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Death of John Ford, Irish American Film Director

John Ford, American film director of Irish descent and one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation, dies in Palm Desert, California, on August 31, 1973.

Ford is born John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894, at Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He is the fourth son among five sons and six daughters of Seán Feeney, Roman Catholic farmer and saloonkeeper, and Barbara ‘Abby’ Feeney (née Curran). His father had emigrated to the United States from Spiddal, County Galway, and his mother from Kilronan, Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands.

From an early age Ford has an interest in painting and sailing, and in July 1914 moves to California, where his older brother Francis is an actor with a small film company. Adopting the name ‘Jack Ford,’ he learns his trade as a filmmaker and acts in a number of silent films. Reveling in his Irish heritage, he makes his director’s debut with The Tornado (1917) and follows it with more than forty movies over the next six years. On July 3, 1920, he marries Mary McBryde Smith, a former officer in the army medical corps. They meet at a party thrown by the director Rex Ingram and have one son and one daughter.

In 1921 Ford visits Ireland for the first time and later claims to have travelled on the same boat that brought Michael Collins back from the treaty negotiations. He meets his relatives at Spiddal, falls in love with the countryside, and becomes a fervent Irish nationalist. It is later claimed that he brought over funds for his cousin Martin Feeney, a member of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) flying column.

Returning to Hollywood, Ford becomes friends with the retired marshal Wyatt Earp and makes a number of commercially successful films, now as ‘John Ford’. In 1926 he directs The Shamrock Handicap, a horse-racing yarn partly set in Ireland. In 1928 he shoots Mother Machree, a movie about Irish emigration, starring Victor McLaglen, a regular collaborator. McLaglen also stars in Hangman’s House, made the same year, Ford’s first major movie about Ireland.

In 1934 Ford purchases a luxury yacht which he names the Araner after the Aran Islands. He also begins shooting The Informer, a film set in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and based on a short novel by Liam O’Flaherty. The picture is a major box office success and wins four Academy Awards, including Best Director. O’Flaherty is so impressed with the film that he dedicates his next book, Famine, to Ford.

In 1934 Ford visits Ireland for the second time, and approaches Seán O’Casey about directing a version of The Plough and the Stars. Released in 1936, the film stars Barry Fitzgerald as Fluther, but it is reedited by the studio, much to Ford’s fury, and is a commercial and critical flop.

Stagecoach, shot in 1938, is one of Ford’s masterpieces. It was a western starring his protégé, John Wayne, and marks the beginning of his golden decade. In 1940 and 1941 he wins Best Director Oscars successively for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. With American entry into World War II, he serves in the U.S. Navy, and makes important documentaries such as The Battle of Midway (1942).

In 1952 Ford returns to Ireland to film The Quiet Man, starring Wayne, McLaglen, and Maureen O’Hara. Shot at Ashford Castle, County Mayo, the picture becomes one of the most popular Irish films of all time. He is immensely proud of the work and is in tears leaving Ireland. The following year he makes Mogambo, with Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and a young English actor, Donald Sinden, who later recalls that Ford berated him personally for all the problems of Ireland from the time of William of Orange. Ford’s strong sense of Irishness is central to his character and is crucial for any understanding of his work. Back in Ireland in 1956, he shoots The Rising of the Moon, a portmanteau film for which he takes no salary, starring Tyrone Power, Cyril Cusack, and Noel Purcell. A minor film, it makes no impact at the box office.

Two of Ford’s finest movies are made in his later years. The Searchers (1956) is a powerful study of vengeance, while The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is an elegiac revisionist western which concludes with the famous line, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Struck with cancer in his final years, Ford dies on August 31, 1973 at his home in Palm Desert, California, and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. His will disinherits his son, Michael Patrick Roper, and leaves everything to his wife, daughter, and grandchildren.

