Category Archives: Censorship

Was England the “Most Fruitful Ground” to Show the Irish Film Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn in 1920?

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An earlier blog here looked at two new indigenously produced Irish fiction films released in early 1920 – Aimsir Padraig/In the Days of St Patrick and Rosaleen Dhu – and indicated that a later blog would focus on the third new Irish feature of 1920, Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn. This is that blog. As a surviving work and arguably the most technically accomplished of Irish films up to 1920, Willy Reilly has received gala screenings over the years, including those by the Irish Film Institute (IFI) with a new score composed by Bernard Reilly in 2007 and in several European cities in 2013. It is frequently shown with a short propaganda film usually called the Dáil Bonds or Republican Loan film, which was made alongside Willy Reilly in the grounds of the Hermitage in Rathfarnham, Dublin, a manor house associated with several executed revolutionaries: it was the home of Sarah Curran, secret lover of leader of the 1803 rebellion Robert Emmet, and the house later became the site of St Enda’s School/Scoil Éanna, the Irish-language school founded on radical educational principles by 1916 rebels Padraig Pearse, his brother Willie and Thomas MacDonagh. Before COVID-19 restrictions made it unfeasible, the IFI planned to mark Willy Reilly’s centenary with an accompanied screening at St Enda’s, now a public park and museum to Pearse.

Willy Reilly framegrab Willy intro

The film’s opening shots introduce Brian Magowan as Willy Reilly. Screenshots here and below from the tralier.

Produced by the Film Company of Ireland (FCOI), the most important Irish feature producers of the silent period, Willy Reilly is a largely faithful adaptation of William Carleton’s novel Willy Reilly and His Dear Coleen Bawn: A Tale Founded Upon Fact (1855). Directed by John (Jack) MacDonagh, a theatre director and brother of Thomas MacDonagh, the film is set in Co. Cavan during the 18th century when the Penal Laws restricted Catholics’ legal rights. It tells how Catholic landowner Willy Reilly (Brian Magowan) falls in love with Helen Folliard/the Colleen Bawn (Frances Alexander), the daughter of a misguidedly bigoted Protestant landowner Squire Folliard (Dermot O’Dowd) who will only sanction their marriage if Reilly converts. When Reilly refuses, the Squire reluctantly favours the Colleen Bawn’s other suitor, Sir Robert Whitecraft (Seamus MacBlante/Jim Plant), a persecutor of Catholics, who conspires with local bandit the Red Raparee (James Barrett McDonnell) to prevent Reilly and the Colleen Bawn eloping and to seize control of Reilly’s land by having him declared a criminal. Whitecraft’s plot is eventually defeated, significantly through the aid of Willy’s Protestant neighbours, including Hastings (Frank Walsh) and Reverend Brown, a clergyman who declares in an intertitle: “I am a Minister of God, Reilly, and I abhor persecution, but rising above ever consideration, is the fact that we are fellow Irishmen.”

Willy Reilly framegrab 3

Frances Alexander as Helen Folliard/the Colleen Bawn.

Willy Reilly has received considerable attention from those writing about Irish film history. Among the best of that writing has focused on how the film, despite its historical setting, provides a commentary on the politics of Ireland during the War of Independence (1919-21). This blog will take a different tack by focusing on little-considered details of the film’s genesis and circulation. While much ingenious interpretation of the film has speculated on how audiences would have read certain characters and events, few writers have paused to consider who actually saw the film at the time of its release. The recourse to textual interpretation in lieu of contextual exploration is in many ways understandable because although the film’s survival presents us with an unmistakable artefact from the period, much about the making and showing of the film is obscure. One detail of the film’s circulation that is not particularly obscure but that tends to get overlooked is the fact that it did not premiere at Dublin’s Bohemian Picture Theatre on 19 April 1920 in order to coincide on 24-29 April with the anniversary of the Easter Rising (Rockett, Gibbons and Hill 27). The film did first play before a paying audience in Dublin at the Bohemian on 19-24 April 1920, but this was not the film’s premiere. The film had premiered in Manchester almost four months earlier.

Daily Herald 2 Jan 1920: 2.

This is an intriguing detail. Given how much FCOI had always stressed its all-Irishness, why did it premiere Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn (Ireland: FCOI, 1920), the film that would prove to be its last major feature, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on 5 January 1920? This seemingly anomalous decision right at the start of the film’s public life seems to epitomize the dilemmas of a company with stated ambitions to represent the nation in the commercial art form of cinema. Two years earlier, the company had been so concerned with the significance of place that it had premiered its previous epic, Knocknagow (Ireland: FCOI, 1918), not in any of Ireland’s cities where it could draw its audiences from populations in the 100,000s – at least in Dublin and Belfast – but in Clonmel, a town with a population of little over 10,000 people but which was intimately connected with the novel on which the film was based and with its author and revolutionary, Charles Kickham.

Willy Reilly framegrab Red Raparee

The Red Raparee (James Barret McDonnell) prepares to waylay Squire Folliard.

Clearly a different logic was at work with the distribution and exhibition of Willy Reilly, one that although not entirely clear, appears to have been a concession less to the expression of national – or even local – culture than to FCOI’s need for audiences abroad to ensure its commercial viability. From a business point of view, FCOI appears to have opted for what it hoped would be an opening that would attract large audiences and considerable advertising. In terms of sheer numbers of people, Manchester had a population larger than Belfast and Dublin combined and a substantial Irish community. Why the company did not pursue the even larger audiences in Liverpool, which was regarded as an even more “Irish” city, or indeed, the potentially vast audiences of London, the heart of British cinema, is a mystery.

Willy Reilly framegrab 2

Willy and the Colleen Bawn get close.

Also puzzling is the fact that, rather than securing a deal with a British distribution company, FCOI opted to distribute the films itself. Whether this was a decision based on principle or because no British distributor would take the film at a rate acceptable to FCOI is not clear. Davison’s Film Sales Agency had distributed some of the films FCOI had made in its first production season in 1916, but its 1917 productions appear not to have been released in Britain, except for Knocknagow, which was belatedly trade shown at London’s New Gallery on 10 October 1919 and reviewed in the Bioscope the following week as a “Native Irish production fully flavoured with political sympathies – interesting production needing thorough revision” (“Forthcoming Trade Shows,” “Knocknagow”). It fared little better among Manchester’s exhibitors when shown with Willy Reilly in January 1920. “The Irish film ‘Knocknagow,’” wrote the Bioscope’s “Manchester Notes” columnist, “which is being shown to the public at the Manchester Free Trade Hall this week, is not likely to set the Thames on fire. Many local exhibitors who have visited the hall are unanimous in their lack of praise for the subject.”

Despite this none-too-favourable reception, the release of Knocknagow in Britain does show FCOI functioning by continuing to distribute its existing films as well as in producing and releasing new work such as Willy Reilly. This was a positive sign for the company after a year that had been commercially chaotic and personally tragic for some of its key members, as we’ll explore further. But as well as this, Irish commentators were already preparing to counter a similarly negative reception of Willy Reilly in the British press. “One would hardly think that England would be the most fruitful ground for the presentation of an Irish production, especially such a thoroughly Irish story as Carleton’s ‘Willy Reilly,’” a writer, possibly JAP (Joseph A. Power), in Dublin’s Evening Telegraph commented at the end of January 1920,

and yet the Film Company of Ireland did not hesitate to put the picture to the severe test when, for the first time, it was shown in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, perhaps the largest assembly hall where a picture can be shown in Great Britain, and the marvel is that all records were broken in attendance.  Our Irish company outstripped the success achieved in the same place by such world-known films as “The Life of Kitchener,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “Intolerance,” and “Civilisation.”

