seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Gaiety Theatre


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Death of Actress Betty Chancellor

Betty Chancellor, Irish actress, dies in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, at the age of 74 on April 27, 1984.

Chancellor is born at 8 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin, on January 9, 1910. Her parents are John William Chancellor, a Dublin clockmaker, jeweller, and photographer, and Cicely Chancellor (née Granger). They marry in Billericay, Essex, in 1904. She has an elder sister, Joyce Fanny, who also becomes an actress. She attends Nightingale Hall and Alexandra College, going on to train as a secretary.

Chancellor’s first appearance on stage is as a fairy in a benefit performance at the Gaiety Theatre in 1914. She appears again at the Gaiety in 1922 as Gwennie in F. Anstey‘s The Man from Blankley’s, and then studies drama under Frank Fay. In the 1920s, she acts in the Dublin Drama League’s productions in the Abbey Theatre. Once she joins the Gate Theatre her career progresses, establishing her as one of the principal actresses in the Gate by the early 1930s.

Chancellor plays Naomi alongside Orson Welles in a production of Jud Süss in October 1931. Welles becomes infatuated with her and later describes her as “the sexiest thing that ever lived.” In 1931, she debuts in J. B. Fagan‘s production of The New Gossoon by George Shiels as Biddy Henley at the Apollo Theatre. Her most noted roles are as Toots in Youth’s the Season in 1932 by Mary Manning, Laura in a production of Carmilla in 1932, based on the Gothic novella by Sheridan Le Fanu, Ophelia in 1932 and Cicely in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1933. Touring with the Gate company in 1935, she plays Stella in its production of Lord Longford‘s Yahoo performed in the Westminster Theatre, London. She stars with James Mason in the Gate’s production of Pride and Prejudice in 1937. Disappointed with the parts she is getting at the Gate after that and much to the annoyance of Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards, she joins Lord Longford’s first provincial tour in 1937.

In the late 1930s, Chancellor works more often in London. Following her appearance as Baby Furze in the 1938 production of Spring Meeting by Molly Keane and John Perry, she is nominated as “Star of the Future” by the Daily Mail. She acts alongside Alec Guinness and Peggy Ashcroft in 1940 in Clemence Dane‘s Cousin Muriel at the Globe Theatre, directed by John Gielgud.

Chancellor returns to the Gaiety Theatre in 1941 to act with Hilton Edwards in a production of Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw, a production that marks the 75th anniversary of the Gaiety. The press welcomes her return to the company, but her fellow actors are disturbed by the fact she is then living with Denis Johnston, the husband of fellow actress Shelah Richards. After Johnston’s divorce, they marry in March 1945 in Dungannon, County Tyrone. She partly retires from acting to raise their sons, but also due to her increasing deafness that had begun in her teens.

In 1947, Chancellor appears in Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River at the Arts Theatre in London with Jack Hawkins. The family moves to the United States in November 1948, where she has the lead role in Shaw’s Candida at Amherst College, Massachusetts in 1950.

In 1969, Chancellor returns to Ireland with her family and settles in Dalkey, County Dublin. She dies in Dún Laoghaire on April 27, 1984, and is buried in the close of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.


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Birth of Eileen Crowe, Stage & Film Actress

Eileen Aice Izabella Crowe, Irish actress, is born at Carlingford Terrace in Drumcondra, Dublin, on March 2, 1899.

Born Alice Izabella, she is one of ten children born to grocer Moses Crowe and Therese Eglinton. From an early age, she shows an interest in the theatre, and regularly attends productions in both the Gaiety and Abbey theatres. Having completed her education, she joins a convent but soon after abandons the idea of becoming a nun. In October 1921, she enters the Abbey School of Acting. She has a career with the Abbey Theatre from 1921 to 1970.

Upon her entry to the Abbey School of Acting, Crowe makes her debut in 1921 in the play The Revolutionist, taking the lead role of Nora Mangan. She plays her last role of Miss Hatty in Grogan and the Ferret, after which she retires. During nearly five decades, she stars in many plays, some of which include The Marriage of Columbine (1921) and Juno and the Paycock (1924). Between 1931 and 1953, she appears in the Abbey Theatre productions of plays by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy including A Disciple (1931), Katie Roche (1936, 1937, 1949, 1953), Temporal Powers (1932, 1937) and The Reapers (1930).