When asked to name the finest American directors, Orson Welles replies simply, “John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” An alcoholic, Ford is a difficult and often tyrannical director, but he makes films of extraordinary power and vision. He ranks as one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century. As Frank Capra concludes, “John is half-tyrant, half-revolutionary; half-saint, half-Satan; half-possible, half-impossible; half-genius, half-Irish.”

(From: “Ford, John,” contributed by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Birth of John Ford, Award Winning Irish American Film Director

John Ford, film director, is born as John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894 at Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He is the fourth son among five sons and six daughters of Seán Feeney, Roman Catholic farmer and saloon-keeper, and Barbara ‘Abby’ Feeney (née Curran). His father had emigrated to the United States from Spiddal, County Galway, and his mother from Kilronan, Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands.

From an early age Ford has an interest in painting and sailing, and in July 1914 moves to California, where his older brother Francis is an actor with a small film company. Adopting the name ‘Jack Ford,’ he learns his trade as a filmmaker and acts in a number of silent pictures. Reveling in his Irish heritage, he makes his director’s debut with The Tornado (1917) and follows it with more than forty movies over the next six years. On July 3, 1920, he marries Mary McBryde Smith, a former officer in the army medical corps. They meet at a party thrown by the director Rex Ingram and have one son and one daughter.

In 1921 Ford visits Ireland for the first time and later claims to have travelled on the same boat that brought Michael Collins back from the treaty negotiations. He meets his relatives at Spiddal, falls in love with the countryside, and becomes a fervent Irish nationalist. It is later claimed that he brought over funds for his cousin Martin Feeney, a member of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) flying column.

Returning to Hollywood, Ford becomes friends with the retired marshal Wyatt Earp and makes a number of commercially successful films, now as ‘John Ford’. In 1926 he directs The Shamrock Handicap, a horse-racing yarn partly set in Ireland. In 1928 he shoots Mother Machree, a movie about Irish emigration, starring Victor McLaglen, a regular collaborator. McLaglen also stars in Hangman’s House, made the same year, Ford’s first major movie about Ireland.

In 1934 Ford purchases a luxury yacht which he names the Araner after the Aran Islands. He also begins shooting The Informer, a film set in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, and based on a short novel by Liam O’Flaherty. The picture is a major box office success and wins four Academy Awards, including Best Director. O’Flaherty is so impressed with the film that he dedicates his next book, Famine, to Ford.

In 1934 Ford visits Ireland for the second time, and approaches Seán O’Casey about directing a version of The Plough and the Stars. Released in 1936, the film stars Barry Fitzgerald as Fluther, but it is reedited by the studio, much to Ford’s fury, and is a commercial and critical flop.

Stagecoach, shot in 1938, is one of Ford’s masterpieces. It was a western starring his protégé, John Wayne, and marks the beginning of his golden decade. In 1940 and 1941 he wins Best Director Oscars successively for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. With American entry into World War II, he serves in the U.S. Navy, and makes important documentaries such as The Battle of Midway (1942).

In 1952 Ford returns to Ireland to film The Quiet Man, starring Wayne, McLaglen, and Maureen O’Hara. Shot at Ashford Castle, County Mayo, the picture becomes one of the most popular Irish films of all time. He is immensely proud of the work and is in tears leaving Ireland. The following year he makes Mogambo, with Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and a young English actor, Donald Sinden, who later recalls that Ford berated him personally for all the problems of Ireland from the time of William of Orange. Ford’s strong sense of Irishness is central to his character and is crucial for any understanding of his work. Back in Ireland in 1956, he shoots The Rising of the Moon, a portmanteau film for which he takes no salary, starring Tyrone Power, Cyril Cusack, and Noel Purcell. A minor film, it makes no impact at the box office.

Two of Ford’s finest movies are made in his later years. The Searchers (1956) is a powerful study of vengeance, while The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is an elegiac revisionist western which concludes with the famous line, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Struck with cancer in his final years, Ford dies on August 31, 1973 at his home in Palm Desert, California, and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. His will disinherits his son, Michael Patrick Roper, and leaves everything to his wife, daughter, and grandchildren.

