seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA


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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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Death of Micheál Mac Liammóir, Actor & Playwright

Micheál Mac Liammóir, British-born Irish actor, playwright, impresario, writer, poet and painter, dies in Dublin on March 6, 1978. He co-founds the Gate Theatre with his partner Hilton Edwards and is one of the most recognizable figures in the arts in twentieth-century Ireland.

Mac Liammóir is born Alfred Willmore on October 25, 1899. He is born to a Protestant family living in the Kensal Green district of London.

As Alfred Willmore, he is one of the leading child actors on the English stage, in the company of Noël Coward. He appears for several seasons in Peter Pan. He studies painting at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, continuing to paint throughout his lifetime. In the 1920s he travels all over Europe. He is captivated by Irish culture and learns the Irish language which he speaks and writes fluently. He changes his name to an Irish version, presenting himself in Ireland as a descendant of Irish Catholics from Cork. Later in his life, he writes three autobiographies in Irish and translates them into English.

While acting in Ireland with the touring company of his brother-in-law Anew MacMaster, Mac Liammóir meets the man who becomes his partner and lover, Hilton Edwards. Their first meeting takes place in the Athenaeum, Enniscorthy, County Wexford. Deciding to remain in Dublin, where they live at Harcourt Terrace, the pair assists with the inaugural production of Galway‘s Irish language theatre, An Taibhdhearc. The play is Mac Liammóir’s version of the mythical story Diarmuid agus Gráinne, in which Mac Liammóir plays the lead role as Diarmuid.

Mac Liammóir and Edwards then throw themselves into their own venture, co-founding the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928. The Gate becomes a showcase for modern plays and design. Mac Liammóir’s set and costume designs are key elements of the Gate’s success. His many notable acting roles include Robert Emmet/The Speaker in Denis Johnston‘s The Old Lady Says “No!” and the title role in Hamlet.

In 1948, Mac Liammóir appears in the NBC television production of Great Catherine with Gertrude Lawrence. In 1951, during a break in the making of Othello, he produces Orson Welles‘s ghost-story Return to Glennascaul which is directed by Hilton Edwards. He plays Iago in Welles’s film version of Othello (1951). The following year, he goes on to play ‘Poor Tom’ in another Welles project, the TV film of King Lear (1953) for CBS.

Mac Liammóir writes and performs a one-man show, The Importance of Being Oscar, based on the life and work of Oscar Wilde. The Telefís Éireann production wins him a Jacob’s Award in December 1964. It is later filmed by the BBC with Mac Liammóir reprising the role.

Mac Liammóir narrates the 1963 film Tom Jones and is the Irish storyteller in 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968) which stars Dudley Moore.

In 1969 Mac Liammóir has a supporting role in John Huston‘s The Kremlin Letter. In 1970 he performs the role of narrator on the cult album Peace on Earth by the Northern Irish showband, The Freshmen and in 1971 he plays an elocution teacher in Curtis Harrington‘s What’s the Matter with Helen?.

Mac Liammóir claims when talking to Irish playwright Mary Manning, to have had a homosexual relationship with General Eoin O’Duffy, former Garda Síochána Commissioner and head of the paramilitary Blueshirts in Ireland, during the 1930s. The claim is revealed publicly by RTÉ in a documentary, The Odd Couple, broadcast in 1999. However, Mac Liammóir’s claims have not been substantiated.

Mac Liammóir’s life and artistic development are the subject of a major study by Tom Madden, The Making of an Artist. Edwards and Mac Liammóir are the subject of a biography, titled The Boys by Christopher Fitz-Simon.

Micheál Mac Liammóir dies at his and Edwards’s Dublin home, 4 Harcourt Terrace, at the age of 78 on March 6, 1978. Edwards and Mac Liammóir are buried alongside each other at St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin.


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Birth of Irish Actress Sinéad Cusack

Sinéad Moira Cusack, award winning Irish actress, is born Jane Moira Cusack in Dalkey, County Dublin, on February 18, 1948.

Cusack is the daughter of actress Maureen Cusack and actor Cyril Cusack. She is the sister of actresses Sorcha Cusack, Niamh Cusack, and half-sister to Catherine Cusack. Her father is born in South Africa, to an Irish father and an English mother, and had worked with Micheál Mac Liammóir at Dublin‘s Gate Theatre.