Following her film debut in 1925 in The Land of Her Fathers, Crowe appears in many films between 1936 and 1964 including The Plough and the Stars (1937), The Quiet Man (1952), Home is the Hero (1959) and Girl with Green Eyes (1964), her last film appearance.

Also in 1964, Crowe appears in the Aldwych Theatre‘s production of Juno and the Paycock in London. She works in the Abbey for the vast majority of her career, except for when she is on a six-month tour for Peg O’ My Heart, touring Northern Ireland and England.

In 1924, when the play Grasshopper is being produced, Crowe meets her husband, Peter Judge, also known as F. J. McCormick. They are married in 1925 and the marriage produces a daughter and a son.

Crowe dies at her home in Upper Rathmines Road, Dublin, on May 8, 1978, at the age of 79. She is buried beside her husband in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Deansgrange, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.


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Birth of Pete St. John, Irish Folk Singer-Songwriter

Peter Mooney, Irish folk singer-songwriter known professionally as Pete St. John, is born in Inchicore, Dublin on January 31, 1932. He is best known for composing “The Fields of Athenry.”

St. John is the eldest of six children born to Tommy and Lottie Mooney. He is educated at Scoil Muire Gan Smál and Synge Street CBS. He emigrates to Ontario, Canada in 1958 where he takes what labouring jobs he can find. Within six months he meets a woman named Gert Gorman who has an electrical contracting company in the United States. She and her husband sponsor him to move to Washington, D.C., where he is able to work as an electrician. He marries his sweetheart, Susie Bourke, who is from a well-known Dublin theatrical family with links to both the Gaiety and the Olympia theatres. They have two sons, Kieron and Brian. He travels widely and becomes involved in the peace movement and the civil rights movement. He remains in the United States until 1970, returning to settle in Collins Avenue in north Dublin.

The Dublin city that St. John returns to is a changed place from the one he had grown up in and proves to be the spur that inspires his songwriting. He chooses “St. John” as his nom de plume, inspired by a middle name he had been given while at school when all the boys in his class were assigned saints’ names. In 1975, he is running a theatre in Petticoat Lane on Marlborough Street, and while fixing an alarm outside a window on the first floor, the ledge on which he is leaning gives way, resulting in a bad fall. He breaks his elbow and hip and spends six months in the hospital recuperating. It is during this time that he takes to songwriting in earnest.

St. John is an extrovert who loves people. He is a voracious reader with a particular interest in Irish history. His son Kieron recalls his father writing “The Rare Aul Times” during this recovery period and singing it to his family. The Dublin City Ramblers is the first band to cover the song, but it is Danny Doyle’s version that achieves a real breakthrough, spending eleven weeks in the Irish Singles Chart, reaching No. 1 in 1978.

In 1978, St. John writes “The Fields of Athenry,” a tale of a man exiled to Botany Bay for stealing food to feed his family during the Famine. It has been recorded by several artists, charting in the Irish Singles Chart on a number of occasions. A recording by Paddy Reilly, which is released in 1982, remains in the Irish charts for 72 weeks.

St. John pays close attention to the melding of lyric and melody and has particular form in writing memorable melodies that sound timeless, resonating deeply with listeners across all walks of life. His songs sometime express regret for the loss of old certainties, for example, the loss of Nelson’s Pillar and the Metropole Ballroom, two symbols of old Dublin, as progress makes a “city of my town.”

St. John describes his chosen craft with affection. “Songs are magic carpets. They can tell a story over and over again without boring the pants off the listener and maybe take us out of ourselves for a few moments of peaceful escapism. With easy to remember melody lines, the words can tell of times and events in our daily lives that are worth noting or remembering.”

St. John’s songbook consists of hundreds of compositions, including “The Ferryman,” “Waltzing on Borrowed Time” and “The Furey Man” and are recorded by over 2,500 artists. He is a founding member of the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and is always generous and supportive of younger writers, some of whom he continues to mentor well into his 80s.

St. John is surprised and delighted at the affiliation that emerges between “The Fields of Athenry” and rugby and football sporting events. He is present in Croke Park in 2007 when Ireland beats England in the Six Nations, and where the song is sung three times over. It is a song often heard in Anfield in Liverpool, and at Glasgow Celtic games, and reverberates around the stadium at Chicago’s Soldier Field when Ireland beats the All Blacks on November 5, 2016.

