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Tag Archives: Milo O’Shea


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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 Anew McMaster, Touring Shakespearean Actor & Manager

Anew McMaster, the last of the touring actor-managers who presents William Shakespeare’s plays throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and the United States, dies in Dublin on August 24, 1962. For almost 35 years he tours as actor-manager of his own theatrical company performing the works of Shakespeare and other playwrights.

McMaster is born as Andrew McMaster on December 24, 1891, the son of Liverpool-born Andrew McMaster, a master stevedore, and Alice Maude (née Thompson). A number of sources make the erroneous claims, based on details supplied by McMaster himself, that he is born in 1893 or 1894 or even 1895 in County Monaghan in Ireland, but according to the Birth Register and the 1901 Census he is actually born in 1891 in Birkenhead, England. Like his future brother-in-law, Micheál Mac Liammóir, who is born in London as Alfred Willmore but who claims to have been born in Cork to Gaelic-speaking parents, McMaster reinvents himself as Irish and claims for himself the town of Monaghan as his birthplace, and Warrenpoint, County Down, as the scene of his earliest memories.

At the age of 19, McMaster gives up a career in banking to pursue one on the stage. He moves to Ireland and tours the country with the O’Brien-Ireland theatrical company from 1910 to 1914. Success quickly follows with his appearance as Jack O’Hara in Paddy the Next Best Thing at the Savoy Theatre in 1920. From 1921 he tours Australia in this and other plays, and in 1925 forms his own company, the McMaster Intimate Theatre Company, a “fit-up” company to tour in the works of Shakespeare, mainly in Ireland but also in Britain and Australia, touring with his theatrical company until 1959. One of the last actor-managers “of the old school – and an epitome of the type,” on occasions McMaster persuades a “big name” to act with his company as a draw for audiences, and Frank Benson (1928), Sara Allgood (1929) and Mrs. Patrick Campbell appear with him.

In 1933 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon McMaster appears as Hamlet opposite Esme Church as Gertrude, Coriolanus, Macduff in Macbeth, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. His greatest roles are as Othello and as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, to which he adds King Lear in 1952. Just before World War II he and his company appear at the Chiswick Empire in a Shakespeare season. He tours the United States as James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1956. Having “a great organ voice,” Harold Pinter, who acts in his company in Ireland from 1951 to 1953 and calls him “Perhaps the greatest actor-manager of his time,” later describes McMaster as “evasive, proud, affectionate, shrewd, merry.” In his brief biography Mac (1968), Pinter recalls, “Mac gave about a half dozen magnificent performances of Othello while I was with him… At his best he was the finest Othello I have seen. [He] stood dead in the centre of the role, and the great sweeping symphonic playing would begin, the rare tension and release within him, the arrest, the swoop, the savagery, the majesty and repose.”

McMaster’s only film role is an uncredited appearance as the Judge in Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960).

In 1924 McMaster marries the actress and designer Marjorie Willmore, the sister of Micheál Mac Liammóir. They have two children, the actors John Christopher McMaster and Mary-Rose McMaster.

McMaster dies at the age of 70 at his home in Dublin on August 24, 1962. He is buried with his wife in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in County Dublin.

McMaster trains a generation of actors who tour with his company and go on to achieve success as actors. These include Pauline Flanagan, Milo O’Shea, T. P. McKenna, Kenneth Haigh, Henry Woolf, Harold Pinter, Donal Donnelly and Patrick Magee. It is while they are touring with McMaster’s company that the actor and dramatist Micheál Mac Liammóir and the actor and producer Hilton Edwards first meet and begin their lifelong partnership.

McMaster’s biography, A Life Remembered: A Memoir of Anew McMaster, by his daughter Mary-Rose McMaster, is published in 2017. Harold Pinter also publishes a short biography, Mac, in 1968.


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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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Birth of Anew McMaster, Anglo-Irish Stage Actor

Anew McMaster, Anglo-Irish stage actor, is born in Birkenhead, England, on December 24, 1891. During his nearly 45 year acting career he tours Ireland, Britain, Australia and the United States. For almost 35 years he tours as actor-manager of his own theatrical company performing the works of Shakespeare and other playwrights.