Cusack’s first acting roles are at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1975, she moves to London and joins the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) starring in Dion Boucicault‘s London Assurance in the West End. Her work with the RSC continues with an award-winning performance as Celia in As You Like It which includes the Clarence Derwent Award and her first Laurence Olivier Award nomination. She secures a second Olivier Award nomination for her performance in The Maid’s Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in 1981, followed two years later with a third Olivier Award nomination as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.

Cusack makes her Broadway debut in 1984 performing in repertory with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Starring opposite Derek Jacobi, she plays Roxane in Anthony Burgess‘s translation of Edmond Rostand‘s Cyrano de Bergerac and Beatrice in William Shakespeare‘s Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Terry Hands. Much Ado is first produced at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1982–83, then moves to London’s Barbican Centre for the 1983–1984 season where it is joined by Cyrano, before both plays transfer to New York‘s Gershwin Theatre from October 1984 to January 1985, for which Cusack received a Tony Awards nomination for her performance as Beatrice, and costar Derek Jacobi wins the award for his Benedick. The production of Cyrano de Bergerac is later filmed in 1985.

During this period, Cusack and her husband, Jeremy Irons, appear in a Shakespeare Winter’s Eve, a major fundraiser for the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York, along with other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Following the Broadway run, the plays tour the United States, making stops in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Her connection with the Royal Shakespeare Company continues with a series of leading roles include Portia in The Merchant of Venice opposite David Suchet, Lady Macbeth opposite Jonathan Pryce in Macbeth and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford-upon-Avon and at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End.

In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joins two of her sisters, Niamh (as Irina) and Sorcha (as Olga), and her father, Cyril Cusack (as Chebutykin) for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov‘s tragicomedy Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also features Niamh’s husband, Finbar Lynch, as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production wins the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.

One of Cusack’s best known stage roles is Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry in 1998, in which she plays the principal role of Mai O’Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National Theatre. For this she wins the 1998 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress, the 1998 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress and her fourth Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2006-07 she stars with Rufus Sewell in Tom Stoppard‘s Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Royal Court Theatre in London which transfers to the West End and Broadway, winning Cusack her fifth Olivier Award nomination and her second Tony Award nomination.

In 2015, Cusack returns to Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, where she begins her theatre career. She appears in the world première of Mark O’Rowe‘s play Our Few and Evil Days, acting opposite long-time collaborator Ciarán Hinds. She wins the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Actress.

Cusack stars with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman (1970). She guest stars in an episode of The Persuaders! (1971), a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975, she makes three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character Roz.

Cusack and her husband appear together in the film Waterland (1992), in a television adaptation of Christopher Hampton‘s Tales from Hollywood (also 1992), and again in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Stealing Beauty (1996). Further film work includes Passion of Mind (2000), V for Vendetta (2005), and Eastern Promises (2007), a thriller directed by David Cronenberg. Her performance in The Tiger’s Tail (2007) wins her a first Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She wins the IFTA Award for her performance in The Sea (2013), adapted from the novel by John Banville. She is nominated once more for an IFTA Award for her performance in John Boorman‘s drama film Queen and Country (2014), which premières at the Cannes Film Festival.

Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver’s Travels (1995), Have Your Cake and Eat It (1997) for which Cusack wins the Royal Television Society‘s RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness’s The Hen House (1989) for BBC Television. She stars in the title role of George du Maurier‘s Trilby (1976), in an adaptation for the BBC’s Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also stars in the BBC mini-series North & South (2004, from the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell) as Mrs. Thornton. She stars in the BBC sitcom Home Again (2006) and appears in the TV series Camelot (2011), which runs for one season. She has featured roles in the mini-series The Deep (2014) and the series Marcella (2016), an eight-episode murder mystery.

Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributes to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today (1994). The book analyses modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.

Cusack marries British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and they have two sons, Samuel James and Maximilian Paul. Prior to marrying Irons, she gives birth to a son in 1967 and places the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, reveals that Cusack is the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett. The two have since been reunited.

Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. In 1998, she is named, along with her husband, in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the British Labour Party. In August 2010, she signs the “Irish artists’ pledge to boycott Israel” initiated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

(Pictured: Sinéad Cusack reciting poetry for the British Library in October 2021)


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Death of Donal Donnelly, Irish Theatre & Film Actor

Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, dies in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he has a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lives in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States at various times, and his travels lead him to describe himself as “an itinerant Irish actor.”

Donnelly is born to Irish parents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on July 6, 1931. His father James is a doctor from County Tyrone, and his mother Nora O’Connor is a teacher from County Kerry.