This was staunch support for FCOI from the Telegraph and particularly JAP, if it was he, because he had been critical of Knocknagow, particularly its script, on its release in 1918.

While the Manchester premiere suggests that FCOI did expect England to be fruitful ground for Irish films, it might be worth asking who was deciding on the company’s strategy. But lack of documentation make this difficult to establish. Ongoing changes suggest that it would be wrong to emphasize continuity: the FCOI that released Knocknagow into the British market in October 1919 and premiered Willy Reilly in Manchester in January 1920 appears to have been a substantially different entity to the one that had released Knocknagow in Clonmel in January 1917. Founded by James Mark Sullivan and Henry Fitzgibbon in Dublin in March 1916, the company had initially been wound up in order to be restructured in June 1917, on foot of a case taken by Sullivan’s wife, Ellen O’Mara Sullivan. As a substantial investor in a company with considerable debt, O’Mara Sullivan sought to remove Fitzgibbon, whose absence in America with no plans to return had legally paralyzed the company. That action provides early evidence that O’Mara Sullivan was centrally involved in running FCOI in mid-1917, making her Ireland’s pioneering woman film producer. As several writers have shown, O’Mara Sullivan ran the company alongside her husband, with the most substantial documentary evidence coming from their promotion of FCOI films in the United States in mid-1918 to early 1919 (Casella, Felter &Schultz, Schultz & Felter).

However, her tragic death prevented O’Mara Sullivan’s involvement in the production of Willy Reilly. Shipping and civil records show that in mid-January 1919, O’Mara Sullivan returned to Ireland, where she tended one of their children, Donal Dhu, who was seriously ill and subsequently died on 10 April. “The sympathy of the Trade in Ireland will be extended to Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan of the Film Company of Ireland, upon the death of their son James, aged eight,” Fingal wrote, somewhat erroneously, in the Biosocpe (“Irish Notes” 17 Apr). Sullivan arrived back in Ireland a week later, but O’Mara Sullivan herself died of typhoid on 17 May 1919. “The sympathies of the Trade not only in Ireland, but across the Atlantic, will go out to Mr. James Mark Sullivan, managing director of the Film Company of Ireland, on the death of his wife,” commented JAP, in what was her most extensive trade obituary.

It is not many weeks since Mrs. Sullivan had to meet her husband at Liverpool on his return from America (where he had been marketing “Knocknagow,” and other Irish-made films), and break to him the news of the death of their young son. It is possible that the strain of nursing the boy through this last illness had an injurious effect upon Mrs. Sullivan’s own health. She passed away in her native city of Limerick, where her people have been prominent in civic life for generations.

Mrs. Sullivan took a very keen interest in the business of the Film Company of Ireland, and delighted to acquire an intimate knowledge of every detail of production. Her death will delay slightly the company’s projects for this summer, but they will not be abandoned. (“Irish Notes” 5 Jun.).

Some pre-production work had been undertaken by the time of the O’Mara Sullivan’s death, but it seems unlikely that she or Sullivan can have been much involved at that point given her own illness and given the recent death of their son. Nevertheless, it was to Sullivan’s imminent arrival back in Ireland and FCOI’s activities during the summer production season that Fingal devoted much of a Bioscope “Irish Notes” column on 24 April. “Already the Film Co. of Ireland are engaging their artists,” it revealed. “Bryan McGowan, whose Matt the Thrasher was a feature of the ‘Knocknagow’ film, Breffni O’Rorke one of the foremost Irish actors who has many English and Scottish tours to his credit, and Mrs. O’Rorke are amongst the players who will appear in this firm’s next productions.” These few details were all Fingal knew of the production at this stage, not even a title was mentioned, and some of these casting decisions would turn out to be mistaken or to have changed by the time of shooting. Although Brian Magowan would star as Willy Reilly, neither Breffni O’Rorke nor his wife Alice Cole would feature.

Few other details of the production were mentioned in the press during the summer of 1919. This contrasts markedly to Norman Whitten’s generation of publicity during the making of Aimsir Padraig/In the Days of St Patrick in the same period, when Whitten courted the press even to the extent of having journalists act in crowd scenes and was rewarded with a steady stream of mentions in newspapers throughout the production period. A very different dynamic of secrecy existed around the set of Willy Reilly and FCOI in general. This is usually explained by the fact that several members of the cast and company were well-known Republican activists associated with Sinn Féin and the Volunteers/IRA at a time when the authorities were attempting to suppress the organization. One of the most prominent was director John MacDonagh, who also appeared on screen as Tom the Fool. MacDonagh was an Irish Volunteer who had fought under the command of his brother Thomas and John McBride in Jacob’s Factory during the 1916 Rising. When Thomas had been executed along with McBride and 12 other leaders, John had been imprisoned in Britain along with many other Volunteers. John’s 1951 statement to the Bureau of Military History is informative on this period of his life (BMH WS0532).

Dail Bonds Group1

The “Interesting Group of Sinn Fein Notabilities” who gathered to be filmed buying Dáil bonds from Michael Collins (foregroud centre). The location on the steps of St Enda’s was imbued with republican significance, underlined even by the furniture, the table being “the block upon which Robert Emmet was beheaded.” Framegrab from Dáil Bonds.

MacDonagh’s writings about the filming of Willy Reilly offer the only extant account of what happened on set and among the few of what happened afterwards. Some of his reminiscences are quite well known, but others have remained underexplored. The well-known ones appeared as the article “Film Production in Ireland in the Early Days” in a pamphlet published by Liam O’Leary in 1976. In it, MacDonagh discusses his experiences as a scriptwriter in New York in the early 1910s before coming back to Ireland and shooting Willy Reilly. The most quoted of these stories is not about Willy Reilly itself but the Dáil Bonds film, which advertised the sale of bonds to support the Dáil, the illegal assembly founded by Irish republicans and nationalists in early 1919. The film features Michael Collins selling the bonds to the elected members of Sinn Féin and several of the widows and female relatives, as the film presents them, of executed leaders of the 1916 Rising. MacDonagh reveals that the two films were made at the same time at St Enda’s because he came to shoot Dáil Bonds still dressed in the costume and makeup of Tom the Fool and attempted to play a joke on Collins and Arthur Griffith.

Dail Bonds Kathleen Clarke

Kathleen Clarke, referred to in an intertitle as the “Widow of Tom Clarke,” was among several prominent women Republicans who featured in the Dáil Bonds film.

In many ways a straightforward advertising and propaganda film, Dáil Bonds is remarkable not only for showing many of the major Irish republican figures of the period but also for the far-from-straightforward way in which it was distributed and exhibited. “In those dangerous and exciting times no cinema owner wold dare risk exhibiting the Republican Loan films,” MacDonagh explains,

so it was planned for a few volunteers in fast cars to visit certain cinemas, rush the operator’s box, and, at gun-point force the operator to take off the film he was showing, and put the Loan Film. On the appointed night, all went smoothly as arranged, and the volunteers got safely away before the British forces discovered the plot. (MacDonagh 11.)

Dail Bonds Fogarty Letter 1

The Dáil Bonds film features a letter from Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, showing the support of senior members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy.