McMaster is born as Andrew McMaster, the son of Liverpool-born Andrew McMaster (1855–1940), a master stevedore, and Alice Maude née Thompson (1865–1895). A number of sources make the erroneous claims, based on details supplied by McMaster himself, that he is born in 1893 or 1894 or even 1895 in County Monaghan in Ireland but, according to the Birth Register and the 1901 United Kingdom Census, he is actually born in 1891 in Birkenhead, England. Like his future brother-in-law Micheál Mac Liammóir, who is born in London as Alfred Willmore but claims to have been born in Cork to Gaelic-speaking parents, McMaster reinvents himself as Irish and claims for himself the town of Monaghan as his birthplace, and Warrenpoint, County Down, as the scene of his earliest memories.

At the age of nineteen McMaster gives up a career in banking to pursue one on the stage. He moves to Ireland and tours the country with the O’Brien-Ireland theatrical company from 1910 to 1914. Success quickly follows with his appearance as Jack O’Hara in Paddy the Next Best Thing at the Savoy Theatre (1920). From 1921 he tours Australia in this and other plays, and in 1925 forms his own company, the McMaster Intimate Theatre Company, a ‘fit-up‘ company to tour in the works of Shakespeare, mainly in Ireland but also in Britain and Australia, touring with his theatrical company until 1959. One of the last actor-managers “of the old school – and an epitome of the type,” on occasions he persuades a ‘big name’ to act with his company as a draw for audiences. Frank Benson (1928), Sara Allgood (1929) and Mrs. Patrick Campbell appear with him.

In 1933 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon McMaster appears as Hamlet opposite Esme Church as Gertrude, Coriolanus, Macduff in Macbeth, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. His greatest roles are as Othello and as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, to which he adds King Lear in 1952. Just before World War II he and his company appear at the Chiswick Empire in a Shakespeare season. He tours the United States as James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1956. Having ‘a great organ voice,’ Harold Pinter, who acts in his company in Ireland from 1951 to 1953 and calls him ‘perhaps the greatest actor-manager of his time,’ later describes McMaster as ‘evasive, proud, affectionate, shrewd, merry.’ In his brief biography Mac (1968), Pinter recalls, “Mac gave about a half dozen magnificent performances of Othello while I was with him… At his best he was the finest Othello I have seen. [He] stood dead in the centre of the role, and the great sweeping symphonic playing would begin, the rare tension and release within him, the arrest, the swoop, the savagery, the majesty and repose.”

McMaster’s only film role is an uncredited appearance as the Judge in Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960).

In 1924 McMaster marries the actress and designer Marjorie Willmore (1894–1970), the sister of Micheál Mac Liammóir. They have two children, the actors John Christopher McMaster (1925–1995) and Mary-Rose McMaster (1926–2018).

Anew McMaster dies at the age of 70 at his home in Dublin on August 24, 1962. He is buried with his wife in Deans Grange Cemetery in County Dublin.

McMaster trains a generation of actors who tour with his company and go on to achieve success as actors. These include Pauline Flanagan, Milo O’Shea, T. P. McKenna, Kenneth Haigh, Henry Woolf, Harold Pinter, Donal Donnelly and Patrick Magee. It is while they are touring with McMaster’s company that the actor and dramatist Micheál Mac Liammóir and the actor and producer Hilton Edwards first meet and begin their lifelong partnership.

McMaster’s biography, A Life Remembered: A Memoir of Anew McMaster by his daughter Mary-Rose McMaster, is published in 2017. Harold Pinter also publishes a short biography, Mac, in 1968.


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Birth of Maureen Toal, Stage & Television Actress

Maureen Toal, Irish stage and television actress whose professional career lasts for more than sixty years, is born on September 7, 1930 in Fairview, Dublin.

