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Birth of Anna Manahan, Stage, Film & Television Actress

Anna Maria Manahan, Irish stage, film and television actress, is born on October 18, 1924, in County Waterford in what is at the time the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland).

Manahan receives two Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play nominations for her performances in the 1968 production of Lovers and the 1998 production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the latter for which she wins at the 52nd Tony Awards.

Manahan is also nominated for two Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award in a career that spans more than 60 years. She interprets the works of, among others, Seán O’Casey, John B. Keane, John Millington Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Martin McDonagh, Christy Brown, and Brian Friel.

Manahan’s career begins when, as a young woman, she is recruited by the legendary Irish impresarios and theatrical directors Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards. She later marries stage director Colm O’Kelly, who dies not long afterward of polio, which he contracts after swimming in the Nile during a theatre tour of Egypt. They have no children and she never remarries. She is known professionally by her maiden name. In 1946 she appears in a production by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, The Wild Goose, where she plays the part of Eileen Connolly. This is performed by Equity Productions in the Theatre Royal, Waterford.

In 1957, Manahan plays Serafina in the first Irish production of Tennessee Williams‘s The Rose Tattoo and achieves unexpected notoriety when she and several other members of the cast are arrested for the possession of a condom on stage.

Manahan plays a minor role in the Irish cult soap opera The Riordans (1960s), and as Mrs. Mary Kenefick in the TV comedy Me Mammy (1970s). She also plays the lead in the Irish comedy series, Leave It To Mrs O’Brien (1980s) and Mrs. Cadogan in The Irish R.M. (1980s). Most recently she plays Ursula in Fair City, for which her niece, Michele Manahan (daughter of Michael Manahan), is a writer.

Manahan has an extensive theatre portfolio having played at theatres throughout Ireland including the Abbey Theatre, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States and Australia. She wins the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Mag in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane on Broadway. She previously receives a Tony nomination in 1969 for Brian Friel’s Lovers.

The Irish playwright John B. Keane writes the play Big Maggie specifically for Manahan. In 2001 she stars in Keane’s The Matchmaker with veteran Irish actor Des Keogh. In 2005 she stars in Sisters, a new play by Declan Hassett that is also written for her and for which she is nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance. The production tours Ireland and is staged at the International Festival of World Theatre in Colorado and also plays at the 59E59 Theater in New York City in 2006.

Manahan appears in films starring, among others, Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth More, Christopher Walken, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney and Brenda Fricker, and with John Gielgud in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977).

Manahan receives the Gold Medal of the Éire Society of Boston in 1984 and thus joins the company of past recipients such as John F. Kennedy, and film makers John Ford and John Huston. She receives an honorary doctorate in letters from the University of Limerick in 2003. She is granted the freedom of the city of Waterford in 2002 in recognition of her life’s achievement in the arts. She thus becomes the 28th Freeman of Waterford since Isaac Butt in 1877.

In 2004 Manahan starts to play the role of Ursula in Fair City. All About Anna (2005), a documentary on her life and work is made by Charlie Mc Carthy/Icebox Films for RTÉ Television. In 2008, she becomes the first ever patron of the Active Retirement Ireland organization.

Manahan dies of multiple organ failure on March 8, 2009 in Waterford. She had suffered from a longterm illness.

Her funeral is held on March 11, officiated by her “longtime friend” the psychoanalyst, poet, and priest Bernard Kennedy. “As the final curtain falls, the lights dim, the auditorium becomes silent, we remember her” he says. Describing her as a woman of faith (who “sought to bring the word of God alive”), he says she had brought everyone together to be present at “her last great exit from this great stage of life,” saying her life’s work had drawn people from all over the world. “Anna believed in the empty tomb of the Resurrection and she believed the empty tomb could be filled by hearing the word take the place of the emptiness,” he says. “She knew the bedsits which preceded the Tony nomination.”

Manahan is buried in Ballygunner Cemetery, Knockboy, County Waterford.


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Birth of Harriet Kavanagh, Artist, Traveler & Antiquarian

Lady Harriet Kavanagh, Irish artist, traveler, and antiquarian, described as a “woman of high culture and of unusual artistic power,” is born Lady Harriet Margaret Le Poer Trench on October 13, 1799. She is believed to be the first Irish female traveler to Egypt.

Kavanagh is the second daughter of Richard Le Poer Trench and Henrietta Margaret Le Poer Trench (née Staples), with three brothers and three sisters. She marries Thomas Kavanagh of Borris House, County Carlow, on February 28, 1825, as his second wife. The couple has four children, three sons Charles, Thomas, Arthur, and one daughter, Harriet or “Hoddy.”

