Announcing The Luck of the Irish Blog o'thon : March 15-17th!

UPDATE: To view a complete list of participants check out the official blogathon post here. 

Top o' the morning film fans! Silver Scenes is proud to present The Luck of the Irish Blog o'thon...a wee little event to celebrate the joy and talent that the Irish have brought to the silver screen for many many years. 

You need not be Irish to participate in this ceilidh because on holy St. Patrick's Day we all be wearing a touch o' the green.....

THE DETAILS:  We not be specific - you can write about almost anything so long as it has a bit o' Irish in it, was filmed prior to 1975, and features no blessed word spoken against the little people. Will you be wanting to write about an Irish-made production? That'll be grand! Will ye be caring to write about an Irish-born actor? We tip our hats to ye! 

Movies that take place in Ireland are surely welcome and you most certainly can write about an American actor with an Irish heritage. We not be turning down any post on Cagney himself. And do not be forgetting the talented Irish men and women who worked behind the magic movie screen as well. 

If ye need some inspiration to get your heart a beatin', here be some suggestions :

Films: The Quiet Man, Return to Glennascaul, Captain Boycott, The Informer, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Parnell, The Molly McGuires, Finian's Rainbow, Little Nellie Kelly, The Girl with Green Eyes, Odd Man Out, The Plough and the Stars, The Shame of Mary Boyle, Top O' the Morning, Gentlemen Jim, I See a Dark Stranger, Irish and Proud of It, Guns in the Heather, Barry Lyndon, Young Cassidy, The Fighting Prince of Donegal, Going My Way, This Other Eden, Shake Hands with the Devil, The Long Gray Line, The Sporting Irish, Peg O' My Heart, The Hills of Ireland, Wings of the Morning, Man of Aran, Mother Machree, The Rose of Kildare, My Wild Irish Rose, Daughter of Rosie O'Grady, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Leave it to the Irish, Gateway, The Story of Seabiscuit, Sally and Saint Anne, The Fighting O'Flynn. 

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Personalities: John Ford, George Murphy, James Cagney, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris, Maureen O'Hara, John Ford, Barry Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby ( what the hey! ), Dennis Morgan, Stephen Boyd, Arthur Shields, Pat O'Brien, Richard Todd, George Brent, Owen Moore, Charles B. Fitzsimmons, Roy William Neill, James Kilgannon, Sara Allgood, Rex Ingram, Patrick Delany, Una O'Connor, David S. Hall, Brian Donlevy, Niall MacGinnis, Rod Taylor, Alan Young.

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DATE: The Luck of the Irish Blog o'thon runs from March 15th through St. Paddy's Day itself. Ready to join in the jig? Just drop your name, blog site, and the topic you be wanting to write about in the comment box below. 

DEADLINE : Entries will be accepted up until midnight on the 17th of March. If you denno get your entry in by that time, you'll be hearing the wailin' o' the banshee at your backdoor wondering why ye had forgotten her! 

'Tis no good hosting a blogathon without a followin' of fans to participate in it, so we be asking kindly that you post these pretty little Irish banners on those pretty little blogs of your own...with a link back if ye may : 

            

            

            

            

Thankee for reading this announcement and we hope to see you at the ceilildh! 

Irish Nuggets

The Luck of the Irish ( 1948 ) 18k

During a visit to Ireland, an American reporter finds and catches a leprechaun who sticks with him and helps him decide whether to remain or  return to New York to marry his fiancee and achieve success in politics. Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Cecil Kellaway, Jayne Meadows. 20th Century Fox. Directed by Henry Koster. 

The Luck of the Irish never achieved classic cult status on St. Patrick's Day like The Quiet Man or Darby O'Gill and yet it should have for it's a delightful film. Cecil Kellaway, adorable in any role he plays, is especially suited to the leprechaun part. The DVD release includes two versions, one entirely in black and white, and another in the original release format of black and white and green tint. 'Tis a pot of gold for sure!

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Top O' The Morning ( 1949 ) 14k

A singing insurance investigator comes to Ireland to recover the stolen Blarney Stone and romance the local policeman's daughter. Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Ann Blyth, Hume Crownyn. Paramount Pictures. Directed by David Miller. 