Fascinating as this account is, its anecdotal nature makes it difficult to discern when it occurred, how widespread the practice was and whether it happened on more than one night as is implied here. The film itself offers one clue as to its date. In the opening shots, Collins reads a letter from Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe that appears on screen showing the date of 8 October 1919, dating the filming to sometime after this in late 1919. One other witness corroborates this. As part of his statement to the Bureau of Military History, John Plunkett, brother of executed 1916 leader Joseph Plunkett, reveals that “in the autumn of 1919, probably in November, I was asked – I can’t remember by whom – to collect a Dáil Loan propaganda film from Joe McDonagh who with his brother Jack and some others had been running a company called the Film Company of Ireland” (BMH WS0865 12).

Dail Bonds Joseph MacDonagh

Among the elected members of Sinn Féin who buy bonds in the film is MacDonagh brother, Joseph MacDonagh, also a member of FCOI.

Plunkett had some knowledge of FCOI, even claiming to have taken a small part, along with another brother George, in When Love Came to Gavan Burke. He had a different role in relation to Dáil Bonds, overseeing its distribution in Kerry. “I was asked,” he claims, “to take the film to Killarney and Cahirciveen and, as far as possible to arrange for its showing in any other worthwhile towns. I know it was also shown in Listowel.” In Killarney, he liaised with Dick Fitzgerald and Tom Cooper, the latter of whom “afterwards produced the film dealing with the Tan war, called the ‘Dawn,’” leaving the film with Cooper to have it shown in Listowel some days later. He notes that the Kerry distribution operation was relatively successful in comparison to some other unspecified parts of Ireland, where “those who went round with the film were unsuccessful in having it shown” (BMH WS0865 13). From this account, it seems that Dáil Bonds had a more varied circulation than MacDonagh’s story suggests, and it is unlikely that he knew much of what went on in these local contexts.

In his published account, MacDonagh discusses his own role in exhibiting Willy Reilly in Scotland, to which we will return, but some of his unpublished manuscripts held in the National Library’s Liam O’Leary Archive (LOLA) have more to say about the structure of FCOI in later 1919 and Sullivan’s role as producer. Sullivan, he writes, “was a man of great mental and physical energy, and his hustling methods swept people off their feet. He got a group of Irishmen together, my brother Joe, JJ Walsh, minister of posts in the 1st Free state govt, Senator George Nesbitt, and Dan Harrigan, a Glaswegian bookmaker” (MS 50,000/272/44). These must be the directors of the company in early or mid-1919 after Sullivan’s return to Ireland and the death of O’Mara Sullivan.

‎Willy Reilly Theatre Royal LL 19 Apr 1920p3

Ad for Willy Reilly at Limerick’s Theatre Royal, where it shared a bill with an Irish Events newsreel of the release of Sinn Féin prisoners who had been on hunger strike at Mountjoy prison, a film that underlines the difficulties the Republican directors of FCOI faced. Limerick Leader 19 Apr. 1920: 3.

If the MacDonaghs and these other new collaborators were avowedly Republican, Sullivan also drew on his contacts in Ireland’s sporting world. An article in Sport on the shows at Limerick’s Theatre Royal in mid-April 1920 drew readers attention to the number of sportsmen in the cast, including Nesbitt, who

was for many years a prominent member of Bective Rangers F.C. Mr Hastings is portrayed by Frank Walsh, ex-light-weight champion of Ireland. Jim Plant and James Barret McDonnell, Sir Robert Whitecraft and the Red Rapparee respectively, need no introduction to Irish supporters. J. Nugent and P. Day, celebrated the world over as purveyors of the thoroughbred, helped not a little by courteously placing their stables at the disposal of the producers and anybody fortunate enough to see the film this week in Limerick will appreciate the leaping blood of Mr. Hasting’s mount in his ride across country to save the Colleen Bawn from Sir Robert Whitecraft.” (“Theatrical Topics” 10 Apr.).

Willy Reilly Whitecraft at Willy house

Sir Robert Whitecraft (Jim Plant) orders his soldiers to raid Willy Reilly’s house.

MacDonagh says of his own role that “I was to write scenarios and direct the filming with Sullivan” and then crosses out the “with Sullivan” by hand. He presents Sullivan as an initiator of projects that he claimed would make his collaborators rich but that were subsequently completed despite his profligacy. “We finished making our first film, ‘Willie Rielly,’” he writes, “in spite of Sullivan’s orgies or entertainment, and lavish spending of money. However, as we were soon all to make thousands, he was given a free hand, and often I had a job getting the people ‘on location’ after a particularly riotous night.” This was illustrated when the company travelled to London to film the interiors at the Waltardaw studios in Walthamstow, where “Sullivan had all the English staff his slaves by knocking off in the middle of every shot for refreshments” and partied with actor Jim Plant, “a notorious Dublin character.” Sullivan had told FCOI investors that “he had fixed up with an American co to take all our films” but then Willy Reilly was finished and sent to America “though it was exhibited extensively, we never succeeded in collecting a cent, and suffered a heavy loss” (MS 50,000/272/44).

This does not sound like FCOI was keeping a low profile during production, but MacDonagh’s published article insists that “we were working with great difficulties at that time, tension in the city and country was mounting daily. Our directors were ‘on the run’” (MacDonagh 11). Although the exact period is not specified here in an article possibly composed in the 1940s and published in the 1970s decades after the events, he may be referring to the end of 1919 and start of 1920 and to the increasing conflict of the War of Independence. However secretive, the release of Dáil Bonds may also have made him a target. In this context, FCOI faced difficulties in distributing Willy Reilly, and MacDonagh was given a warning. “Michael Staines, who later became the first Commissioner of Police under the Free State Government, came to tell me that my name was on a list for arrest,” he reveals, “and advised me to lie low, so it was fixed for me to go on a cattle boat to Gourock, Scotland. We were showing our films in Scottish Town Halls in various cities and towns at the time” (ibid.).

Map of Willy Reilly exhibition in Britain in 1920

Google map showing the towns and cities in England and Scotland in which shows of Willy Reilly were advertised in 1920. Full map here.

Ads and notices in local newspapers allow us to trace something of the film’s exhibition in the north of England and Scotland in 1920. After the Manchester Free Trade Hall shows on 5-10 January, Willy Reilly and Knocknagow were both shown at Sunderland’s Victoria Hall for the week of 2-7 February. Although the ads in Sunderland were not explicit about this, it is likely, because this is the pattern followed elsewhere, that Willy Reilly played for the first three days of the week, and Knocknagow played for the second three. The following week, the films were at Burslem’s Queen’s Hall. There is then a gap in the ads until the week containing St Patrick’s Day (17 March), when the first Scottish shows were advertised. Willy Reilly played at Motherwell’s Town Hall from 15-17 March, with Knocknagow featuring there on 18 March. The following week, Willy Reilly played 22-24 March at Port Glasgow’s Town Hall, with Knocknagow playing later in the week on 27 March. That same week, Tipperary’s Tivoli Theatre had the first Irish public showings of Willy Reilly for three days beginning 25 March. The film was then advertised for a three-day run at Galway’s Empire Theatre on 4-6 April, followed by Easter 1916 anniversary week runs in the week beginning 19 April at Dublin’s Bohemian, Limerick’s Theatre Royal, Sligo’s Picture Theatre and Derry’s Empire.

Willy Reilly Motherwell Times 12 Mar 1920p1

This ad for FCOI films at Motherwell’s Town Hall shows the priority given to Willy Reilly, which was typically shown on the first three days of a run, with Knocknagow featuring for a fourth day or in the second three days of a week-long run. Motherwell Times 12 Mar. 1920: 1.