Kavanagh’s third son, Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh, is born without fully formed limbs. Some attribute the disability to a peasant’s curse, while others speculate it is due to Lady Kavanagh taking laudanum during her pregnancy. She refuses to treat her son differently to his siblings, and with the help of local doctor Francis Boxwell, raises him as a normal child. During his initial education, she teaches Arthur herself, teaching him to paint and then write by holding brushes and pens in his mouth. With the help of the surgeon Sir Philip Crampton, she has a mechanical wheelchair constructed for Arthur, and also encourages him to ride horses and engage in other outdoor activities. Her husband dies after twelve years of marriage, in 1837.

In 1846, Kavanagh takes her children to learn French in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, later traveling to Rome. As an antiquarian, she also wants to visit Egypt and the Holy Land, setting off on the long journey from Marseille in October 1846. Accompanying her are her daughter, Harriet, her two sons, Thomas and Arthur, their tutor, the Rev. David Wood, and a maid, Miss Hudson. In Cairo, she hires two feluccas with Arab crews, and visits archaeological sites along the Nile, such as Thebes, Karnak, and the Nubia region. From there, she visits sites of biblical interest, including Tyre, Sidon, and Roda Island. She negotiates with Bedouin chiefs in Aqaba, hiring camels and Bedouin guides to travel to Hebron. She visits harems and a slave market and records the journey’s incidents in her diary, including her son Arthur’s accidental near drowning when he falls off their boat while fishing.

While in Cairo, Kavanagh becomes acquainted with a number of fellow Europeans, including Sir Charles Murray, Sophia Lane Poole, and Edward William Lane. Harriet Martineau travels with the party from Cairo to the Holy Land.

While visiting Jerusalem in Easter 1847, Kavanagh bears witness to a confrontation over the control of holy places between Roman and Orthodox Catholics priests. She goes on to visit Petra, the Sinai Peninsula, Beirut, Smyrna, and Constantinople. The group spends a second winter in Egypt before traveling to the Black Sea before returning to Marseilles in April 1848. Much of these journeys are conducted on horse or camel-back, with one desert crossing taking 36 days. She later comments on her travels as a woman, stating “quite enough danger to make it a very exciting business.”

In 1850 and 1852, Kavanagh travels to Corfu, returning to Borris with samples of Greek lace. She teaches a number of her tenants to copy these designs, which lead to the establishment of a local lace-making industry. She is elected to the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1851.

Kavanagh moves to Ballyragget Lodge, County Kilkenny, in 1860, dying there on July 14, 1885. She is buried in St. Mullin’s Abbey, Borris in County Carlow. She documented her travels in journals, with drawings and paintings of the sites she visited. These are held by the Kavanagh family, along with an oil portrait and a self-portrait. Her collection of roughly 300 Egyptian antiquities were donated to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland after her death. These collections were later moved to the National Museum of Ireland and form a core element of the Museum’s Egyptian collection. Copies of two of her watercolours, a self-portrait, and a landscape are on display in the Museum.


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Birth of Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh

Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, Irish politician, is born on March 25, 1831, at Borris House, a country house near Borris, County Carlow. His middle name is spelled MacMorrough in some contemporaneous sources.

Kavanagh is the son of Thomas Kavanagh MP and artist Lady Harriet Margaret Le Poer Trench, daughter of Richard Trench, 2nd Earl of Clancarty. His father traced his lineage to the medieval Kings of Leinster through Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhánach. He has two older brothers, Charles and Thomas, and one sister, Harriet or “Hoddy.” He is born with only the rudiments of arms and legs, though the cause of this birth defect is unknown.

Kavanagh’s mother insists that he be brought up and have opportunities like any other child and places him in the care of the doctor Francis Boxwell, who believes that an armless and legless child can live a productive life. Kavanagh learns to ride horses at the age of three by being strapped to a special saddle and managing the horse with the stumps of his arms. With the help of the surgeon Sir Philip Crampton, Lady Harriet has a mechanical wheelchair constructed for her son, and encourages him to ride horses and engage in other outdoor activities. He also goes fishing, hunting, draws pictures and writes stories, using mechanical devices supplementing his physical capacities. His mother teaches him how to write and paint holding pens and brushes in his mouth.