Toal begins performing at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1946, when she is just sixteen years old. She becomes a fixture at the theatre, portraying Bessie Burgess in Seán O’Casey‘s The Plough and the Stars and the Widow Quinn in John Millington Synge‘s The Playboy of the Western World. She also appears in several one woman shows, including Baglady, which is written by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness.

Another playwright, John B. Keane, writes the role of Mame Fadden in his play, The Change in Mame Fadden, specifically for Toal. Hugh Leonard also pens characters in his plays A life and Great Big Blonde with the intention of casting Toal in the parts. She is best known to Irish television audiences for her role as Teasy McDaid on RTÉ One‘s Glenroe during the 1990s.

In 1952, Toal marries fellow Irish actor Milo O’Shea. They divorce in 1974.

The University College Dublin awards Toal an honorary doctorate in literature in 2010.

Toal dies in her sleep at her home in Sandycove, Dublin, on August 24, 2012, two weeks before her 82nd birthday. She is survived by her sons, Steven and Colm O’Shea, two sisters, one brother, and three grandchildren.


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Birth of Tony Award Nominated Actor Milo O’Shea

Milo Donal O’Shea, Irish actor twice nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performances in Staircase (1968) and Mass Appeal (1982), is born in Dublin on June 2, 1926.

O’Shea is raised in Dublin and educated by the Christian Brothers at Synge Street CBS, along with his friend Donal Donnelly. His father is a singer and his mother a ballet teacher. Because he is bilingual, he performs in English-speaking theatres and in Irish in the Abbey Theatre Company. At age 12, he appears in George Bernard Shaw‘s Caesar and Cleopatra at the Gate Theatre. He later studies music and drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and is a skilled pianist.

O’Shea is discovered in the 1950s by Harry Dillon, who runs the 37 Theatre Club on the top floor of his shop, the Swiss Gem Company, 51 Lower O’Connell Street, Dublin. Early in his career he tours with the theatrical company of Anew McMaster.

O’Shea begins acting on the stage, then moves into film in the 1960s. He becomes popular in the United Kingdom, as a result of starring in the BBC sitcom Me Mammy alongside Yootha Joyce. In 1967–68 he appears in the drama Staircase, co-starring Eli Wallach and directed by Barry Morse, which stands as Broadway‘s first depiction of homosexual men in a serious light. For his role in that drama, he is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1968.

O’Shea stars as Leopold Bloom in Joseph Strick‘s 1967 film version of Ulysses. Among his other memorable film roles in the 1960s are the well-intentioned Friar Laurence in Franco Zeffirelli‘s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and the villainous Dr. Durand Durand in Roger Vadim‘s counterculture classic Barbarella (1968). In 1984, he reprises his role as Dr. Durand Durand, credited as Dr. Duran Duran, for the 1985 Duran Duran concert film Arena (An Absurd Notion), since his character inspired the band’s name. He plays Inspector Boot in the 1973 Vincent Price horror/comedy film Theatre of Blood.

O’Shea is active in American films and television, such as his memorable supporting role as the trial judge in the Sidney Lumet-directed movie The Verdict (1982) with Paul Newman, an episode of The Golden Girls in 1987, and portraying Chief Justice of the United States Roy Ashland in the television series The West Wing. In 1992, he guest stars in the season 10 finale of the sitcom Cheers, and, in 1995, in an episode of the show’s spin-off Frasier. He appears in the pilot episode of Early Edition as Sherman.

Other stage appearances include Mass Appeal (1981) in which he originates the role of Father Tim Farley, for which he is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1982, the musical Dear World in which he plays the Sewer Man opposite Angela Lansbury as Countess Aurelia, Corpse! (1986) and a 1994 Broadway revival of Philadelphia, Here I Come!.

O’Shea receives an honorary degree from Quinnipiac University in 2010.

O’Shea’s first wife is Maureen Toal, an Irish actress, with whom he has two sons, Colm and Steven. They divorce in 1974. His second wife is Irish actress Kitty Sullivan, whom he meets in Italy, where he is filming Barbarella and she is auditioning for Man of La Mancha. The couple occasionally act together, such as in a 1981 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. O’Shea and Sullivan have no children together. They both adopt United States citizenship and reside in New York City, where they both live from 1976.