At the end of April, attention returned to Scotland and the north of England with a screening of Willy Reilly headlining an evening of Irish-themed entertainment in aid of the YMS at Kilmarnock’s Palace Theatre on 30 April. A four-day run at Coatbridge’s Town Hall began on 5 May, followed by a week-long run at Burnley’s Mechanics’ Institute beginning on 17 May. Beginning on 21 May Liverpudlians finally had a chance to see the FCOI films when Picton Hall hosted three days of Willy Reilly followed by three days of Knocknagow. From 21 May, Liverpudlians finally had a chance to see the FCOI films when Picton Hall hosted three days of Willy Reilly followed by three days of Knocknagow. And on 21-23 June, Kilmarnock’s Empire Picture House featured Willy Reilly. The currently digitized newspapers show no ads for the rest of the summer, but there were autumn screenings at Edinburgh’s Picturedrome (c. 18 September), Kirkintilloch’s Town Hall (8 October) and the Pavilion in Forfar (25 November).

Undoubtedly, this does not account for all the British screening of Willy Reilly in 1920. MacDonagh, for example, “remember[s] giving a special matinee for school children in the Paisley town hall,” but no newspaper record of it appears to survive (MacDonagh 11). He gives few other details of the Paisley show, but he spends some time describing a marketing coup of his own for St Patrick’s Day. “I got the idea of presenting a sprig of shamrock straight from Ireland to every member of the audience on the even of the festival,” he comments of a strategy hardly novel but nonetheless effective, the shamrock being supplied from Ireland by JJ Walsh. MacDonagh claims that its success allowed him to return to Ireland by securing a distributor in Scotland, when the manager of the agency “saw the crowds fighting to get in. […] He knew nothing about the shamrock, but took on the agency for Scotland and I came home” (MacDonagh 12). If his memory is accurate, this must have occurred during the run at Motherwell.

Willy Reilly Boh ET 19 Apr 1920p2

Dublin’s Bohemian Picture Theatre was one of the first Irish cinemas to show Willy Reilly.Evening Telegraph 19 Apr. 1920: 2.

We know virtually nothing about what audiences in Scotland and the north of England thought of Willy Reilly in 1920, but we do know that they were the first to see this new Irish film. This seems to have happened because of chaotic management of FCOI in Ireland, some of which arose from the difficulties the directors had in running a company while also engaging in revolutionary politics. For MacDonagh, certainly, Scotland, was a kind of asylum, and therefore fruitful ground in which to show his new film, Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn, in 1920.

References

BMH WS0532. Dublin, Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 532: John MacDonagh. <http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/bureau-of-military-history-1913-1921/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0532.pdf>

BMH WS0865. Dublin, Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 865: John Plunkett. <http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/bureau-of-military-history-1913-1921/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0865.pdf>

Casella, Donna. “Ellen O’Mara Sullivan.” Women Film Pioneers Project. <https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ellen-omara-sullivan/>

Felter, Maryann, and Daniel Schultz. “James Mark Sullivan and the Film Company of Ireland.” New Hibernia Review 8:2 (Summer 2004): 24-40.

“Film Company of Ireland: Screening of ‘Willy Reilly.’” Dublin Evening Mail 3 Jan. 1920: 3.

“Forthcoming Trade Shows.” Bioscope 2 Oct. 1919: 118.

“Irish Notes.” Bioscope 17 Apr. 1919: 105; 24 Apr. 1919: 78; 5 Jun. 1919: 98.

“Knocknagow.” Bioscope 16 Oct. 1919: 58.

MacDonagh, John. “Film Production in Ireland in the Early Days.” Cinema and Ireland, 1895-1976, edited by Liam O’Leary. Dublin Arts Festival, 1976: 10-12.

“Manchester Notes.” Bioscope 15 Jan. 1920: 109.

MS 50,000/272/44. “Film Company of Ireland.” Liam O’Leary Archive, National Library of Ireland.

“Post and Paddock.” Sport 13 Dec. 1919: 1; 10 Jan. 1920: 1.

Rhodes, Gary D. “The Film Company of Ireland and Irish-American Press.” Screening the Past 33 (2012) <http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/02/the-film-company-of-ireland-and-the-irish-american-press/>

Rockett, Kevin, Luke Gibbons and John Hill. Cinema and Ireland. London: Croom Helm, 1987.

Schultz, Dan, and Maryanne Felter. “The Making of an Irish Nationalist: James Mark Sullivan and the Film Company of Ireland in America.” Screening the Past 33 (2012). <http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/02/the-making-of-an-irish-nationalist/>

“St. Joseph’s Y.M.S. Entertainment.” Kilmarnock Herald 30 Apr. 1920: 2.

“Theatrical Topics.” Sport 10 Apr. 1920: 10.

“Features Resembling a Sensational Cinema Story”: Political Violence in Irish Cinema in February 1920

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Part of the 1911 Census return for Lena (here: Elenia) Johnson and her family. Full record available from the National Archives of Ireland: http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai002751044/.

Political violence associated with the Irish War of Independence impinged on Irish cinema with force in February 1920. It did so in a number of ways, most tragically in the death of cinema attendant Lena Johnson but also in the use of cinema in describing the violence that was occurring on the streets. For newspapers, cinema had become the ready metaphor to describe incidents of heightened excitement or danger, as is evident in the Irish Independent’s description on 26 February of police and military attempts to recapture army deserters as “incidents worthy of a cinema episode” (“Exciting Chase after Deserters”). Why the men deserted is not clear, but the episode had reached the pinnacle of excitement in the newspaper account when the deserters were identified at Dublin’s port, tried to get away across the rail lines, and a group of them “had a miraculous escape from being run over by a passing train.” Chases, hairbreadth escapes and the train as the epitome of human frailty in the face of modern technology had long been the cinema’s stock-in-trade.

Irish Independent 7 Feb. 1920: 4.

What was new now was the metaphor’s application to conflict between the police and British army, on the one hand, and Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers, on the other. On 7 February 1920, the Independent reported on an incident in which an armed detective chased a man who pointed a revolver at him in the street into a shop in Dublin’s Coombe and was himself restrained by the shop keeper who said he mistook the detective for an armed robber. The incident “had features resembling a sensational cinema story,” the report surmised (“Sensational City Scene”). If it was a sensational cinema story, that story now concerned the escalating violence of the War of Independence in which armed conflict in the streets of Ireland’s cities, as well as skirmishes in the countryside, were becoming increasingly common. And the story had an openly political character. Whoever the initial man with the revolver had been, shop keeper Patrick Horan, “an ex-soldier wearing the 1915 ribbon,” and his mother Mrs Donnelly, who was serving in the shop, were identified by the detective as Sinn Fein supporters “and they have obstructed me in the discharge of my duty.” Horan’s identification as a decorated soldier and a Sinn Féin supporter suggests some of the complexities of the situation.

Freeman’s Journal 13 Feb. 1920: 3.

Writers in the Independent was not alone in implicating cinema in accounts of political violence. Describing an incident in Dublin in mid-February, the Freeman’s Journal suggested that the cinema had so come to dominate the ways that even experienced journalists saw the world that actual violent confrontations between Irish republican forces and those of the British state was distorted and exaggerated beyond credibility. Seeking to correct Irish and British press reports of a supposed attack by a large number of armed Irish Volunteers on a heavily guarded escort bringing the court-martialled Sinn Féin MP Robert Barton to prison, the reporter observed that accounts of the alleged incident made the “military act like cinema stars” (“North Side Hold-Up”). The incident was “like a cinema scene,” no doubt a sensational one. “Eyewitnesses described the scene,” the writer commented, “which indeed had something in it to stir the imagination of a generation accustomed to the thrilling scenarios of the film-play dramatists.” Nevertheless, s/he claimed that while an attack on a car carrying military personnel did occur, all aspects of the story as reported were exaggerated and were not attributable to major republican groups. “The facts of the affair subdue the high lights, and raise the substantial doubt which, while leaving the authors of the incident in obscurity, utterly demolish the suggestion that Irish Volunteers or any similar organisation was concerned in it. […] There is something wrong with the story.”