Alright, we cheated a bit with including this film among the nuggets for we haven't seen it yet. It just sounds like such a good film we would really doubt if it turns out to be a dud. With such a great cast, how can it fail to be anything but bragha.

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The Quiet Man ( 1952 ) 24k

A former boxer comes to Ireland to purchase his mother's cottage and make a new life for himself, but first he must square himself with his wife, who believes him to be a coward for not putting up a fight for her dowry. John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Victor MacLaglen, Mildred Natwick. Republi Pictures. Directed by John Ford.

This is one of those beautiful films where everything falls into place perfectly...the cast, the script, the music, the cinematography the locations. It just couldn't be any better than it is. It ranks as one of John Ford's greatest films ( if not his best ) and certainly one of the finest pictures to ever come out of Republic Pictures. You'll be spouting Quiet Man-isms forever after viewing this film. "And who taught you to be playing patty fingers in the Holy water?"


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Darby O'Gill and the Little People ( 1958 ) 18k

Darby O'Gill, caretaker to Lord Fitzpatrick, is unhappy when he is replaced by a new lad, but gladly decides to matchmake him with his daughter so that he may remain at his cottage. Later he beguiles King O'Brian, the king of the leprechauns to help him save his daughter when the banshee comes knocking on their door. Albert Sharpe, Sean Connery, Janet Munro, Jimmy O'Dea. Walt Disney Productions. Directed by Robert Stevenson.

"Sparkling with Leprechauns and Laughter" is right! Darby is one of those films that has great replay value. You can watch it every St. Patrick's Day and never tire of it. King Brian finally met his match when it came to old Darby. A special shout-out to Peter Ellenshaw for his magnificent matte paintings in this film. They surely do transport us to the beautiful land of the leprechauns. 

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The Secret of Boyne Castle ( 1969 ) 14k

A young student and his friend help deliver a secret message to Boyne Castle to aid an American spy and help an Eastern European agent defect. Retitled "Guns in the Heather" for its feature film release. Kurt Russell,  Glenn Corbett, Alfred Burke, Patrick Dawson. Walt Disney Productions. Directed by Robert Butler. 

Most of the television movies made for Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color are tough to find on DVD, and bootleg versions that are available are often very blurry. Alas, that is the case with this film but from what we made out of the picture it sure was entertaining. The movie pairs Kurt Russell with a young Irish boy ( who, quite frankly, we thought was a villain ) and together they play like a Hardy Boys duo. Why Walt Disney never put Kurt Russell in a Hardy Boys series I certainly don't know, but at least this movie got all the great mysteries of one of them - a motorcycle chase, a secluded castle, a glider ride, and a really clever spy ( not like those bungling crooks Disney films always had in the 1990s ). 

Barry Fitzgerald - Frowning on Fame

While hunting down photographs of Barry Fitzgerald's home for the upcoming Hollywood Home Tour we stumbled upon this article from the New York Times, originally posted on January 14, 1945. It was so entertaining we couldn't help but share it. And it's so fitting for St. Patrick's Day too...which will be here before you can say Johnny O'Mara Fitzsimmons!
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Written by Fred Stanley 

In Hollywood these days everyone, it seems, is excited about Barry Fitzgerald - except Barry Fitzgerald. On the basis of his performance as the whimsical, petulant old parish priest in Paramount's ''Going My Way,'' the New York critics have just given him their award for the best film acting of the year.

Today Barry Fitzgerald is in greater demand by the studios than any character has ever been in the history of the film city. One conservative estimate, by people who figure such things out, has it that if the 56-year-old Irish actor accepted all of the parts that have been offered to him in the past four months he would be working in front of the cameras, night and day, for the next two years. Film producers calculate that Fitzgerald's name in the cast of one of their products now means increased returns at the box office. That fact explains an increase in his ''per picture'' pay to $75,000 more than three times his pre-''Going My Way'' rate.  

To all of which Barry Fitzgerald says: ''I am now just another Hollywood celebrity and that's downright boring.'' He doesn't understand why being a successful actor should mean that he can, per se, set the general public an example by smoking so and so's cigarettes or wearing this or that brand of underwear. 

Gone are the days, he will regretfully tell you, when he could walk down the street unrecognized and just watch people go by. Now the people watch Barry Fitzgerald go by. In Hollywood he is too easily recognized, pointed out, stared at and besieged by that curious American phenomenon, the autograph seeker. 