St. John wins several awards, including the Irish Music Rights Organisation “Irish Songwriter of the Year.”

St. John lives life to the fullest, and while he suffers ill health in his later years with both diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, he never loses his zest for life. His son Kieron describes his father with affection as a man who had nine lives and lived them all to the fullest. He lives independently at home until his admission to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. He dies peacefully there at the age of 90 on March 12, 2022. After his funeral, Paddy Reilly and Glen Hansard perform “The Fields of Athenry” at Beaumont House in Dublin as a tribute.


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Death of Frank Hall, Broadcaster, Journalist, Satirist & Film Censor

Frank Hall, Irish broadcaster, journalist, satirist and film censor, dies in Dublin on September 21, 1995. He is best remembered for his satirical revue programme Hall’s Pictorial Weekly.

Born in Newry, County Down, on February 24, 1921, Hall receives little more than a primary education as he leaves school at the age of twelve to work in a local shop. He later works as a waiter in London before moving to Dublin. On his return he joins the art department of the Irish Independent. He subsequently works with the Evening Herald where he writes a column on dance bands.

After that, Hall moves to RTÉ where he works in the newsroom. From 1964 to 1971 he presents Newsbeat, a regional news programme. He also presents The Late Late Show for the opening of the 1964 season, but his lack of success in that seat leads to the return of the previous presenter, Gay Byrne. When Newsbeat ends, he starts writing and presenting Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, a political satire show that runs for over 250 episodes until 1980. A successor show, Hall and Company, runs from 1980 until his retirement from television in 1986. He serves as spokesperson for the Irish jury in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965 and 1966.

Hall wins two Jacob’s Awards, in 1966 and 1975, for his work on Newsbeat and Hall’s Pictorial Weekly respectively.

In 1978, Hall is appointed Ireland’s national film censor. During his period as censor, he is known for his strict application of Irish censorship and his defence of family values. Among the films banned by him is Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which he describes as “offensive to Christians and to Jews as well, because it made them appear a terrible load of gobshites.”

Hall has a long running affair with a young colleague from RTÉ, though married to Aideen Kearney at the time. It is also widely accepted that he has a daughter in 1956 with RTÉ presenter Frankie Byrne, although this is disputed at the time by his family members. His relationship with Frankie Byrne is placed in the public domain in a Mint Productions programme, Dear Frankie, screened on RTÉ in January 2006. In 2010, a play written by Niamh Gleeson, also entitled Dear Frankie, opens in the Liberty Hall theatre. Later in 2012, it opens again in the Gaiety Theatre, going on to play in theatres across the country.

Hall dies of a heart attack in Dublin on September 21, 1995. He is buried in Dardistown Cemetery in Northside, Dublin.


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Death of Annie Horniman, Theatre Patron & Manager

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH, English theatre patron and manager, dies on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey, England. She establishes the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founds the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encourages the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what become known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

Horniman is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah (née Emslie). Her father is a tea merchant and the founder of the Horniman Museum. Her grandfather is John Horniman who founds the family tea business of Horniman and Company. She and her younger brother Emslie are educated privately at their home. Her father is opposed to the theatre, which he considers sinful, but their German governess takes her and Emslie secretly to a performance of The Merchant of Venice at The Crystal Palace when she is fourteen years old.

Horniman’s father allows her to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1882. Here she discovers that her talent in art is limited but she develops other interests, particularly in the theatre and opera. She takes great pleasure in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Henrik Ibsen‘s plays. She cycles in London and twice over the Alps, smokes in public and explores alternative religions. The “lonely rich girl” has become “an independent-minded woman.” In 1890 she joins the occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where she remains a member until disagreements with its leaders lead to her resignation in 1903. During this time she meets and becomes a friend of W. B. Yeats, acting as his amanuensis for some years. Their friendship endures. Frank O’Connor recalls that on the day Yeats hears of her death, he spends the entire evening speaking of his memories of her.

Horniman’s first venture into the theatre is in 1894 and is made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supports her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Royal Avenue Theatre, London. This includes a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. In 1903 Yeats persuades her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovers her skill as a theatre administrator. She purchases a property and develops it into the Abbey Theatre, which opens in December 1904. Although she moves back to live in England, she continues to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she purchases and renovates the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and develops it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.