Limerick Leader 4 Feb. 1920: 3.

In the case of the shooting of Lena Johnson in Limerick on 2 February, the interaction between cinema and the War of Independence were far from these metaphorical references to stardom and thrilling scenarios. A cinema attendant in her 20s who lived with her family in Thomondgate, Johnson was crossing Sarsfield Bridge on her way home from work at the Coliseum between 10.30 and 11pm when she was hit by a stray bullet fired indiscriminately at a taunting crowd by members of the RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary). Much public sympathy was shown to Johnson and to publican Richard O’Dwyer, the two people fatally shot that night, and who had had no part in any demonstration in the streets. Johnson’s funeral “was one of the most impressive funerals that has taken place in Limerick for a number of years, and all classes joined in paying fitting tribute to a young lady who enjoyed general popularly, and whose death under such peculiarly sad circumstances produced universal grief” (“Limerick Shootings”).

Limerick Echo 17 Feb. 1920: 3.

At the subsequent inquest, the RIC witnesses tried to blame British soldiers stationed in the city for firing on the crowd after an armed man had fired on them first, and much of the coverage of the inquest focused on the contradictions between the evidence of the police and the military. The inquest jury, however, rejected the police’s attempts at exculpation and found “that Helena Johnson met her death by shock, the results of the effect of a bullet wound caused by a rifle bullet fired by police without orders from their superiors, which we strongly condemn, because there was no provocation for what the jury consider murder in the case of Helena Johnson” (“Contradictory”).

Dublin Evening Mail 21 Feb. 1920: 3.

Cinema and those associated with it – including such workers as Lena Johnson, audiences and filmmakers – were only rarely the targets of fighting during the War of Independence. Like the population at large, however, those involved in cinema faced the increasing dangers and restrictions of a society openly in conflict, and these affected how they went about their ordinary activities. One of the new restrictions introduced to Dublin in February 1920 was a curfew between midnight and 5am. Announced by Major-General Gerald Farrell Boyd, the General Officer Commanding the Dublin District, it was made under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), many of whose wartime powers remained in use in Ireland. Describing the first night of martial law, the Freeman’s Journal observed that “for some time before the military put in an appearance the streets were practically deserted. Up to 11 o’clock, however, the city might be said to have worn its normal aspect. When the theatres, picture houses and other places of amusement emptied themselves there were the customary scenes of animation” (“Plunged into Complete Darkness”).

Censorship restrictions had long limited what Irish filmmaker could portray. Although indigenous production companies were making films at the time, they were not telling the contemporary sensational stories of life in Ireland, regardless of how much the press touted these stories’ cinematic character. Early 1920 saw the release of two of the major Irish feature films of the silent period: the General Film Supply’s In the Days of St Patrick/Aimsir Padraig and the Film Company of Ireland’s Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn, which will shortly receive their due attention here in blogs to mark the centenaries of their releases. It is worth noting, however, that these were historical dramas because when these companies turned to the depiction of the politics of contemporary Ireland, their films were seized by the authorities.

None of these factors were affecting the boom in cinema building in early 1920, but some local councils did see that boom as detrimental to the much-needed construction of housing. At a meeting of Belfast Borough Council on 2 February 1920, Councillor J. Baird sought unsuccessfully to halt “the erection of motor garages, public-houses, picture theatres, factories, extensions of shops and other buildings which could be described as luxuries until the people of the city were supplied with the necessary housing accommodation” (“The Housing Problem”). A meeting of Cork Corporation on 1 March 1920 took a similar view of the cinema-licence application by “three ladies and a gentleman who had made a little capital in Cork, and who wished to invest it in Cork for the benefit of the workingmen of the city” by opening a cinema at 1-2 Winthrop Street (”Cork Corporation”). Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain “objected to sanctioning luxury entertainment whilst there were people in the city who hadn’t houses to live in.” Nevertheless, the Corporation’s Law and Finance Committee chaired by MacCurtain subsequently granted a licence not only to those applicants but also to four others for new cinemas at 80-82 Patrick Street, 40-42 Grand Parade, another in Winthrop Street and 26 Cook Street (“Cinema Licences in Cork”).

MacCurtain’s murder by the RIC on 20 March 1920 had nothing to do with these decisions, but it was certainly part of the political violence that also impinged on Irish cinema a century ago.

References

“Cinema Licences in Cork.” Evening Echo 2 Mar. 1920: 3.

“Contradictory: Inquest on Miss Johnson.” Limerick Echo 17 Feb. 1920: 3.

“Cork Corporation.” Cork Examiner 2 Mar. 1920: 7.

“Exciting Chase after Deserters.” Irish Independent 26 Feb. 1920: 6.

“The Housing Problem: Shortage in Belfast.” Belfast News-Letter 3 Feb. 1920: 5.

“Limerick Shootings: Funerals of the Victims.” Limerick Leader 6 Feb. 1920: 3.

“The North Side Hold-Up: Military Act Like Cinema Stars.” Freeman’s Journal 13 Feb. 1920: 3.

“Plunged into Complete Darkness: Military Patrols Move Through Deserted Streets.” Freeman’s Journal 24 Feb. 1920: 3.

“Police Fired without Orders or Provocation.” Freeman’s Journal 14 Feb. 1920: 5.

“Sensational City Scene: Commotion in a Shop.” Irish Independent 7 Feb. 1920: 4.

“Tragic Incidents Further Described.” Cork Examiner 5 Feb. 1920: 5

“A Photo-Play of Unique National Interest”: Seeing Knocknagow in Irish Cinemas, January-April 1918

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On 22 April 1918, Knocknagow  (Ireland: FCOI, 1918) opened at Dublin’s Empire Theatre after a tour of many of Ireland’s towns and cities.

Ad for Knocknagow in the Irish Limelight Feb. 1918: 10-11.

In inviting Irish exhibitors to the trade show of the long-awaited Knocknagow on 6 February 1918 at Dublin’s Sackville Street Picture House, the Film Company of Ireland (FCOI) described the film as “a photo-play of unique national interest.” Knocknagow would become the most significant film made in Ireland during the silent period. Appearing just over two months after the three-reel comedy Rafferty’s Rise, Knocknagow was very different from anything FCOI had yet released. An epic nine-reel (8,700-feet or 2 hours 25 minutes at 16fps) adaptation of the best-selling Irish novel of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Knocknagow was by far the FCOI’s most ambitious work to date. Part of the national interest of the film may have been in making accessible a novel that some critics have argued was very widely bought but very little read (Donovan). Indeed, when in August 1917 the film was announced and a stage adaptation was proving popular, the Evening Herald’s Man About Town wondered “what the opinion of the author of Knocknagow would be if he saw his novel on the cinema screen, or its dramatized version drawing crowded houses in the theatres throughout the country.”

Tailor Phil Lahy (Arthur Shields) fits out Mat the Thrasher (Brian Magowan) for a new coat in Knocknagow. Image and essays on the film available here.

