate radio station Radio Limerick One, and no holds were barred. He was a vocal critic of McCourt. In a two-hour interview on 20 January 2000, Harris held nothing back:
If Limerick is, as he claims, a city of begrudgers, why did they give him an honorary doctorate at the University of Limerick? And why did the Mayor propose making him a Freeman of Limerick? Are these the acts of begrudgers? I was offered an honorary doctorate by UL, and though I never say never, I would have to think very seriously about it, because I don’t want to link myself to totally mediocre non-entities like McCourt.
There is a friendly tribal rivalry which exists in the rugby world in Limerick, but when an outside team comes in to play we all come together in unison to support our own. It is for that very reason that Limerick is unique. The loyalty is absolutely astonishing and, I believe, that element of Limerick totally by-passed the McCourts. They [Frank and Malachy] are devoid of any sense of loyalty, and are filled with hate for Limerick.
Limerick is a sporting city and when, as a young man, I had TB, legions of my mates from the Young Munster Rugby Club came to see me in my sick bed. These guys were from the same background as the McCourts. They came from the lanes of Limerick, and they had just as tough a time but, in spite of the poverty and hardship, they had an almost indestructible loyalty to Limerick.
You never heard from them one condemnation about Limerick. Not even one utterance of disloyalty, and this was a quality that Frank never inherited. Limerick people have a passion about each other. When I go back to Limerick they will attack me and they will make fun of me, and they will pass jokes about me. But God help if somebody from Dublin or London said anything nasty about a Limerick man. That kind of loyalty is something that McCourt just did not have.
He was equally scathing about Alan Parker, the director of the movie. ‘I have made sixty-three movies, and I know how these guys operate,’ he said. ‘Alan Parker hasn’t directed a good movie in years.’
He went on to describe the movie as boring, dull, repetitive and totally unmoving, and said it should be nominated for an Oscar for best rain effects. ‘The movie is one long perpetual moan,’ he concluded.
Harris was preaching to the converted. Though he might jinx Young Munster when he attended their games, and though he might have been born in a different social class than the common people of Limerick, he was now their champion and they loved him for it.
McCourt responded to the interview, saying that he was annoyed but also puzzled by the outburst of the actor. ‘Why is he bringing it all up now?’ he asked.
Harris never forgave either of the McCourt brothers, or Alan Parker. When he died in 2002 the dispute was still going strong, though McCourt did reveal that Harris had thought of extending the hand of friendship. In an interview in 2009, McCourt said that on his last visit to London he had stayed at the Savoy Hotel and was put in the Harris suite:
It amused me because he and I had a very turbulent relationship. He was angry with me for what I’d said about Limerick, and wrote to The Times denouncing me. But his wife told me that before he died, he said to her: ‘Maybe I should call McCourt. Maybe we should have a reconciliation.’ He never did, though. She invited me to the memorial service, but I couldn’t go.
Considering the character of the big man, and his love of his native town, this death-bed conversion may have been another fabrication on behalf of McCourt.