Donnelly is raised in Dublin where he attends Synge Street CBS, where he acts in school plays with Milo O’Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran, Bernard Frawley (Seattle Repertory Co.) and Jimmy Fitzsimons (brother of Maureen O’Hara), under the direction of elocution teacher, Ena Burke.

Donnelly gets his start in an amateur group calling itself the Globe Theatre Players. It is organised and run by Jim Fitzgerald and Monica Brophy. He then later tours with Anew McMaster‘s Irish repertory company before moving to England where he stars with Rita Tushingham in the film The Knack …and How to Get It.

Donnelly’s breakthrough role comes when he is cast as Gar Private in the world premiere of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! directed by Hilton Edwards for the Gate Theatre at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1964. The production subsequently transfers to Broadway where it plays for over 300 performances and establishes Donnelly and Patrick Bedford, who plays his alter-ego Gar Public, as formidable new talents to be reckoned with. They are jointly nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play in 1966.

Donnelly returns to Broadway a number of times, replacing Albert Finney in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1968, playing Milo Tindle in Anthony Shaffer‘s Sleuth and appearing as Frederick Treves opposite David Bowie as The Elephant Man. He also renews his relationship with Brian Friel, appearing in the world premieres of Volunteers at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 and Faith Healer with James Mason at the Longacre Theatre in New York City in 1979, as well as the Broadway premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa in 1991 and Translations in 1995.

For many years, Donnelly tours a one-man performance of the writings of George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Michael Voysey and entitled My Astonishing Self.

Donnelly’s film roles include Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather Part III and as Freddy Malins in John Huston‘s final work, The Dead, based on the short story by James Joyce, where he gains particular acclaim for his performance.

On television, Donnelly plays the lead role of Matthew Browne in the 1970s ITV sitcom Yes, Honestly, opposite Liza Goddard. But from the late 1950s onwards, he often appears in such British TV programs as The Avengers, Z-Cars and The Wednesday Play.

Donnelly is an acclaimed audiobook reader whose catalogue includes Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Voltaire‘s Philosophical Dictionary, and several audio versions of the works of James Joyce.

In 1968, Donnelly records an album of Irish songs, Take the Name of Donnelly, which is arranged, produced and conducted by Tony Meehan formerly of the Shadows.

Donnelly, who is a heavy smoker all his life, dies from cancer at the age of 78 in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Patricia ‘Patsy’ Porter, a former dancer he met working on Finian’s Rainbow, and two sons, Jonathan and Damian. Their only daughter, Maryanne, predeceases him after being killed in a riding accident. A brother, Michael Donnelly, is a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and Lord Mayor of Dublin (1990–91).


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Death of Theatrical Producer Hilton Edwards

Hilton Edwards, an English-born Irish actor, lighting designer, and theatrical producer, dies in a Dublin hospital on November 18, 1982, following a short illness.

Edwards is born in London on February 2, 1903. He begins his career acting with the Charles Doran Shakespeare Company in 1920 in Windsor and then joins The Old Vic in London, playing in all but two of Shakespeare‘s plays before leaving the company a few years later. Trained in music, he also sings baritone roles with the Old Vic Opera company.

After touring with various companies in Britain and South Africa, Edwards goes to Ireland in 1927 for a season with Anew McMaster‘s company and meets McMaster’s brother-in-law, Micheál Mac Liammóir. As he tells an interviewer once, both men want a theater of their own. Mac Liammóir wants it to be in Ireland and Edwards does not care. “I don’t care about nationalism, I care about the theater,” he says.

Edwards and Mac Liammóir co-found the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928. The two men’s talents are complementary. Mac Liammóir is an actor, designer, and writer. Edwards is a director, actor, producer, and lighting designer. Edwards produces and directs more than 300 plays at the Gate, ranging from the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Henrik Ibsen to the comedies of George Bernard Shaw and Richard Brinsley Sheridan and new Irish plays, by such authors as W. B. Yeats, Brian Friel, and Mac Liammóir.

In New York City in 1948 Edwards plays in and directs John Bull’s Other Island and directs The Old Lady Says No and Where Stars Walk. In 1961, Edwards takes a two-year leave from the Gate to become the first Head of Drama at Telefís Éireann. A year later, he wins a Jacob’s Award for his television series Self Portrait.