One of the things he would likely have thought is that the film was very selective in what it took from the novel. “The story meanders along through over six hundred pages its placidity disturbed by very little of what the playwright dubs ‘action,’” the Evening Telegraph critic JAP noted of the novel in his review of the trade show.

To extract from the [novel’s] 600 pages enough incidents for a photoplay – which, above all things, must have virile action, – and to contrive that there should be sufficient continuity to sustain interest throughout a half-dozen reels, was a task to daunt the most expert scenario writer. (“Gossip of the Day.”)

Although impressed by the film in other ways, particularly the acting, JAP did not seem to think that the scenario attributed to Mrs. N. T. Patton had been particularly successful in delivering virile action. Indeed, two weeks later, although no longer referring to Knocknagow, he argued that “the best books should not be filmed. To turn a book into a photo-play must be always an unsatisfactory business” (27 Feb.). However, in the trade-show review, he advised that “the action could be brisked up by sub-editing it down from eight reels to six, the sub-titles would be improved by more frequent quotations from the book and better choice of incidents would have helped to get more of the ‘atmosphere.’”

J.M. Carre as the villainous land agent Beresford Pender.

The version of Knocknagow that survives today is about an hour shorter than the original cut. As a result, it is difficult to say exactly what Irish audiences saw in early 1918, but a general description probably captures many of its essential features. Set in 1848, the film concerns the relationships among a large cast of characters who live on or adjacent to the lands of the absentee landlord Sir Garrett Butler, particularly in the village of Kilthubber and the hamlet of Knocknagow. Prominent among these are Mat “the Thrasher” Donovan (Brian Magowan); the tailor Phil Lahy (Arthur Shields), whose sickly daughter Nora (Kathleen Murphy) is betrothed to turfman Billy Heffernan (Breffni O’Rourke); large tenant farmer Maurice Kearney (Dermot O’Dowd) whose daughter Mary Kearney (Nora Clancy) is attracted to theology student Arthur O’Connor (Fred O’Donovan, who also directed); and villainous land agent Beresford Pender (J.M. Carre), who schemes to remove tenants from the land to make way for more lucrative cattle grazing. The film interweaves scenes of rural work and leisure (ploughing, tailoring, Christmas celebrations, a wedding, a hurling match, a fair) with more strongly plotted sequences, such as the developing love stories or Pender’s strategies to evict certain tenants and frame Mat for robbery. “With a true appreciation of the artistic,” the reviewer in Cavan’s Anglo-Celt contended

the various degrees of tone have been lifted from the novel, and placed on the screen just as Kickham would have done it himself. The happy peasantry, the prowess of the youth at the hurling match, the hammer-throwing contest, the unexpected “hunt,” the love scenes and the comedy – the life as it was before the agent of the absentee landlord came like a dark shadow on the scene, and with crowbar and torch, laid sweet Knocknagow in ruins – all were depicted by the very perfect actors who made up the cast. (“‘Knocknagow’ on the Film.”)

Pender’s eviction of the Brians, a farm labouring family, is depicted in detail, with titles superimposed on the images of the land agent dancing before their burning cottage.

Apart from transposing a bestselling Irish novel into an accessible screen format, two other definitions of “national interest” seem to be particularly relevant to thinking about the release of Knocknagow in early 1918: the commitment to local exhibition and the politics of Irish nationalism. The first of these is illustrated by the fact that the trade show had, unusually, followed rather than preceded a special premiere run in Clonmel from 30 January to 2 February, and the film’s first run after the trade show would not be in the cities of Dublin or Belfast but in Carlow on 18-19 February. The Clonmel opening was designed to acknowledge that the film had been shot almost entirely in the Tipperary locations of Clonmel and Mullinahone associated with Kickham’s source novel. However, the fact that audiences not only in Clonmel and Carlow but also in many other small towns saw the film before it opened to the public in Dublin on 22 April underscores FCOI’s commitment to a definition of national interest that associated it first and foremost with small-town Ireland.

The importance of the Tipperary landscape is emphasized at several points of the film, including a sequence of iris shots in which Mat says farewell to Ireland as he makes ready to emigrate.

Other aspects of the exhibition of Knocknagow deserve discussion, but the 22 April opening date of the film in Dublin also marked a turning point in Irish national politics. That day was flanked by two days of demonstrations against the conscription of Irish men into the British army. Sunday, 21 April represented a particularly Catholic church influenced protest, with mass meeting and fiery speeches in every parish in the country, while Tuesday, 23 April was the day chosen by trade unions for a general strike that meant, among other things, that “there were neither newspapers nor cinema shows” during a “universal cessation of work throughout Nationalist Ireland” (“Labour’s Protest”). The British government’s determination to extend conscription to Ireland would finally succeed in uniting the warring factions of Irish nationalism against it.

Newsreel special of the by-election in South Armagh, Dublin Evening Mail 4 Feb 1918: 2.

This turning point of the conscription crisis came after the film’s release in much of the country, however, and it was in a political context of the rise of Sinn Féin that the film was produced and initially exhibited. In late 1917 and early 1918, the long stable link between the achievement of nationhood and the Home Rule of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) was severely under threat from the vision of a more radical independence offered in the wake of the 1916 Rising by the new Sinn Féin party. The set pieces of this struggle from the time Knocknagow began shooting in Tipperary in the early summer of 1917 and through the period of its exhibition in late winter and spring 1918 were a series of six by-elections in which Sinn Féin ran candidates in constituencies where the IPP had previously held Westminster seats, winning three of them. After losing four seats in all to Sinn Féin in 1917, the IPP may have seemed to be regaining the momentum by winning the three by-elections in early 1918, but one of these included the Waterford seat left vacant by the death on 6 March of the man most associated with Home Rule, IPP leader John Redmond. Cinema audiences could follow these developments through the newsreel footage of the by-elections and Redmond’s funeral provided by Irish Events and exhibitors such as William Kay of Dublin’s Rotunda who filmed these events.

General Film Supply sought sales of its film of the Funeral of the Late John Redmond, M.P. beyond its usual Irish Events network by placing this ad with the entertainment ads in the Evening Telegraph of 11-12 Mar. 1918.

As well as these party-political events, Knocknagow was released in a country that was experiencing increasing incidents of local unrest of many kinds, with a large number of prosecutions for cattle driving and for illegal drilling by Irish Volunteers, as well as a hunger strike by Sinn Féin prisoners in Mountjoy Jail. In early March, County Clare was placed under martial law, and Major-General W. Fry issued a proclamation “prohibiting the holding of any meeting or procession within the Dublin Metropolitan Police Area between March 6 and March 27,” a period that included St. Patrick’s Day (“Proclamation”). In one high-profile case, men arrested for illegal drilling in Dundalk refused to recognize the court and sang “The Soldier’s Song” to disrupt proceedings. This tactic became so common that one defendant (Michael Murray) in a Clare cattle-driving case refused to recognize “this concert” (“Court Scene”). However, when during the Dundalk case, a variety company sang the same “Sinn Féin” songs at one of the local picture house, a section of the audience left in protest (“Round Up”). More seriously, members of an audience at Limerick’s Tivoli Picture House on 4 March became victims of violence when 15 to 18 soldiers who had been involved in running battles with young men in the street burst into the auditorium and attacked the crowded audience at random with sticks and truncheons, injuring many, including the musical director (“Soldiers & People in Conflict”).

Mat leads the Knocknagow hurling team for a match that the Derry Journal reviewer thought was “a topsy-turvey affair, resembling a rugby scramble more than a game of caman” (“‘Knock-na-Gow’ at the Opera House”). Some more on that aspect of the film here.