At the Gaiety, Horniman appoints Ben Iden Payne as the director and employs actors on 40-week contracts, alternating their work between large and small parts. The plays produced include classics such as Euripides and Shakespeare, and she introduces works by contemporary playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. She also encourages local writers who form what becomes known as the Manchester School of dramatists, the leading members of which are Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse. The Gaiety company undertakes tours of the United States and Canada in 1912 and 1913. Horniman becomes a well-known public figure in Manchester, lecturing on subjects which include women’s suffrage and her views about the theatre. In 1910 she is awarded the honorary degree of MA by the University of Manchester. During World War I the Gaiety continues to stage plays but financial difficulties lead to the disbandment of the permanent company in 1917, following which productions in the theatre are by visiting companies. In 1921 she sells the theatre to a cinema company.

As a result of her tea connection, Horniman is known as “Hornibags.” She holds court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which is considered scandalous at the time. She introduces Manchester to what is called at the time “the play of ideas.” The theatre critic James Agate notes that her high-minded theatrical ventures have “an air of gloomy strenuousness” about them.

Horniman moves to London where she keeps a flat in Portman Square. In 1933 she is made a Companion of Honour. She and Algernon Blackwood might be the only past or present members of an occult society to receive a United Kingdom honour.

Horniman dies, unmarried, on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey. Her estate amounts to a little over £50,000. The Annie Horniman Papers are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester. Her portrait, painted by John Butler Yeats in 1904, hangs in the public area of the Abbey Theatre.


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Birth of Leland Bardwell, Poet, Novelist & Playwright

Constan Olive Leland Bardwell, Irish poet, novelist, and playwright, is born Leland Hone in India on February 25, 1922. She was part of the literary scene in London and later Dublin, where she was an editor of literary magazines Hibernia and Cyphers.

Bardwell is born to Irish parents William Hone and Mary Collise and moves to Ireland at the age of two. Her father’s family are of the Anglo-Irish Hone family. She has a difficult childhood growing up in Leixlip, County Kildare. She is educated at Alexandra College and briefly studies in Switzerland. She works in a variety of jobs in Ireland and later Scotland, where, in 1948, she meets poet Michael Bardwell. The couple has two children and later separate.

Bardwell becomes a part of the literary scene of Soho in London, where she socialises with fellow writers, including Anthony Cronin, Francis Bacon, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Burgess. In the 1950s, she meets Fintan McLachlan, with whom she has three children, including the composer, John McLachlan. The family moves back to Dublin, where she works as a reviewer for Hibernia magazine and as a poetry editor.

From 1970 onward, Bardwell’s work is published regularly, starting with her first volume of poetry, The Mad Cyclist, which is later followed by her first novel, Girl on a Bicycle. She writes a number of plays and short stories, such as Outpatients, and her works are produced for RTÉ and the BBC. In 1984, she writes a musical play, No Regrets, based on the life of Édith Piaf. It opens at the Gaiety Theatre starring Anne Bushnell, and later tours across Ireland.

Bardwell’s work is heavily influenced by her difficult upbringing and her experiences in London and Dublin. In her memoir, A Restless Life, she describes her life as “a crescendo of madness.” She is considered an important poet by her contemporaries, who include Patrick Kavanagh, John Jordan, Paul Durcan, Macdara Woods and Michael Hartnett. On the publication of her fourth collection of poetry, The White Beach, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain states “it is good to see her work of the decades collected – it has inspired many Irish poets, male and female, and should be much more widely known,” adding that her work is “witty, full of sharp intimate honesty, full of truth and surprises.”

In 1975, Bardwell co-founds the long running literary magazine Cyphers with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Macdara Woods, and acts as a co-editor until 2012. She is the recipient of the Marten Toonder Award in 1993, and the Dede Korkut Short Story Award from Turkish PEN in 2010.

In later life, Bardwell moves to Annamakarraig in County Monaghan and later to Cloonagh in County Sligo, where in 1993 she co-founds the Scríobh Literary Festival. She is a member of the Irish artists’ association Aosdána and acts as one of Patrick Kavanagh’s literary executors.

Bardwell dies at the age of 94 in Sligo, County Sligo, on June 28, 2016.