In 1846, Lady Harriet takes three of her children, Thomas, Harriet and Arthur, traveling to the Middle East for two years. Kavanagh nearly drowns in the Nile when he falls in while fishing and is rescued by a local antiquities salesman who dives in to pull him out.

In 1849, Kavanagh’s mother discovers that he has been having affairs with girls on the family estate, so she sends him into exile to Uppsala, and then to Moscow with his brother and a clergyman, whom he comes to hate. He travels extensively in Egypt, Anatolia, Persia, and India between 1846 and 1853. In India, his letter of credit from his mother is cancelled when she discovers that he has spent two weeks in a harem, so he persuades the East India Company to hire him as a despatch rider. Other sources say that this is due to the death of his eldest brother, Charles, of tuberculosis in December 1851, which leaves him with only 30 shillings.

In 1851, Kavanagh succeeds to the family estates and to the title of The MacMurrough following the death of his older brother Thomas. He serves as High Sheriff of County Kilkenny for 1856 and High Sheriff of Carlow for 1857. A Conservative and a Protestant, he sits in Parliament for County Wexford from 1866 to 1868, and for County Carlow from 1868 to 1880. On being elected, he has to be placed on the Tory benches by his manservant. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Evelyn Denison, gives a special dispensation to allow the manservant to stay in the chamber during sittings. He is opposed to the disestablishment of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland but supports the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870. On losing his seat in 1880, William Ewart Gladstone appoints him to the Bessborough Commission, but he disagrees with its conclusions and publishes his own dissenting report. In 1886, he is made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland.

Kavanagh dies of pneumonia in London at the age of 58 on December 25, 1889. He is buried in Ballicopagan cemetery. He is succeeded in the title of The MacMurrough by his son, Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, who also serves as MP for County Carlow from 1908 to 1910. The 1901 novel The History of Sir Richard Calmady, written by Lucas Malet (pseudonym of Mary St. Leger Kingsley), is based on his life.

Kavanagh marries his cousin, Mary Frances Forde-Leathley, in 1855. Assisted by his wife, he is a philanthropic landlord, active county magistrate, and chairman of the board of guardians. Together, they have seven children.


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Death of Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon

presley-neville-obannon

Presley Neville O’Bannon, first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and descendant of Brien Boru O’Bannon (1683) who is apparently the first notable O’Bannon to enter the American colonies, dies on September 12, 1850.

O’Bannon is born in 1776 in Fauquier County, Virginia, to William O’Bannon, a captain of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, and Anne Neville, a sister of General John Neville, commander of Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania during the Revolution. He is probably named after Neville’s son, Presley, who is aide-de-camp to the Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

O’Bannon enters the Marine Corps on January 18, 1801. As a first lieutenant assigned to the USS Argus, he commands a detachment of seven Marines and two Navy midshipmen in diplomatic Consul General William Eaton‘s small army during the Tripoli campaign of the First Barbary War. In the combined operations with the United States Navy, he leads the successful attack at the Battle of Derna, a coastal town in eastern modern Libya on April 27, 1805, giving the Marines’ Hymn its line “to the shores of Tripoli.”

Lieutenant O’Bannon becomes the first man to raise a United States flag over foreign soil in time of war. O’Bannon’s superior, William Eaton, a former Army officer, had raised the American flag several months earlier while traveling on the Nile River from Alexandria to Cairo, but it had not been in a time of war. According to Marine Corps legend, Prince Hamet Karamanli is so impressed with O’Bannon’s bravery during the attempt to restore him to his throne as the Bey of Tripoli that he gives O’Bannon a sword as a gesture of respect. This sword becomes the model for the Mameluke sword, adopted in 1825 for Marine Corps officers, which is part of the formal uniform today.

O’Bannon resigns from the Marine Corps on March 6, 1807. He moves to Logan County, Kentucky, making his home in Russellville. He serves in the Kentucky Legislature in 1812, 1817, and 1820–21, and in the Kentucky State Senate from 1824 to 1826.

Sometime before 1826, O’Bannon marries Matilda Heard, daughter of Major James Heard and Nancy Morgan, a daughter of American Revolutionary War general Daniel Morgan, commander at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina in 1781.

Presley O’Bannon dies at age 74 on September 12, 1850, in Pleasureville, Kentucky, where his daughter and nephew live. In 1919, his remains are moved to the Frankfort Cemetery on East Main Street in the state capital of Frankfort, Kentucky.

(Pictured: Oil painting of Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon, USMC, by Colonel Donald L. Dickson, USMCR, from the Official Photograph Album Collection (COLL/2246) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division)