O’Shea dies on April 2, 2013, in New York City following a short illness at the age of 86. He is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery.


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Birth of Irish Entertainer Adèle King

Adèle King, Irish entertainer better known as Twink, is born on April 4, 1951 in Dublin. She is the mother of singer Chloë Agnew from the group Celtic Woman.

King begins singing and acting at the age of five. She is a Gaiety Kiddie and works in pantomime with performers such as Jimmy O’Dea, Milo O’Shea and Maureen Potter. She is also a Young Dublin Singer, from which is formed the trio Maxi, Dick and Twink.

King spends more than 30 years in Dublin’s theatres, 26 years in the Gaiety Theatre, two years in the Point Theatre and five years in the Olympia Theatre. At the Olympia Theatre she co-produces and co-writes much of the shows. She has been described as Ireland’s “Panto Queen.” She has roles in a number of theatrical productions in Ireland, including Dirty Dusting at the Gaiety Theatre and Menopause: The Musical.

King appears on Irish television regularly since the late 1960s. She stars in her own series Twink on RTÉ. She spends ten years on Play the Game, and makes many appearances as a guest on a wide range of programmes, including RTÉ’s The Late Late Show, being the subject of a tribute on that show in 2005. She also is the subject of a weekend visit by the television programme Livin’ with Lucy with Lucy Kennedy.

In 1993 King is the guest act at a Christmas concert by Perry Como at Dublin’s Point Theatre, televised to a worldwide audience of 880 million. In 2003 she takes part in RTÉ’s Celebrity Farm and in 2011 she wins TV3‘s Celebrity Head Chef, receiving €10,000 for charity as a result.

King has written an agony aunt page for the Irish magazine TV Now. In 2011, she is given an agony aunt programme on TV3 called Give Adele a Bell. However, after a delay, the programme is cancelled in June 2012 without an episode being made. She wins a Jacob’s Award for her performance in her 1981 Christmas Light Entertainment Special on RTÉ2.

King establishes a performance school in the summer of 2002, the Adèle King Theatre School in Castleknock and Greenhills. Pupils of the school have appeared on television, in films, and in commercials in Ireland and abroad. The school does not re-open for the 2008 autumn term.

King marries oboist David Agnew in 1983 and has two children, Chloë in 1989, who sings with the group Celtic Woman, and Naomi in 1993. The marriage ends after 21 years, in October 2004.

King describes the Irish singer Linda Martin as a “cunt” during a tirade in May 2010. The two had been friends for 30 years but afterwards both say they have no plans to speak to each other again.

King has pet dogs, cats, birds, and a donkey. She lives with her daughters in Knocklyon, Dublin. In April 2015 it is reported that she and her ex-husband face a bid by the Bank of Scotland to repossess a house which is mortgaged in both their names. The application for possession against King had already previously been adjourned by the court.

In September 2014 it is widely reported across major Irish media outlets that King’s dog, Teddy Bear, had been kidnapped. Commenting on the events, she is quoted describing Linda Martin as being “a very powerful woman in the dog world” and that the kidnapping marked her own personal “Erin Brockovich moment.” On September 24 she is reunited with her dog after a public tip-off leads to the police arrest of a man in Dublin.

(Photo credit to Crispin Rodwell, The Sun Dublin)


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Death of Actress Maureen Toal

maureen-toal

Maureen Toal, stage and television actress whose professional career lasts for more than sixty years, dies on August 24, 2012.

Toal is born in Fairview, Dublin on September 7, 1930. She begins performing at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1946, when she is just sixteen years old. She becomes a fixture at the theater, portraying some of the strongest roles on the stage including Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars and the Widow Quinn in The Playboy of the Western World. She also appears in several one woman shows, including Baglady, which is written by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness.

In 1952, Toal marries fellow Irish actor Milo O’Shea. They divorce in 1974.