Edwards appears in 15 films, including Captain Lightfoot (1955), David and Goliath (1960), Victim (1961), and Half a Sixpence (1967). He also writes and directs Orson Welles‘s Return to Glennascaul (1951). However, he is primarily known for his theatre work. He is nominated for a Tony Award in 1966 for Best Director of a Drama for Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Hilton Edwards dies in a Dublin hospital on November 18, 1982. Edwards and Mac Liammóir are the subject of a biography, titled The Boys by Christophor Fitz-Simon.


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Death of Irish Writer Denis Johnston

Irish writer (William) Denis Johnston dies on August 8, 1984, at Ballybrack, County Dublin. He writes mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work on cosmology and philosophy. He also works as a war correspondent and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC.

Johnston is born in Dublin on June 18, 1901, the only child of William John Johnston from Magherafelt, a barrister and later an Irish Supreme Court judge, and his wife Kathleen (née King), a teacher and singer from Belfast. They are Presbyterians and liberal home rulers. He sees the family home in Dublin occupied by rebels during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Johnston is educated at St. Andrew’s College, Dublin (1908–15, 1917–19), and Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh (1915–16). In 1918, he attempts to join Sinn Féin, offering to supply the party with weapons taken from his Officers’ Training Corps. In 1922, while reading history and law at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1919–23) he tries to enlist in the civil war Free State army. He goes on to study at the Harvard Law School (1923–24) and enters King’s Inns in Dublin and the Inner Temple in London.

In London, developing his interest in the theatre, Johnston abandons plans for a legal and political career.

Johnston is a protégé of W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, and has a stormy friendship with Seán O’Casey. He is a pioneer of television and war reporting. He works as a lawyer in the 1920s and 1930s before joining the BBC as a writer and producer, first in radio and then in the fledgling television service. His broadcast dramatic work includes both original plays and adaptation of the work of many different writers.

Johnston’s first play, The Old Lady Says “No!”, helps establish the worldwide reputation of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. His second play, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn. Later plays deal with the life of Jonathan Swift, the 1916 Rebellion, the pursuit of justice, and the fear of death. He writes two opera libretti and a pageant.

“Passionate in his radical skepticism and loathing of what he saw as the pernicious influence of the Roman Catholic Church,” at the end of 1933, Johnston joins the trade unionist John Swift, the Dublin novelist Mary Manning, and fellow northerner, the libertarian socialist Jack White, in forming The Secular Society of Ireland. “Convinced that clerical domination in the community is harmful to advance,” the society seeks “to establish in this country complete freedom of thought, speech and publication, liberty for mind, in the widest toleration compatible with orderly progress and rational conduct.” Among other things it aims to terminate the clerically-dictated ban on divorce, the Censorship of Publications Act and the system of clerical management, and consequent sectarian teaching, in schools.

This is at a time of heightened clerical militancy and as soon the meeting place of the Society (from which it distributed the British journal The Freethinker) is exposed, it has to shift to private houses outside of Dublin. In 1936, Johnston and the other members disband the society and donate the proceeds to the government of the beleaguered Spanish Republic. He has become a recognised man of the left. In 1930 he joins the Irish Friends of Soviet Russia, and though never a party member, until as late as the 1950s he professes faith in a communist future.

During World War II he serves as a BBC war correspondent, reporting from El Alamein, through the Italian campaign, to Buchenwald and Adolf Hitler‘s Berghof. For this he is awarded an OBE, a mention in dispatches, and the Yugoslav Partisans Medal. He then becomes Director of Programmes for the television service.

Johnston later moves to the United States and teaches at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and other universities. He keeps extensive diaries throughout his life, now deposited in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and these together with his many articles and essays give a distinctive picture of his times and the people he knew. Another archive of his work is held at the library of Ulster University at Coleraine. He receives honorary degrees from Ulster University and Mount Holyoke College and is a member of Aosdána.

Johnston and actress Shelah Richards are the parents of Jennifer Johnston, a respected novelist and playwright, and a son, Micheal. His second wife is the actress Betty Chancellor, with whom he has two sons, Jeremy and Rory.

Johnston dies on August 8, 1984, at Ballybrack, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral close. His epitaph is a quotation from The Old Lady Says “No!” – Emmet’s lines praising Dublin “the strumpet city.”