In these circumstances in which, it seems, politics could irrupt into the auditorium at any moment, Knocknagow looks like quite an indirect, even tame intervention. The FCOI’s choice of Kickham’s novel as the basis for its first landmark film seems, on the one hand, an overtly nationalist statement: its author was a former president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and one of the best known Irish revolutionaries of the latter half of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the nature of the book – rich in detail of Irish country life in the 1840s but also sprawling and sentimental rather than overtly political – was such that it could be adapted without courting political controversy. As such, the film contrasts with the films made in Ireland between 1910 and 1914 by US filmmakers Sidney Olcott and Gene Gauntier for Kalem and subsequently their own production companies, some of which openly feature armed political rebellion against Britain, albeit that these films are also set in the past.

ArthurO’Connor and Mary Kearney pursue their romance.

This is not to argue that FCOI was politically conservative but that the company had to negotiate strict censorship. The attempt to show Ireland a Nation (US: Macnamara, 1914) in Dublin in January 1917 or even the more recent controversy over the potential banning of the Finn Varra Maa pantomime had shown that to have produced a film that the authorities judged to have been overtly nationalistic would undoubtedly have been to see the film immediately banned under the particularly strict wartime censorship provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act. Apart from anything else, the banning of Knocknagow would have been a financial disaster for the already struggling FCOI.

Scenario competition in Irish Limelight Dec 1917: 11.

In this context, Kickham’s work took on a renewed importance in its ability to subtly re-articulate a familiar set of representations in a political way through its association with the author’s republicanism. Despite its setting in the mid-19th century, Knocknagow still resonated with Irish audiences, as the popularity of the stage adaptation shows. And 1918 would be the year of Kickham film adaptations: with a similar setting in time and place, Kickham’s other major novel Sally Cavanagh would be adapted by J. A. McDonald for a scenario competition run by the Irish Limelight in early 1918. Given that Knocknagow’s director Fred O’Donovan joined Limelight editor Jack Warren in judging the competition, it is perhaps not surprising that McDonald’s scenario, Untenanted Graves, won, but its seems never to have been produced (“Untenanted Graves”).

Films made in Ireland by US filmmakers Sidney Olcott and Gene Gauntier for Kalem dominated this list of Irish films available to Irish exhibitors through Dublin-based General Film Supply; Irish Limelight Dec. 1917: 18.

As the Kickham film that was actually made, Knocknagow in itself, and in the company’s rhetoric around it, emphasized its embeddedness in particular Irish locations that were different from the ones popularized by previous, foreign filmmakers in Ireland, especially the Killarney of the enduringly popular Olcott-Gauntier films. Unlike Olcott and Gauntier, the FCOI filmmakers were – predominantly – Irish born, and the company was based in Dublin. In keeping with this rhetoric, local exhibition was of more than usual importance to Knocknagow. FCOI had opened previous films in regional picture houses, despite the claim by the Dame Street Picture Theatre in Dublin that all the company’s productions could be seen there first. But for Knocknagow, regional exhibition was a part of its national significance.

Ad for premiere of Knocknagow at Magner’s Theatre, Clonmel; Nationalist 26 Jan. 1918: 6.

Indeed, successful regional exhibition in Ireland was to be part of the promotion of the film with audiences and exhibitors abroad. On 13 April, while Knocknagow was showing in Derry, Dublin’s Evening Herald published a brief interview by its drama critic Jacques with FCOI producer James Mark Sullivan. Sullivan was on the cusp of bringing the FCOI films to America (on the film in America, see here and here), and Jacques quoted him on the company’s intentions:

“We desire,” he says, “to show Ireland sympathetically; to get away from the clay pipe and the knee breeches; to show Ireland’s rural life, with pride in the same; to show Ireland’s metropolitan life intelligently, depicting the men and women of the 20th century – in short, Ireland at its best in every walk of human endeavour.”

This may have been his desire but if it had any basis in a reality beyond advertising rhetoric, it must have referred to the earlier FCOI films and not Knocknagow. Knocknagow persisted in representing the Irish of the mid-19th century and doing so in familiar ways, including costumed in knee breeches. In addition, Sullivan made specific claims about the way that Knocknagow was being welcomed in Ireland “like no other picture was ever received in Ireland or out of Ireland before. From every place where it has once been shown,” he contended,

we are receiving return bookings—a remarkable thing in the case of a picture, though very ordinary in that of a play or opera. For instance, the city of Limerick gave us four bookings, and I question if any other picture every received over two. The same is true of Waterford, Clonmel, Cork, Carlow, and other towns. This week we are breaking all records in Waterford. I mention these facts to indicate that there is prospect of promise and permanency in our enterprise.

The ad for Knocknagow at Derry’s Opera House was dwarfed by an ad for the opening of the city’s newest picture house, the Rialto, on 29 April. Derry Journal 12 Apr. 1918: 2.

Although the surviving evidence in Ireland’s regional newspapers does not quite support Sullivan’s attempts to boost Knocknagow in advance of its Dublin opening, the film had been shown – or in the case of Limerick, was about to be shown – in the towns he named. To clarify, before its week-long run at the Empire Theatre in Dublin (22-27 Apr.), the film was shown at Magner’s Theatre in Clonmel (30 Jan.-2 Feb.), the Sackville Picture Theatre in Dublin (trade show, 6 Feb.), the Cinema Palace in Carlow (18-19 Feb.), the Town Hall Cinema in Cavan (25-27 Feb.), the Cinema in Kilkenny (6-7 Mar.), the Opera House in Cork (18-23 Mar.), the Coliseum in Waterford (1-6 Apr.), the Opera House in Derry (8-13 Apr.), the Empire Theatre in Belfast (15-20 Apr.), the Shannon Cinema in Limerick (15-17 Apr.) the Picturedrome in Tralee (18-20 Apr.) and the Town Hall in Galway (22-24 Apr.).

Anglo-Celt 23 Feb. 1918: 7.

A survey of the reception of Knocknagow in the run up to the Dublin opening has shown something of the way in which the film resonated with audiences around the country. It makes clear that the film was certainly popular with Irish cinemagoers, with local critics consistently praising its fidelity to Kickham’s novel, the quality of the acting and the beauty of the Tipperary scenery. However, few reviews mentioned the film’s contemporary political relevance. Indeed, some suggested that audiences abroad would be particularly impressed by the film, including the Anglo-Celt‘s reviewer, who subtitled his/her notice “A Picture Play that Will Create a Furore in America” (“‘Knocknagow’ on the Film”).

Despite such potentially politically sensitive scenes as the eviction, this was probably due to the fact that such events were depicted in the past, safely distanced, with Cork Evening Echo emphasizing that the film would attract “all those who take an interest in the economic and social development which has taken place in this country during the past two generations” (“Opera House”). These events had happened “many years ago” even for those such as the Evening Herald’s Jacques, for whom the film vividly recalled personal memories of “the cabin doors broken and the furniture flung out, and the poor half-dressed occupants lying on the roadside amid the wreckage of their home.”

An illustrated intertitle introduces the eviction scene, emphasizing its importance.

It was only really in Galway that a critic saw the film’s immediate political relevance by arguing that it

pointed a topical moral at the present time. We saw the evictions, the crowbar brigades, the burnings, the landlord oppression of 70 years ago, the attempt to wipe out a race. Such memories – only of the other day – as it revived scarcely accommodated the mind of the beholder to the nation of conscription. (“Town Hall.”)

