seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Jacob’s Awards


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Birth of Actor Ray McAnally

Ray McAnally, Irish actor and winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s, is born on March 30, 1926, in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal.

The son of a bank manager, McAnally is educated at Saint Eunan’s College in Letterkenny where he writes, produces and stages a musical called “Madame Screwball” at the age of sixteen. He enters St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth at the age of 18 but leaves after a short time having decided that the priesthood is not his vocation. He joins the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he meets and marries actress Ronnie Masterson.

The couple later forms Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. McAnally makes his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gives a well-received performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.

On television he is a familiar face, often in glossy thriller series like television series The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, and Strange Report. In 1968 he takes the title role in Spindoe, a series charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe, after a five-year prison term. This is a spin-off from another series, The Fellows (1967) in which McAnally had appeared in several episodes as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents very convincingly.

McAnally regularly acts in the Abbey Theatre and at Irish festivals, but in the last decade of life he achieves award-winning notice on TV and films. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earns him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. He earns a second BAFTA award for his role in the BBC’s A Perfect Spy (1987). In 1988 he wins the BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance in A Very British Coup, a role that also brings him a Jacob’s Award. In the last year of his life, he portrays the father of Christy Brown, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in the Academy Award-winning film, My Left Foot (1989).

McAnally dies suddenly of a heart attack on June 15, 1989, at the age of 63, at his home in County Wicklow which he shares with Irish actress Britta Smith. He remains married to actress Ronnie Masterson until his death, although they reside in different homes. He receives a posthumous BAFTA award for his last film in 1990.

At the time of his death, McAnally is due to play “Bull McCabe” in Jim Sheridan‘s film The Field. The part eventually goes to Richard Harris who receives an Academy Award nomination for his performance. McAnally had also been cast in the lead role of First and Last, a drama about a man who walked from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Filming is almost a third of the way done when he dies, but the whole play has to be re-filmed, with Joss Ackland taking the role instead.


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Birth of Theatrical Producer Hilton Edwards

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Hilton Edwards, an English-born Irish actor, lighting designer, and theatrical producer, is born in London on February 2, 1903.

Edwards 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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Birth of Broadcaster Pat Kenny

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Patrick “Pat” Kenny, veteran Irish broadcaster, is born in Dublin on January 29, 1948. Kenny currently hosts the daily radio show The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk and the current affairs show Pat Kenny Tonight on TV3.

Kenny is educated at the O’Connell School and obtains a chemical engineering degree from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1969. Subsequently, he is a postgraduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology and then a lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Dublin. He begins his broadcasting career in parallel to his academic “day-job” by working as a continuity announcer on RTÉ radio in the mid-1970s. He subsequently becomes a radio disc jockey.

Kenny has a 41-year high-profile career at RTÉ, in which he is their highest paid presenter for several years. He presents the radio show Today with Pat Kenny on RTÉ Radio 1 each weekday morning between 10:00 and midday until 2013. He hosts The Late Late Show from September 1999 until May 2009, however, returns as a stand-in host in January 2013. He presents the current affairs programme, The Frontline, each Monday night from 2009 until its cancellation in 2013.

Kenny is the co-host of Eurovision Song Contest 1988, as well as numerous other television shows, including Today Tonight, Saturday Live, and Kenny Live, and works for both RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2fm, sometimes simultaneously, in a career that has spanned five decades. He is the holder of a Jacob’s Award and is perennially cited as the highest paid employee in RTÉ’s possession. He is named 23rd most influential person of 2009 by the magazine Village.


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Birth of Radio & Television Presenter Gerard “Gerry” Ryan

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Gerard “Gerry” Ryan, Irish presenter of radio and television employed by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), is born in Clontarf, County Dublin, on June 4, 1956. He presents The Gerry Ryan Show on radio station RTÉ 2fm each weekday morning from 1988 until his sudden death.

Early in his career, Ryan is involved part-time in pirate radio, presenting a selection of programmes firstly for Alternative Radio Dublin (ARD) and then for Big D. When RTÉ Radio 2, now RTÉ 2fm, is launched in 1979, Ryan joins RTÉ as a DJ where he presents a selection of speech and music-based programmes.

In 1987, Ryan and a group of volunteers spend time in the countryside of Connemara as part of The Gay Byrne Show. Ryan claims to have killed and eaten a lamb to survive, earning him the nickname “Lambo,” though the story turns out to be a hoax.

The Gerry Ryan Show begins in March 1988 when he is offered a three-hour morning radio slot. Ryan’s style is considered by some to be that of a motor-mouth shock jock. The Gerry Ryan Show is subject to several upheld complaints to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI). The Gerry Ryan Show becomes something of a national institution as the oldest show still running on 2fm. Despite repeated reshuffles which see all other presenters shifted around, RTÉ never moves The Gerry Ryan Show from its traditional slot.

In October 1990, Ryan receives a Jacob’s Award for The Gerry Ryan Show, described at the award ceremony as “unbelievably bizarre and unprecedented – and at the same time being serious, hilarious, and unpredictable.”

Ryan hosts several series of television shows during his career including Secrets, Ryantown, Gerry Ryan Tonight, Let Me Entertain You, Gerry Ryan’s Hitlist, Ryan Confidential, and Operation Transformation.

Ryan is noted for his love of fine food and wine. He battles a weight problem for several years. Ryan concedes in his autobiography, Would the Real Gerry Ryan Please Stand Up published in 2008, that he drinks too much for his own good.

Shortly after midday on April 30, 2010, Ryan is found dead in the bedroom of his home on Leeson Street, Dublin. His funeral takes place on May 6, and is broadcast on 2fm, the home of Ryan’s radio show and a first for the predominantly youthpop-oriented station.