Johnston’s war memoir, Nine Rivers from Jordan, reaches The New York Times‘ Best Seller list and is cited in the World Book Encyclopedia‘s 1950s article on World War II under “Books to Read,” along with Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, et al. Joseph Ronsley cites an unnamed former CBS Vietnam War correspondent who called the book the “Bible,” carrying it with him constantly, “reading it over and over in the field during his tour of duty.” In a profile in The New Yorker in 1938, Clifford Odets is quoted as saying that the only playwrights he admires are John Howard Lawson, Sean O’Casey, and Denis Johnston.

The Denis Johnston Playwriting Prize is awarded annually by Smith College Department of Theatre for the best play, screenplay or musical written by an undergraduate at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The prize is endowed by his former student at Smith, Carol Sobieski.


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Birth of Mary Manning, Novelist, Playwright & Film Critic

Mary Manning Howe Adams, Irish novelist, playwright and film critic, is born in Dublin on June 30, 1905.

Raised in Dublin, Manning goes to school in Morehampton House and Alexandra College, Dublin. She gets her theatre training in Sara Allgood‘s teaching class in the Abbey Theatre.

Prior to her career as a writer and filmmaker, Manning works as a film critic throughout the 1920s and 30s. She works as a film critic for The Irish Statesman for a year during that time until it goes out of business. She is known to disapprove of Hollywood‘s “unimaginable stories and its stereotypical portrayal of Ireland and the Irish.” She also works as a writer for the Gate Theatre. She adapts the short story “Guests of the Nation” for a film directed by Denis Johnston. She also helps found the Dublin Film Society in 1930 and co-founds the Gate Theatre arts magazine Motley in 1932.

From 1914 to 1926, Ireland experiences a surge of new film styles being produced, consisting of historical melodramas and romantic comedies. Following this, 1930 to 1935 births a second wave of industry produced silent films that are intended to be less cliche compared to the first wave. The films produced under the second wave are much more experimental and deal less with the commercial appeals of the first wave. There’s minimal information on how Manning specifically contributed to the second wave, however, it is stated that she plays an important role producing five out of the six films to come out of that wave.

In 1935, Manning moves to Boston where she marries Harvard Law School professor Mark De Wolfe Howe. They have three daughters, Fanny, Susan and Helen. When her husband dies, she returns to Dublin in 1967 and lives in Monkstown, County Dublin, for another ten years. During this time she writes for various publications such as The Hibernia Magazine, The Irish Times and The Atlantic. She later returns to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Manning is a founder of the Poets’ Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and works as drama director atn Radcliffe College during World War II. She marries Faneuil Adams of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1980.

Manning dies at the age of 93 on June 27, 1999, at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


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Birth of Shelah Richards, Actress, Manager, Director & Producer

Shelah Geraldine Richards, Irish actress, manager, director and producer, is born in Dublin on May 23, 1903.

Richards is born to John William Richards, a lawyer, and Adelaide Roper, suffragist who had chained herself to the railings in St. Stephen’s Green. She goes to school at Alexandra College, Dublin, and after that she attends a finishing school in Paris. Though her family is not in the arts, her godmother is Beatrice Elvery. Shes attends Elvery’s salons with her parents as a child. She meets W. B. Yeats when she is sixteen. Her niece, Geraldine Fitzgerald, daughter of her sister, Edith Catherine Richards, is also one of Ireland’s pre-eminent actresses.

Richards’s acting career starts while attending the Dublin drama league and she is asked at short notice to replace Eileen Crowe in Juno and the Paycock, playing the role of Mary Boyle in the Abbey Theatre production. Richards gets the role of Nora Clithero in the 1926 production of The Plough and the Stars, Seán O’Casey‘s next production. This role means that she ends up with police protection for the duration of the run due to the disturbances the play engenders. Another important role is to take on playing the lead in The Player Queen by Yeats. Maire O’Neill had previously made the role her own and Yeats had let no one perform the part since then so taking on such a challenge is intimidating. Richards continues to take on leading roles with the Abbey Theatre but in 1926 she also begins to direct.

On December 28, 1928, Richards marries playwright Denis Johnston in St. Anne’s Church in Dublin. She tours the United States with the Abbey players in 1932 and with the Irish Players in the mid 1930s. A role in 1938 in Molly Keane‘s Spring Meeting starring Gladys Cooper and A. E. Matthews takes her to Broadway in New York City. War in Europe breaks out while the run is still going on and Richards is advised to stay in the United States. However, by then she has two children, producer Micheal and novelist Jennifer Johnston, so she returns to Dublin. There she runs her own theater company at the Olympia Theatre with Nigel Heseltine. Her marriage to Johnston, broken in 1938, ends with divorce in February 1945.