(Photo by Pat Boran)


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Death of David Kelly, Film & Television Actor

David Kelly, Irish actor who has regular roles in several film and television works from the 1950s onwards, dies on February 12, 2012, in Goatstown, Dublin, following a short illness. One of the most recognisable voices and faces of Irish stage and screen, he is known for his roles as Rashers Tierney in Strumpet City, Cousin Enda in Me Mammy, the builder Mr. O’Reilly in Fawlty Towers, Albert Riddle in Robin’s Nest, and Grandpa Joe in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Another notable role is as Michael O’Sullivan in Waking Ned.

Kelly is born on July 11, 1929, in Dublin, and educated at Dublin’s Synge Street CBS Christian Brothers school. He begins acting at the age of eight at the city’s Gaiety Theatre, encouraged by a teacher at school. He also performs with the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society and goes on to train at the Abbey School of Acting. As a backup career, he additionally trains as a draughtsman and calligrapher, and also learns watercolour painting. He appears onstage in the original production of Brendan Behan‘s The Quare Fellow, and gains his first major career attention in Samuel Beckett‘s Krapp’s Last Tape at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1959. By then he has made his screen debut in a small part in director John Pomeroy’s 1958 film noir Dublin Nightmare.

One of Kelly’s first television appearances is on RTÉ in O’Dea’s Your Man (1964) in which he plays the part of Ignatius opposite Jimmy O’Dea. He goes on to become a familiar face on British television with the BBC comedy Me Mammy, opposite Milo O’Shea and Anna Manahan. He goes on to often-memorable guest roles on such series as Oh, Father! and Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, and particularly during the 1970s with a long-running role as the one-armed dishwasher Albert Riddle in the Man About the House spin-off Robin’s Nest. He also has a regular long running role alongside Bruce Forsyth in both series of the comedy Slinger’s Day from 1986 to 1987, and, in 1991, he appears in the first series of the BBC sitcom 2point4 Children as the cafe-owner Paddy.

Kelly gains some of his greatest recognition in 1975, playing inept builder Mr. O’Reilly on the second episode of Fawlty Towers (“The Builders”).

Kelly is in the voice cast of The Light Princess, a partly animated, hour-long family fantasy that airs on the BBC in 1978.

In Ireland, Kelly may be most famous for his portrayal of the character “Rashers” Tierney in the 1980 RTÉ miniseries Strumpet City, which stars Peter O’Toole, Cyril Cusack and Peter Ustinov. He goes on to have starring roles in television shows such as Emmerdale Farm in the 1980s and Glenroe in the 1990s, as well as playing the grandfather in Mike Newell‘s film Into the West (1992).

Following his appearance as Michael O’Sullivan in the 1998 film Waking Ned, Kelly plays roles in such films as Tim Burton‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), in which he plays Grandpa Joe, and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004). He plays title character Frank Kovak in the mystery film The Kovak Box, in a rare villainous role. In 2007, he appears in Stardust, which features Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and which is also his final film. He also does extensive radio work, including a guest appearance on the BBC Radio 4 series Baldi.

Kelly is married to actress Laurie Morton, who survives him, along with children David and Miriam. He dies at age 82 after a short illness on February 12, 2012. The Irish Times refers to him as the “grand old man of Irish acting.” A Catholic funeral mass takes place on February 16, 2012, at the Church of the Miraculous Medal, in his hometown of Dublin. He is cremated at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium.

Kelly wins a 1991 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Performer, Non-Resident Production, for a Kennedy Center revival of The Playboy of the Western World. As well, he earns a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for the 1998 film Waking Ned. In 2005, he wins the Irish Film & Television Academy‘s Lifetime Achievement Award, in addition to earning a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


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Death of A. J. Potter, Irish Composer & Teacher

Archibald James (Archie) Potter, Irish composer and teacher who writes hundreds of works including operas, a mass, and four ballets, as well as orchestral and chamber music, dies suddenly in Greystones, County Wicklow, on July 5, 1980.

Potter is born in Belfast on September 22, 1918, to a Presbyterian family who, oddly, lives on the Falls Road, a republican (Catholic) stronghold. His father is a church organist and piano tuner who has been blind since childhood. His mother is, in Potter’s own words, “a raging alcoholic.” He escapes a rather grim childhood when he goes to live with an aunt in Kent, England.

