TV Comment - Grace, Gene and JFK

NOT COMPARING like with like but if George Bernard Shaw could credit the Reading Room of the British Museum with his early education then surely I can say something similar about the late lamented Green Cinema in my home town of Dunmore. In its 1950s heyday, the then newly-constructed window on Hollywood screened three films a week with a matinee on Sunday. Back in pre-decimal days when we all knew that if a dozen eggs cost four shillings, each egg was four pence. Even better, we also knew it was one and nine into the pictures of a Wednesday or a Friday, a tanner on a Sunday and a loose fag was tuppence. It didnâ€â„¢t grow on trees back then either but somehow we always had the few bob and, while I didnâ€â„¢t see every picture every week, I didnâ€â„¢t miss many. With that schooling, it is little wonder that I thoroughly enjoyed John Kellyâ€â„¢s Hellâ€â„¢s Kitchen to Hollywood on RTE1 on Thursday evening, even if it achieved little other than whet my appetite for more. Kellyâ€â„¢s story was that of the Irish-American men and women who had shaped American cinema, but how could he fit a saga like that into an hour? He barely scratched the surface of what would be an immense undertaking were John to be given the funding to make even a half decent fist of it and, judging by all he packed into an hour, he could well be the man for the job. Money is the problem and my first reaction was to think that were the powers that be in Montrose to hold back a chunk of the money thatâ€â„¢s regularly paid to RTEâ€â„¢s overpaid celebrity presenters, it would fund Kelly. Give it to him with the Horace Greeley recommendation, â€Å“Go West, young man,â€Â beyond New York and Boston and on to the canyons of Monument Valley to do whatever it takes to bring back the story of the Hollywood Irish; because itâ€â„¢s a good one. John took the circuitous route last time, lingering longer than was warranted in New York. As with all nationalities, the newly-arrived 19th century Irish were despised, distrusted and subjected to extraordinary levels of prejudice, and with many from small Irish rural communities it must have been traumatic in the extreme. Without ever having been to Dublin, they departed Westport and Galway to arrive into crowded cities where they would see more people in a day than in their entire lives. Forced to move into tenements such as those in New Yorkâ€â„¢s Hellâ€â„¢s Kitchen, they endured filth and squalor while living 50 to a room in a world that couldnâ€â„¢t have been further removed from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Many sank without trace in a sea of American booze but Kelly steered well clear of anything disparaging to the Irish. On the contrary, here was an ego-massaging exercise with application at home and away but more especially away in places where anyone with a tincture of Irish blood in his/her veins would experience a spine tingle at Johnâ€â„¢s honeyed words. Irish immigrants could not afford to travel very far from the port of their arrival and so they settled in large numbers in cities such as New York and Boston, creating large communities which offered mutual support and protection in frequently hostile environments. Thatâ€â„¢s what Kelly was referring to when he praised the New York Irish ability to close ranks, look out for each other and use their â€Å“smartsâ€Â to make rapid progress up the social ladder. Despite all-pervading poverty and prejudice, the Irish soon found an outlet for their talents in the hugely popular Vaudeville theatres of the time and from there it was but a short and syncopated one-two, one-two-three, step to the silent movies. Twenty years on, Hollywoodâ€â„¢s golden era was in full flower and stars such James Cagney, Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, all sons and grandsons of Irish immigrants, were the living legends of the silver screen. Even where the Irish had not been fully accepted into American life, Cagney and Crosby et al were matinee idols playing distinctive Irish characters such as policemen, gangsters and priests in money-spinning films like White Heat and Going My Way. For the making of the documentary last August it was in Monument Valley that Kelly walked on the desert sands where western director John Ford had created some of his most enduring American icons. Fordâ€â„¢s real name was John Feeney and his parents had come over from Ireland; his father from Spiddal and his mother from Aran. Abbey Theatre players such as Barry Fitzgerald, his brother Arthur Shields and Sarah Allgood had been lured to Hollywood by movie contracts and became part of Fordâ€â„¢s â€Å“stock companyâ€Â. With John Wayne and others they appeared again and again in some of his great movies; How Green Was My Valley, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and the one that persuaded many thousands of Irish Americans to make a trip back home to the Ould Sod, The Quiet Man. It was the rush by Irish-Americans to enlist for military service after Pearl Harbour that finally dispelled the last vestiges of decades of distrust and prejudice against the Irish and the word was that every young man of Irish ancestry born between 1900 and 1927 had joined up. Post-war Hollywood boomed and stars like Grace Kelly and Gene Kelly became the epitome of the American Dream. Hollywood now portrayed such a favourable image of the Irish that it created the political climate for the election of John F Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic president of the United States. Ho-hum, I thought, Hollywood has been given credit for many an accomplishment, including exaggeration and tall tales, but to give it credit for the election of JFK was drawing a particularly long bow. Whatever, Kellyâ€â„¢s documentary was first-rate entertainment and I wish there was more of it â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ Iâ€â„¢M NO shrinking violet and because it peppers so much of our Irish conversation, Iâ€â„¢ve become immune (almost) to strong language. Given too that I was about to attend a play by the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle (who has form when it comes to earthy language) I arrived at Galwayâ€â„¢s Town Hall Theatre on Saturday night well prepared for the most testing of aural assaults. The occasion was the last performance of Doyleâ€â„¢s 1989 comic drama War by the Dunmore Amateur Dramatic Society (DADS) and seeing as weâ€â„¢ve all bought bonhams from the same cart it behoved me to attend. I had been told that the play had been well received by a full attendance the previous evening and, as I now know, such was the case again on Saturday evening. As a drama, War is no masterpiece and I wouldnâ€â„¢t be too put out were I never to see it again. The constant barrage of rough language didnâ€â„¢t help to win friends and influence people but the set was exceptional and it was easy to see why it had won awards for DADS on the festival circuit. During the early stages I kept asking myself what it was all about and it was only later when I concluded it was little other than an obsession with the winning of an inane and pointless table quiz that I began to enjoy it. Complete with a sideshow depicting a married womanâ€â„¢s life of quiet desperation, I found myself admiring ensemble playing at its best and all through the hilarious second act I was laughing away. I couldnâ€â„¢t make head nor tail of a programme that gave the names of the cast in anagram form so itâ€â„¢s best if I mention no names at all. But it proved a most enjoyable occasion and not for the first time DADS made me proud of my home town.