Playwright John B. Keane writes the role of Mame Fadden in his play The Change in Mame Fadden specifically for Toal. Hugh Leonard also pens characters in his plays A Life and Great Big Blonde with the intention of casting Toal in the roles. Toal is best known to Irish television audiences for her role as Teasy McDaid on RTÉ One‘s Glenroe during the 1990s.

In 2010, Toal is awarded an honorary doctorate in literature at University College Dublin for which McGuinness delivers the citation, describing her as “our greatest actress.” He also praises her performances including Maggie in Arthur Miller‘s After the Fall and particularly her lead roles in his own plays, The Factory Girls and Baglady, where, he says, she tells the toughest of stories with devastating honesty. “Hers is the look out of which were fashioned the masks of comedy and tragedy.”

Maureen Toal dies in her sleep at her home in Sandycove, Dublin, on August 24, 2012, two weeks before her 82nd birthday. She is survived by her son, Colm O’Shea, two sisters, one brother, and three grandchildren.


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Death of Actress Pauline Delaney

pauline-delaneyPauline Delaney, accomplished stage, TV and film actress who is best known for her role in Circle of Friends and Into The West, dies in London from complications caused by Parkinson’s disease on January 15, 2007.

Delany is born in Dublin on June 8, 1925. Her mother, a keen theatregoer, inspires her love of the stage, taking her on regular visits to the Abbey Theatre and the Gate Theatre. She learns her craft through evening classes at the Brendan Smith Academy in Dublin and later gives up her job as a trainee fashion buyer to tour with a production of Charlie’s Aunt, starring Leslie Phillips.

In the mid-1950s, she marries actor Norman Rodway and they become members of the Globe company, together with Anna Manahan, Maureen Toal and Milo O’Shea, presenting new plays at a small Gas Company theatre in Dún Laoghaire. When financial problems force the Globe to close, she helps form Gemini Productions and stars in its 1960s Dublin Theatre Festival success, The Poker Session, by Hugh Leonard.

When the play transfers to London, Delany moves there. Her marriage to Rodway ends and she subsequently forms a relationship with Gerry Simpson, an Irish-born playwright. She is a familiar figure on the London stage, appearing in several productions, including The Hostage at the Royal Court, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the King’s Head Theatre and Cross Purpose at Hampstead Theatre.

Delany appears in several TV plays including The Dead, Shadow of a Gunman, Stephen D and The Seagull, as well as roles in The Bill, Casualty and Rumpole of the Bailey. Among her film credits are The Quare Fellow, Brannigan, Rooney and Nothing but the Best.


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Birth of Actor David Kelly

David Kelly, Irish actor who has regular roles in several film and television works from the 1950s onwards, is born in Dublin on July 11, 1929. One of the most recognisable voices and faces of Irish stage and screen, Kelly is known to Irish audiences for his role as Rashers Tierney in Strumpet City, to British audiences for his roles as Cousin Enda in Me Mammy and as the builder Mr. O’Reilly in Fawlty Towers, and to American audiences for his role as Grandpa Joe in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Another notable role is as Michael O’Sullivan in Waking Ned.

Kelly is educated at Dublin’s Synge Street CBS Christian Brothers school. He begins acting at the age of eight at the city’s Gaiety Theatre, and trains at The Abbey School of Acting. As a backup career, he additionally trains as a draughtsman and calligrapher, and also learns watercolor 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 the 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.

He becomes a familiar face on British television beginning in the 1960s 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!, Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, and On the Buses, 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 Slingers Day from 1986 to 1987.

He gains some of his greatest recognition in 1975, playing inept builder Mr. O’Reilly on the second episode of Fawlty Towers. He 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, he 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, in which he plays Grandpa Joe and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London. He plays title character Frank Kovak in the mystery film The Kovak Box, in a rare villainous role. Stardust, released in 2007, is his final film. He also does extensive radio work, including a guest appearance on the BBC Radio 4 series Baldi.

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 Award 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.

David Kelly dies after a short illness on February 12, 2012 at age of 82. 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.