Possessed of a good voice and natural musical ability, Potter is accepted as a treble by the world-famous choir of All Saints, Margaret Street. In 1933, after four years as a chorister, he is sent to Clifton College, Bristol. From there he goes to the Royal College of Music on a scholarship and studies composition under Vaughan Williams. While at the Royal College he wins the Cobbett prize for chamber music.

World War II interrupts Potter’s music education, and he leaves college to serve with the London Irish Rifles in Europe and the Far East. After the war he settles in Dublin, where he continues his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, gaining a Doctorate in Music in 1953.

Potter had already started composing chamber and vocal music before the war. Now, established in Dublin, he chooses the orchestra as his principal means of expression. His early pieces, such as Rhapsody under a High Sky and Overture to a Kitchen Comedy, show that he has absorbed Vaughan Williams’ pastoral style and his love of folk music. In 1952, both pieces are awarded Radio Éireann‘s “Carolan Prize” for orchestral composition by the adjudicator Arnold Bax. A year later Potter repeats this success when his Concerto da Chiesa, a concerto for piano and orchestra, also wins the Carolan Prize.

In 1955 Potter is appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he becomes an effective administrator and inspiring teacher.

In the 1960s, Potter turns to ballet, writing four orchestral scores for the Cork Ballet company. The first of these, Careless Love, becomes the composer’s own favourite of all his compositions. Several years later, following a successful battle with alcoholism, he writes what some regard as his magnum opus, Sinfonia “de Profundis” (1969). The première is given at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on March 23, 1969, in a performance by the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Albert Rosen. The Irish Times refers to the concert as a “major national event.” In December 1969, he receives a Jacob’s Award for the composition.

Potter’s last substantial work, an opera entitled The Wedding, receives its first public performance in Dublin in 1981, almost a year after his death.

Potter dies suddenly at his home in Greystones, County Wicklow on July 5, 1980, at the age of 61. He is buried in the nearby Redford cemetery.


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Birth of Anne Butler Yeats, Painter and Costume and Stage Designer

Anne Butler Yeats, Irish painter, costume and stage designer, is born in Dublin on February 26, 1919.

Yeats is the daughter of the poet William Butler Yeats and Georgie Hyde-Lees, a niece of the painter Jack B. Yeats, and of Lily Yeats and of Elizabeth Corbet Yeats. Her birth is commemorated by her father with the poem A Prayer for My Daughter. Her aunts are associated with the arts and crafts movement in Ireland and are associated with the Dun Emer Press, Cuala Press, and Dun Emer industries. Her brother Michael Yeats is a politician. She is known as “feathers” by her family.

Yeats spends her first three years between Ballylee, County Galway, and Oxford before her family moves to 82 Merrion Square, Dublin in 1922. She is very sick as a child and spends three years in two different hospitals, St. Margaret’s Hall, 50 Mespil Road, and Nightingale Hall, Morehampton Road, Dublin. She then goes to the Pension Henriette, a boarding school in Villars-sur-Bex, Switzerland from 1928–30. In 1923 her Aunt Elizabeth “Lolly” gives her brush drawing lessons which aid her in winning first prize in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) National Art competition for children under eight years old in 1925 and 1926.

Yeats trains in the Royal Hibernian Academy school from 1933 to 1936, and works as a stage designer with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1936, at the age of 16, she is hired by the Abbey Theatre as assistant to Tanya Moiseiwitsch. She studies for four months at the School of Theatrical Design in Paris with Paul Colin in 1937. At 18, she begins her costume career on sets with Ria Mooney‘s company. At the Abbey, she designs the sets and costumes for revivals of W.B. Yeats’ plays The Resurrection and On Baile’s Strand (1938).

In 1938 Yeats designs the first production of W.B. Yeats’ play Purgatory. The designs for Purgatory are her most successful achievement. Purgatory is the last play that W.B Yeats sees on stage, and when it is performed it is a full house. When working on Purgatory, Hugh Hunt wants to have a moon on the back cloth of the production but she refuses. “If she does not win, she is going to say that she doesn’t wish to have her name on the programme as a designer of the setting.” This could be the main reason why her name is not on many productions that she worked on. She also designs the first play of her uncle Jack Yeats to receive professional production, Harlequin’s Positions.