Richards next challenge is to take over the Abbey School of Acting. During her time there one of the designers she works with is Louis le Brocquy. With Siobhán McKenna she produces The Playboy of the Western World in Edinburgh to huge success allowing her to stage it in London and Dublin and later in Toronto‘s Library Theater. She brings Marcel Marceau to Dublin for the first time. She continues to act and has some film roles.

In 1961 Ireland launches its first television service, Raidió Teilifís Éireann. Richards is one of the first producers, recommended to the station by Hilton Edwards. She is one of the few women in the new station. The first Irish play produced during the opening week is directed by her and she is nominated for a Best Actress award in another production, Inquiry at Lisieux. She works as producer on a wide number of programs for the station including documentaries, soap operas and religious programming. Both Tolka Row and The Riordans are produced by her as well as Denis Johnston’s The Moon on the Yellow River, George Bernard Shaw‘s Arms and the Man and John Millington Synge‘s Riders to the Sea.

Richards retires from her RTÉ career in the early 1970s though she continues to raise funds for the Gate Theatre through the Edwards–MacLiammóir Playhouse Society. In 1983, for her 80th birthday, the Abbey puts on a party for her which includes a special rendition of “Nora” from The Plough and the Stars. Richards is the last living member of the original 1926 cast. The song is repeated at her funeral in 1985. She died in Ballybrack, County Dublin, on January 19, 1985. Her funeral is held in St. Anne’s Church in Dublin and she is cremated in Glasnevin Cemetery.


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Birth of Conor McPherson, Playwright, Screenwriter & Director

Conor McPherson, Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film, is born in Dublin on August 6, 1971. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, he is awarded a Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa, in June 2013 by the University College Dublin (UCD).

McPherson is educated at University College Dublin and begins writing his first plays there as a member of UCD Dramsoc, the college’s dramatic society, and goes on to found Fly by Night Theatre Company which produces several of his plays. He is considered one of the best contemporary Irish playwrights. His plays attract good reviews and have been performed internationally (notably in the West End and on Broadway).

The Weir opens at the Royal Court Theatre before transferring to the West End and Broadway. It wins the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play for 1999.

McPherson’s 2001 play, Port Authority, tells of three interwoven lives. The play is first produced by the Gate Theatre of Dublin but premiers at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London in February 2001, before moving to the Gate Theatre in April of that year. The production is directed by McPherson himself. New York‘s Atlantic Theater Company stages a production of the play in the spring of 2008, starring Brian d’Arcy James, and Tony Award winners John Gallagher, Jr. and Jim Norton. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley says, “I found myself holding on to what these actors had to say as if I were a five-year-old at bedtime being introduced to The Arabian Nights.”

McPherson also directs his play, Dublin Carol, at the Atlantic Theater Company, New York, in 2003.

McPherson’s 2004 play Shining City opens at the Royal Court Theatre and prompts The Daily Telegraph to describe him as “the finest dramatist of his generation.” A meditation on regret, guilt and confusion, the play is set entirely within the Dublin offices of a psychiatrist who himself has psychological secrets. While much of the play takes the form of monologues delivered by a patient, the everyday stories and subtle poignancy and humour make it a riveting experience. It subsequently opens on Broadway in 2006 and is nominated for two Tony Awards, including Best Play.

In September 2006, to great critical acclaim, McPherson makes his Royal National Theatre debut as both author and director with The Seafarer at the Cottesloe Theatre, starring Karl Johnson and Jim Norton, with Ron Cook as their poker-playing, Mephistophelean guest. Norton wins an Olivier Award for his performance while McPherson is nominated for both the Olivier and Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Play. In October 2007 The Seafarer opens on Broadway, keeping with it most of its creative team, including McPherson as director and both Jim Norton and Conleth Hill in their respective roles, with David Morse taking over as Sharky, and Ciarán Hinds portraying Mr. Lockhart. The production on Broadway receives some positive reviews including such statements as “McPherson is quite possibly the finest playwright of his generation” from Ben Brantley at The New York Times and “Succinct, startling and eerie, and the funniest McPherson play to date” from The Observer. Norton’s performance as Richard Harkin in The Seafarer at the National Theatre wins the 2007 Best Supporting Actor Laurence Olivier Award, and he wins a Tony Award in 2008 for Best Featured Actor in a play.