When asked to name the finest American directors, Orson Welles replies simply, “John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” An alcoholic, Ford is a difficult and often tyrannical director, but he makes films of extraordinary power and vision. He ranks as one of the greatest film-makers of the twentieth century. As Frank Capra concludes, “John is half-tyrant, half-revolutionary; half-saint, half-Satan; half-possible, half-impossible; half-genius, half-Irish.”

(From: “Ford, John,” contributed by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Birth of William Grattan Tyrone Power, Stage Actor, Comedian & Author

William Grattan Tyrone Power, Irish stage actor, comedian, author and theatrical manager known professionally as Tyrone Power, is born in Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, on November 20, 1797. He is an ancestor of actor Tyrone Power and is also referred to as Tyrone Power I.

Power is the son of Tyrone Power, reported to be “a minstrel of sorts,” by his marriage to Maria Maxwell, whose father had been killed while serving in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. His father is related to the Powers who are of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry and to George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford.

The young Power takes to the stage, achieving prominence throughout the world as an actor and manager. He is well known for acting in such Irish-themed plays as Catherine Gore‘s King O’Neil (1835), his own St. Patrick’s Eve (1837), Samuel Lover‘s Rory O’More (1837) and The White Horse of the Peppers (1838), Anna Maria Hall‘s The Groves of Blarney (1838), Eugene Macarthy’s Charles O’Malley (1838), and William Bayle Bernard‘s His Last Legs (1839) and The Irish Attorney (1840). In his discussion of these works, Richard Allen Cave argues that Power, both in his acting as well as his choice of plays, seeks to rehabilitate the Irishman from the derogatory associations with “stage Irishmen.”

Power has a number of notable descendants by his wife Anne, daughter of John Gilbert of the Isle of Wight:

  • Sir William James Tyrone Power (1819–1911), Commissary General in Chief of the British Army and briefly Agent-General for New Zealand
  • Norah Power, who married Dr. Thomas Guthrie
  • Sir Tyrone Guthrie, British theatrical director (1900–1971)
  • Maurice Henry Anthony O’Reilly Power (1821–1849), trained as a barrister but later took up acting
  • Frederick Augustus Dobbyn Nugent Power (1823–1896), civil engineer, left a large estate of £197,000, equivalent to £15.6 million or 28 million US dollars in 2006
  • Clara Elizabeth Murray Power (born 1825)
  • Mary Jane Power (born 1827)
  • Harold Littledale Power (1833–1901), actor, wine merchant, mine agent & engineer
  • Tyrone Power, Sr. (1869–1931), English theatre and silent movie star
  • Tyrone Power (1914–1958), American Hollywood star of the 1930s to 1950s
  • Romina Power (born 1951), American singer and film actress
  • Taryn Power (1953–2020), film actress
  • Tyrone Power, Jr. (born 1959), American film actor

Power is said to have purchased the land that is later occupied by Madison Square Garden, New York, shortly before his death. The lawyer who holds the papers cannot be found so the Power family is unable to claim right to the property.

Power is lost at sea on March 17, 1841, when the SS President disappears without trace in the North Atlantic shortly after departing for England. Anne Power is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary The Virgin Church in High Halden, Kent, England.


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Death of Actress Maureen O’Hara

maureen-oharaMaureen O’Hara, Irish actress and singer, dies peacefully in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho on October 24, 2015. The famously red-headed O’Hara is known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She works on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne, and was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

O’Hara is born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, County Dublin and grows up in an “eccentric” devout Catholic family, and aspires to become an actress from a very young age. She trains with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She is given a screen test, which is deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton sees potential and arranges for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moves to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and is given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she goes on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquires the nickname “The Queen of Technicolor,” which she detests, believing that people see her only for her beauty rather than talent.

O’Hara gains a reputation in Hollywood for bossiness and prudishness, avoiding the partying lifestyle. She appears in films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), her first collaboration with John Ford, The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947) with John Payne and Natalie Wood and Comanche Territory (1950).