In 1939 Yeats is promoted to head of design at the Abbey until her departure in May 1941. In 1939 it is commented that her designs are “getting arty” and not in keeping with style of the Abbey. One of her last designs is her father’s last play, The Death of Cuchulain, for the Lyric Theatre on the Abbey stage in 1949. She designs and stage-manages for the Peacock Theatre, the Cork Opera House, the Olympia Theatre, the Gaiety Theatre, the Lyric Theatre, the Abbey Theatre and the Players Theatre.

Among the work Yeats is credited with in the Abbey Theatre, she also works on five productions in the Peacock Theatre with the Theatre Company: Alarm Among the Clerks (1937), The Phoenix (1937), Harlequin’s Positions (1939), The Wild Cat (1940), and Cavaliero (The Life of a Hawk) (1948).

Yeats chooses to move towards painting full-time beginning a brief study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1941. She experiments with watercolour and wax. She has a touching naive expressionist style and is interested in representing domestic humanity. She designs many of the covers for the books of Irish language publisher Sáirséal agus Dill over a twenty-year period from 1958. She does illustrations for books by Denis Devlin, Thomas Kinsella and Louis MacNeice, and works with many young designers, such as Louis le Brocquy.

Yeats participates in group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Monaco, and Scotland, along with the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and Taispeántas an Oireachtas.

Yeats dies at the age of 82 on July 4, 2001 and is buried in Shanganagh Cemetery, south Dublin.

The Royal Hibernian Academy holds a retrospective of her work in 1995, as does the National Gallery of Ireland in 2002. She donates her collection of Jack B. Yeats’ sketch books to the National Gallery of Ireland, leading to the creation of the Yeats Museum within the Gallery. Her brother, Michael, in turn, donates her sketchbooks to the Museum.

(Pictured: “Coole Park,” oil on board by Anne Butler Yeats, Duke Street Gallery, Dublin)


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Death of John Hewitt Jellett, Mathematician & Priest

John Hewitt Jellett, Irish mathematician whose career is spent at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he rises to the rank of Provost, dies in Dublin on February 19, 1888. He is also a priest in the Church of Ireland.

Jellett is born at Cashel, County Tipperary, on December 25, 1817, the son of Rev. Morgan Jellett and his wife Harriette Townsend, daughter of Hewitt Baldwin Poole of County Cork, by his wife Dorothea Morris. He is the eldest brother of Hewitt Poole Jellett, Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for County Laois, and of the Venerable Henry Jellett, Archdeacon of Cloyne. He is educated at Kilkenny College and at TCD, where he becomes a fellow in 1840.

Jellett marries his cousin on his mother’s side, Dorothea Charlotte Morris Morgan, daughter of James Morgan, on July 7, 1855. The marriage produces seven children. His son, William Morgan Jellett, is a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is the father of the celebrated artist Mainie Jellett, and of Dorothea Jellett, director of the orchestra of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Another son Henry Holmes Jellett is a civil engineer in British India. His daughter Harriette Mary Jellett is the wife of the noted Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald. Another daughter Eva Jellett is the first woman to graduate with a degree in medicine from Trinity, and goes on to practice as a doctor in India.

Jellett graduates B.A. in mathematics in 1837, M.A. 1843, B.D. 1866, and D.D. 1881. He is ordained a priest in 1846. In 1848 he is elected to the chair of natural philosophy at TCD, and in 1868 he receives the appointment of commissioner of Irish national education.

In 1851 Jellett is awarded the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy for his work on the “Calculus of Variations.” The society later elects him their president, a position he holds from 1869 to 1874.

In 1870, on the death of Dr. Thomas Luby, Jellett is co-opted a Senior Fellow, and thus a member of the Board of TCD. William Ewart Gladstone‘s government in February 1881 appoints him provost of Trinity. In the same year he is awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society.

After the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland by the Irish Church Act 1869, Jellett takes an active part in the deliberations of the general synod and in every work calculated to advance its interests. He is an able mathematician, and writes A Treatise of the Calculus of Variations (1850), and A Treatise on the Theory of Friction (1872), as well as several papers on pure and applied mathematics, articles in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He also writes some theological essays, sermons, and religious treatises, of which the principal are An Examination of some of the Moral Difficulties of the Old Testament (1867), and The Efficacy of Prayer (1878).

Jellett dies of blood poisoning at the provost’s house, TCD, on February 19, 1888, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery on February 23. The funeral procession is the largest that ever left Trinity.

(Pictured: “John Hewitt Jellett,” oil on canvas by Sarah Purser)