McPherson writes and directs a stage adaptation of Daphne du Maurier‘s story The Birds, which opens in September 2009 at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

In 2011 the Royal National Theatre premiers his play The Veil at the Lyttleton Theatre. Described by The Times as “a cracking fireside tale of haunting and decay,” it is set in 1822 and marks McPherson’s first foray into period drama. This vein continues with a striking new translation of August Strindberg‘s The Dance of Death premiering at the Trafalgar Studios in London at the end of 2012. His version is described as “a profoundly seminal work” by The Guardian which also managed, The Times says, to be “shockingly funny.”

The Donmar Warehouse mounts a season of McPherson’s work in 2013 with a revival of The Weir and the world premiere of The Night Alive. The Weir is hailed once again as “a modern classic” by The Daily Telegraph and “a contemporary classic” by The Guardian while The Night Alive is nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play and described as “another triumph” by The Independent on Sunday and “a masterstroke” by Time Out.

The Night Alive transfers to the Atlantic Theatre New York, where it is awarded the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play 2014, and also receives Best Play nominations from the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortell Awards.

McPherson’s play Girl from the North Country, where the dramatic action is broken up by 20 songs by Bob Dylan, opens at London’s The Old Vic on July 26, 2017. The play is set in a hotel in 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota, the birthplace of Dylan. The project begins when Dylan’s office approaches McPherson and suggests creating a play using Dylan songs. The drama receives favorable reviews.

The film of his first screenplay, I Went Down, is critically acclaimed and a great commercial success. His first feature film as a director, Saltwater, wins the CICAE award for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. His second feature film is The Actors, which he wrote and directed.

He is the director and co-writer of The Eclipse, a film which has its world premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. It is picked up for distribution by Magnolia Pictures and is released in U.S. cinemas in the spring of 2010. The film subsequently wins the Melies D’Argent Award for Best European Film at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain, the world’s premier horror and fantasy genre festival. At The 2010 Irish Film and television Awards The Eclipse wins the awards for Best Film and Best Screenplay. Ciarán Hinds wins the Best Actor Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for his portrayal of Michael Farr.

In 2013, McPherson writes the last episode of Quirke. In 2020, he co-writes the feature film adaptation of the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is released digitally worldwide on Disney+ on June 12, 2020.


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Death of John Cowley, Actor & Animal Welfare Activist

John Ultan Cowley, actor and animal welfare activist, dies on February 13, 1998, in Navan, County Meath. He is best known for his role as pater familias, Tom Riordan, in the long-running RTÉ Television drama series, The Riordans.

Cowley is born September 8, 1923, in Ardbraccan, Navan, County Meath, the third child of Patrick Cowley, a small farmer, and his wife Margaret. Educated at the local national school, he leaves at the age of thirteen to work on the family farm. He also works with a horse and cart drawing stones from a local quarry. He is an enthusiastic amateur actor and learns his trade in the fit ups of the forties and fifties. Moving to England, he gets parts in television shows such as Z-Cars and No Hiding Place. During the 1950s and 60s, he is also very active in theatre, and has a long association with the Globe theatre company in Dún Laoghaire, which he joins in 1956. He also plays in the Abbey, Gate and Olympia theatres, travels Europe in 1960–61 with John Millington Synge‘s The Playboy of the Western World, and stars in the early Hugh Leonard play I Loved You Last Summer.

Cowley is best known for his portrayal of the bluff countryman Tom Riordan in RTÉ’s rural drama, The Riordans. First airing on January 4, 1965, it runs until May 28, 1979. One of RTÉ’s most successful programmes, it has a huge audience and a considerable social impact through its treatment of controversial topics such as divorce, contraception, and mixed marriages. When it ends in 1979 Cowley is bitterly disappointed and accuses RTÉ of throwing him on the scrap heap. After this he continues to work in theatre and has occasional appearances on screen, including a part in Jim Sheridan‘s The Field (1991) and the British espionage television series, The Avengers.

Cowley also writes poetry and a play, A Fool and His Money. His other hobbies include a passion for history (particularly the 1798 period), hurling, Gaelic football, boxing, and swimming. A patron and a founder member of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports in 1967, he is a leading opponent of hare coursing, popularising the cause through an appearance on The Late Late Show in 1967.

In 1953 Cowley marries Annie D’Alton, an actor who later appears with him in The Riordans, two years after the death of her first husband, the dramatist Louis D’Alton. They have one son.

Cowley dies in Navan on February 13, 1998. His wife precedes him in death in March 1983.