O’Hara appears in her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated, with Rio Grande (1950). This is followed by The Quiet Man (1952), her best-known film, and The Wings of Eagles (1957), by which time her relationship with Ford has deteriorated. Such is her strong chemistry with Wayne that many assume they are married or in a relationship. In the 1960s O’Hara increasingly turns to more motherly roles as she ages, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Rare Breed (1966).

O’Hara retires from the industry in 1971 after starring with Wayne one final time in Big Jake, but returns 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991). In the late 1970s, O’Hara helps run her third husband’s flying business in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, and edits a magazine, but later sells them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland. She is married three times and has one daughter, Bronwyn, born in 1944 to her second husband.

Her autobiography, ‘Tis Herself, is published in 2004 and becomes a New York Times Bestseller. In November 2014, she is presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription “To Maureen O’Hara, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength.”

Maureen O’Hara dies of natural causes in her sleep at the age of 95 on October 24, 2015, at her home in Boise, Idaho. O’Hara is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles F. Blair, Jr..


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Opening of the Albany New Theatre

theatre-royal-1821The Albany New Theatre opens in Hawkins Street, Dublin, on January 18, 1821.

In 1820, Henry Harris purchases a site in Hawkins Street and builds the 2,000–seat Albany New Theatre on the site at a cost of £50,000. The theatre is designed by architect Samuel Beazley. The construction work is not completed at the time of opening and early audience figures are so low that a number of side seating boxes are boarded up.

In August 1821, George IV attends a performance at the Albany and, as a consequence, a patent is granted. The name of the theatre is changed to the “Theatre Royal” to reflect its status as a patent theatre.

On December 14, 1822, the Bottle Riot occurs during a performance of She Stoops to Conquer attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Marquess Wellesley. Orangemen angered by Wellesley’s conciliation of Catholics jeer him during the national anthem, and a riot ensues after a bottle is thrown at him. Wellesley’s overreaction, including charging three rioters with attempted murder, undermines his own credibility.

In 1830, Harris retires from the theatre and a Mr. Calcraft takes on the lease. The theatre attracts a number of famous performers, including Niccolò Paganini, Jenny Lind, Tyrone Power, and Barry Sullivan. By 1851, the theatre is experiencing financial problems and closes briefly. It reopens in December under John Harris, who had been manager of the rival Queen’s Theatre. The first production under Harris is a play by Dion Boucicault. Boucicault and his wife are to make their first Dublin personal appearances in the Royal in 1861 in his The Colleen Bawn. The first performance of Boucicault’s play Arrah-na-Pogue is held at the theatre in 1864, with Boucicault, Samuel Johnson, John Brougham, and Samuel Anderson Emery in the cast.

The theatre burns to the ground on February 9, 1880.


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Birth of Irish Novelist Anna Maria Hall

anna-maria-hallAnna Maria Hall (nee Fielding), Irish novelist who often publishes as “Mrs. S. C. Hall,” is born in Dublin on January 6, 1800. She lives with her mother, a widow named Sarah Elizabeth Fielding, and stepfather, George Carr of Graigie, Wexford, until 1815. She goes to England with her mother in 1815, and on September 20, 1824, marries Samuel Carter Hall. Her mother lives with her in London until she dies.

Hall’s first recorded contribution to literature is an Irish sketch called “Master Ben,” which appears in The Spirit and Manners of the Age, January 1829. Other tales follow. Eventually they are collected into a volume entitled Sketches of Irish Character (1829), and henceforth she becomes “an author by profession.” The following year she issues a little volume for children, Chronicles of a School-Room, consisting of a series of simple tales.