He finds it all rather bewildering. He resents the disruption of his previously inconspicuous private life. He can't even browse in Los Angeles book shops or join in a discussion with strangers at some out-of-the-way barroom or drug store without being tagged as Father Fitzgibbon. His old clothes and cloth cap, which once kept him inconspicuous, now make him a marked man. 

And along with fame have come obligations - obligations which are particularly distressing to Mr. Fitzgerald, who cheerfully admits to being a ''very lazy man.'' Fame has brought sacks full of fan mail to be answered. It has resulted in invitations to parties and social events - for he is now being recognized, even by some of the town's so-called ''greats.'' 

A bachelor, the actor lives in a seven-room rented house on a hillside street just a few blocks north of Hollywood Boulevard. As you approach his home of an evening you will probably hear the hesitant tones of a piano - the sound a young girl or boy would make drudging along after Paderewski. The address is right, so you ring the doorbell - with some misgivings. Immediately, the music stops and the door is opened by Barry Fitzgerald, who bids you a laconic, ''How do you do.'' And then adds, just as briefly, ''I was practicing.'' 

Mr. Fitzgerald didn't begin to take piano lessons until he was past 50. He still takes lessons twice a week, as he explains it, ''just for my own amusement.'' 

He is surprisingly casual and relaxed. He impresses one as an intensely modest man gifted with a curious, searching mind. There are numerous clues that he and his characterizations, as many interviewers have noted, are cut from the same cloth. His small, wiry body - he's 5 feet 3 - has the unmistakable set of a man good in close fighting. Beneath bristly brows, his eyes glint shrewdly. His chin juts forward aggressively. His voice fumbles drolly at the beginning of a sentence, then gets away with a rush, often changing key before he reaches the end of the sentence. 

He shares his home with Gus Tallon, an Iroquois Indian, who, besides fulfilling the usual duties of a stand-in - posing for the camera men while the set is being prepared and the lights and focus adjusted - acts as companion and general right-hand man. He also shares the task of preparing the morning breakfast - coffee, toast and eggs. Gus is the custodian of Mr. Fitzgerald's wardrobe - not much of a job, considering that the clothes closets hold only three suits, a sports coat or two, a few slacks and cloth caps galore. Mr. Fitzgerald will at once impress upon you that Gus is not an employee but a friend. 

Asked about his screen roles, he says that the part of Father Fitzgibbon has been the most satisfying and therefore the easiest. 

''No,'' he explains, ''it wasn't patterned after any particular priest I knew in Ireland. Call it a composite of several of my good friends of the cloth.'' 

He gets a good deal of amusement out of another misconception arising from his portrayal of Father Fitzgibbon. With a twinkle in his eye, he tells how on several occasions he has been recognized and stopped on the street by a son or daughter of the ''Ould Sod,'' who, after complimenting him on his performance in the role, adds: ''And, sure, no one but a good Catholic could have played a priest so well.'' 

It happens that Barry Fitzgerald is not a Catholic. His family were members of the Protestant faith and as a youth he attended a Protestant church in Dublin - and even sang in the choir.

Justifiably, he feels that these mistaken impressions are really tributes to his ability as an actor. Acting is one thing which he discusses without shyness or hesitation. In contemporary pictures, Mr. Fitzgerald feels, there is too much dialogue. The best acting, he says, is still pantomime - a look, a twist of the neck or the way a person walks can tell more than whole pages of dialogue. 

In ''Going My Way,'' for instance, the glance of disapproval he gave his curate, Bing Crosby, when he discovered Crosby wearing the sweater with ''St. Louis Browns'' spelled out on it, or his silent shame when he learns that the turkey he is feasting on his been stolen, tells more in less time than even the brightest dialogue could. 

Over at Paramount they tell you how he saved a scene in the forthcoming ''Two Years Before the Mast.'' Playing the ship's cook, Mr. Fitzgerald was called on to serve a plate of food to the bellicose captain and then answer him back in kind when the officer disapproved of the offering - using fitting sea language, of courses. The scene was taken several times but failed to justify Director John Farrow. Then, on the next ''take,'' Mr. Fitzgerald, instead of following the script, picked up the plate, sniffed significantly at the food, cast a comical pitying glance toward his irate skipper and shuffled out of the cabin - without saying a word.