In 1831, she publishes a second series of Sketches of Irish Character fully equal to the first, which is well received. The first of her nine novels, The Buccaneer (1832), is a story of the time of The Protectorate, and Oliver Cromwell is among the characters. To The New Monthly Magazine, which her husband is editing, she contributes Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, articles which are republished in three volumes in 1838. The principal tale in this collection, “The Groves of Blarney,” is dramatised with considerable success by the author with the object of supplying a character for Tyrone Power, and runs for a whole season at the Adelphi Theatre in 1838. Hall also writes “The French Refugee,” produced at the St. James’s Theatre in 1836, where it runs ninety nights, and for the same theatre Mabel’s Curse, in which John Pritt Harley sustains the leading part.

Another of her dramas, of which she has neglected to keep a copy, is Who’s Who? which is in the possession of Tyrone Power when he is lost in the President in April 1841. In 1840, she issues what has been called the best of her novels, Marian, or a Young Maid’s Fortunes, in which her knowledge of Irish character is again displayed in a style equal to anything written by Maria Edgeworth. Her next work is a series of “Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” contributed to Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, and afterwards published in a collected form. In 1840 she aids her husband in a book chiefly composed by him, “Ireland, its Scenery, Characters, &c.” She edits the St. James’s Magazine from 1862 to 1863.

In the Art Journal, edited by her husband, she brings out Pilgrimages to English Shrines in 1849, and here the most beautiful of all her books, Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love, first appears. One of her last works, Boons and Blessings (1875), dedicated to the Earl of Shaftesbury, is a collection of temperance tales, illustrated by the best artists.

Hall’s sketches of her native land bear a closer resemblance to the tales of Miss Mitford than to the Irish stories of John Banim or Gerald Griffin. They contain fine rural descriptions, and are animated by a healthy tone of moral feeling and a vein of delicate humour. Her books are never popular in Ireland, as she sees in each party much to praise and much to blame, so that she fails to please either the Orange Order or the Roman Catholics.

On December 10, 1868, she is granted a civil list pension of £100 a year. She is instrumental in founding the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, the Governesses’ Institute, the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen, and the Nightingale Fund. Her benevolence is of the most practical nature. She works for the temperance cause, for women’s rights, and for the friendless and fallen. She is a friend to street musicians, and a thorough believer in spiritualism, but this belief does not prevent her from remaining, as she ever was, a devout Christian. She dies at Devon Lodge, East Moulsey, January 30, 1881, and is buried in Addlestone churchyard on February 5.


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Birth of Actress Maureen O’Hara

maureen-oharaMaureen O’Hara, Irish actress and singer, is born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, County Dublin. The famously red-headed O’Hara is known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She works on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne, and was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

O’Hara grows up in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh to an “eccentric” devout Catholic family, and aspires to become an actress from a very young age. She trains with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She is given a screen test, which is deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton sees potential and arranges for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moves to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and is given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she goes on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquires the nickname “The Queen of Technicolor,” which she detests, believing that people see her only for her beauty rather than talent.

O’Hara gains a reputation in Hollywood for bossiness and prudishness, avoiding the partying lifestyle. She appears in films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), her first collaboration with John Ford, The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947) with John Payne and Natalie Wood and Comanche Territory (1950).

O’Hara appears in her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated, with Rio Grande (1950). This is followed by The Quiet Man (1952), her best-known film, and The Wings of Eagles (1957), by which time her relationship with Ford has deteriorated. Such is her strong chemistry with Wayne that many assume they are married or in a relationship. In the 1960s O’Hara increasingly turns to more motherly roles as she ages, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Rare Breed (1966).

O’Hara retires from the industry in 1971 after starring with Wayne one final time in Big Jake, but returns 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991). In the late 1970s, O’Hara helps run her third husband’s flying business in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, and edits a magazine, but later sells them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland. She is married three times and has one daughter, Bronwyn, born in 1944 to her second husband.

Her autobiography, ‘Tis Herself, is published in 2004 and becomes a New York Times Bestseller. In November 2014, she is presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription “To Maureen O’Hara, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength.”

Maureen O’Hara dies of natural causes in her sleep at the age of 95 on October 24, 2015, at her home in Boise, Idaho. O’Hara is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles Blair.