That wasn't the way the scene had been written, but that's the way it will appear in the picture. In that one scene Mr. Fitzgerald indicated real understanding of the potentialities of motion pictures as a medium of art. With economy of motion and speech he revealed the underlying nuances of character. 

Mr. Fitzgerald has always been a comedian on the screen. And he runs true to form in envying the tragedian.

''I would rather be a villain on the screen and bop someone on the head occasionally than play the most noble of characters,'' he says. ''A villain doesn't have to be repressed - and audiences have a sneaking affection for him, especially if he is picturesque. And besides, it's easier to portray villainy.'' 

Barry Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in Dublin on March 10, 1888. After finishing high school he entered a special school, where he was trained for a civil service post as bookkeeper with the Board of Trade. He explains that he became an actor because he is essentially a lazy person. His brother, Arthur Shields now also a film actor in Hollywood was formerly with the Abbey Theatre. Mr. Fitzgerald hung around the theatre because he was interested in the literary side of the Irish renaissance, and got to know some of the actors. He was urged to walk on, carry a spear, just for the fun of it. He did. And finally, because he didn't, as he says, have the energy to refuse, he graduated into bit parts. 

Uncertain whether his superiors in the Government service would approve of his stage activities, he had a talk with the man in charge of programs at the Abbey Theatre about assuming a stage name. That is how Barry Fitzgerald was born. 

His first speaking part came in the Abbey production of Richard Sheridan's ''The Critic.'' He had been assigned to a second sentry's role in that play. The first sentry said: ''all this shall to Lord Burley's ears.''

Fitzgerald was supposed to answer: ''It is meet that it should.'' 

He had rehearsed that line with more care than the entire production had received. he could literally give it in his sleep. Then came the big moment before the footlights. The first sentry spoke his line. A helpful pal, near Mr. Fitzgerald on the stage, whispered: '''Tis sheet it moud,'' and thus it was that the stunned Mr. Fitzgerald delivered the line. The audience roared with laughter and he was started on his career as a comedian. 

For seventeen years, until 1929, Barry Fitzgerald led a double life. From 9 to 5 he was a bookkeeper. At night he was a member of the Abbey Theatre. He learned his roles riding to and from work, at evening rehearsals or after bolting his lunch. In 1929, when he went to London to do Sean O'Casey's ''Silver Tassie,'' he left his post as a civil servant. 

His most famous role on the stage was as Captain Jack Boyle, the alcoholic, pompous braggart in O'Casey's ''Juno and the Paycock.'' It was one of the richest characterizations in the modern theatre. It was deep, with the stubbornness, the lawlessness, the moods and volatile beauty of the Irish heart. 

Another of his memorable roles was the rascally tippler, Fluther Good, in O'Casey's ''The Plough and the Stars.'' It was for this role that Director John Ford - now a commander in the United States Navy brought Mr. Fitzgerald to Hollywood in 1937, when he made a film of that play. From then on Barry Fitzgerald was busier than he had ever wanted to be. 

Fitzgerald is not the swimming-pool-in-the-back-yard type. He never goes to the lush Hollywood night clubs. His principal outdoor amusement, motorcycling, has been somewhat cramped by gasoline rationing. But he still rides his motor bike to and from the studio occasionally. 

Another of his outdoor pasttimes is golf, at which, he will candidly inform you, he is the worst player in the world. On good days he goes around the eighteen holes in 110 to 120. A few weeks ago he came in with a card of 104 and called in a number of his cronies to celebrate. Characteristically, none of the have names that a devoted movie-goer would recognize. 

Perhaps his most revealing hobby is cutting records of those radio advertising jingles which have made listening to the radio the dangerous business it is. He plays these home-made records over and over, chuckling with glee and the inanities of the music and rhymes. He is making a collection of such pieces to send to Ireland to be played on the phonograph in a certain pub so that some of his old pals may enjoy this new American art form. 

The two things he likes best about America, though, are our pie à la mode and the fact that the ''man in the street has the feeling that he's as good as the next one.'' And that's no idle compliment, for he has spent many a night and day wandering about the streets with a pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust deep in his pockets.