By the time this reviewer was writing on or about 26 April, conscription had become the politically unifying issue for nationalists that it had not been earlier in Knocknagow’s run.

While FCOI could not have foreseen such events, the company enhanced its connection to the local audience in many of the places Knocknagow was shown by having members of the cast sing at screenings. This was a unique feature of the film’s exhibition in Ireland. Film actors had on special occasions attended screenings of their films, but they very rarely contributed to the events’ live music. Brian Magowan, the film’s main star and an actor familiar with musical theatre, appeared most often, regularly accompanied by fellow cast member Breffni O’Rourke. This was not Magowan’s first vocal accompaniment of a FCOI film; he had sung at the premiere of the company’s first film, O’Neill of the Glen. In the case of Knocknagow, however, the FCOI gave this feature special prominence by having Magowan and O’Rourke, dressed in character, sing folk songs connected with the film. Although they did not appear at every venue where the film was shown, and of course, they could not have when the film was showing simultaneously in geographically remote locations, Magowan’s and O’Rourke’s live appearances were regular features of the first run of the film in Ireland.

While ploughing a field with a view of Slievenamon (mountain), Mat pauses to sing “The Farmer’s Boy,” with an intertitle helpfully providing musical notation and the song’s refrain.

Their earliest appearance seems to have been in Cavan, where the Anglo-Celt reported that “[a]n interesting feature of the entertainment was that Mr. J. McGowan, who, as ‘Mat the Thrasher’ was the hero on the film, appeared each evening in the flesh and sang some old Irish ballads in very charming voice, while Mr. Breffni O’Rourke (‘Bill Heffenan’ in the play) gave some traditional Irish lays and witty stories” (“‘Knocknagow’ on the Film”). Magowan most important contribution was “Slievenamon,” a song about the Tipperary mountain whose lyrics Kickham had composed. The centrality of this song to the FCOI’s conception of the ideal accompaniment of the film is underlined by the reproduction of Magowan’s arrangement of the song for voice and piano that was included in a programme for a later (probably 1919) run of the film (NLI).

The film has many musical scenes, including this one in which Billy Heffernan plays the flute while the Lahys dance.

The reviews are unclear on whether they sang before, after or during the projection of the film, but the film itself includes moments that motivate vocal accompaniment. In an early scene of the film, Mat is introduced by an intertitle and then shown ploughing a field in long shot. In a mid-shot, he turns around to the camera, and an intertitle appears with a musical stave and the refrain from the folk song “The Farmer’s Boy.” The cut back to Mat shows him singing animatedly before he returns to his ploughing in the shadow of Slievenamon. These on-screen cues might provide the place for Magowan to sing or they might encourage the audience to sing these popular tunes. A similar series of shots occurs later when tailor Phil Lahy sings “The Black Horse,” whose opening lines are printed on an intertitle.

Made and released during a fraught historical moment, Knocknagow sought to engage its audiences with a bestselling literary text and popular songs and involve them in the process of readjusting the representation of the Irish on screen.

References

“Court Scene: Clare Cattle Drivers Refuse to Recognise ‘this Concert.’” Dublin Evening Mail 16 Mar. 1918: 3.

Donovan, Stephen. “Introduction: Ireland’s Own Film.” Screening the Past 33 (2012). Available at <http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/02/introduction-ireland%E2%80%99s-own-film/&gt;

Jacques. “Knocknagow Filmed: Wonderful Irish Picture of Storied Incident.” Irish Limelight Apr. 1918: 5.

JAP. “Gossip of the Day: Film Version of Kickham’s Most Famous Novel.” Evening Telegraph 7 Feb. 1918: 2.

—. “Gossip of the Day: The Present Fashion in Films.” Evening Telegraph 27 Feb. 1918: 2.

“‘Knock-Na-Gow’ at the Opera House.” Derry Journal 10 Apr. 1918: 4.

“‘Knocknagow’ on the Film: A Picture Play that Will Create a Furore in America.” Anglo-Celt 2 Mar. 1918: 6.

“Labour’s Protest.” Freeman’s Journal 24 Apr. 1918: 2.

The Man About Town. “Thing Seen and Heard.” Evening Herald 22 Aug. 1917: 2; 9 Mar. 1918: 2.

NLI (National Library of Ireland). MS 50,000/272/82, Liam O’Leary Archive. Programme for Knocknagow, n.d.

“Opera House.” Evening Echo 14 Mar. 1918: 2.

“Proclamation: Processions Forbidden for the Next Three Weeks in the Dublin Area.” Dublin Evening Mail 7 Mar. 1918: 3.

“A Round Up: Many Volunteers Arrested.” Evening Telegraph 12 Mar. 1918: 3.

“Soldiers & People in Conflict: Scenes in Limerick.” Irish Independent 6 Mar. 1918: 3.

“Town Hall.” Galway Express 27 Apr. 1918: 4.

“The Untenanted Graves.” Irish Limelight Apr. 1918: 13.

Idealizing Everything Irish: The Film Company of Ireland Releases Rafferty’s Rise in late 1917

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A still from Rafferty’s Rise (Ireland: Film Company of Ireland, 1917)); Irish Limelight May 1917: 5.

On 12 November 1917, the Film Company of Ireland (FCOI) finally premiered Rafferty’s Rise, its first completed production of the year. In many ways this is a minor film. Like all of FCOI’s 1916 productions, this three-reel (approx. 50 minute) comedy is now lost, and it appears to have been little seen in 1917, having had a very limited release. It was overshadowed at the time by the organizational difficulties experienced by FCOI in 1917 and by the fact that the company put its apparently dwindling resources into promoting the much more ambitious Knocknagow. Nevertheless, it is a film by Ireland’s most important fiction-film production company of the silent period and is the first film directed by Abbey Theatre actor-director Fred O’Donovan.

 

Irish Limelight May 1917: 5.

Although Rafferty’s Rise wouldn’t have its premiere until November, it was first mentioned in the Irish Limelight in May 1917. Indeed, it was not just mentioned; it was described in a 200-word article that was accompanied by a photo of Queenie Coleman, “the beautiful Irish Girl who plays Peggy in ‘Rafferty’s Rise,’ and illustrated by an additional full page of stills from the film itself that seem to confirm that it was actually “ready for release” in May, as one of the headings on the stills page asserts. “We extend our hearty congratulations to the Film Co. of Ireland upon their first 1917 release,” the article begins, “a three-reel comedy entitled ‘Rafferty’s Rise.’ The scenario deals with a young and ambitious Irish policeman who endeavours to employ scientific methods in the detection of crime and whose efforts to emulate Sherlock Holmes cause many laughter provoking incidents” (“Rafferty’s Rise” May).

Irish Limelight Jul. 1917: 14.

In November, the Freeman’s Journal would identify the scenario writer as Nicholas Hayes, a writer remembered now mostly for the short-story collection In the Doctor’s Den (“Picture House Novelties”). As well as directing, Fred O’Donovan also played the eponymous Rafferty, and was supported along with Queenie Coleman, by Brian Magowan, Kathleen Murphy, Arthur Shields, Valentine Roberts, J. Storey and Brenda Burke (“Rafferty’s Rise” Nov.). The film was shot in the Dublin Mountains by former Pathé cameraman William Moser, in his first on-set job for FCOI (“Camera Expert”). The exact shooting period is not known, but it is likely to have been in April, in time for the publicity materials to appear in the Limelight’s May issue.

An ad offering Rafferty’s Rise to Dublin exhibitors; Evening Herald 30 Oct. 1917: 2.

However, FCOI organizational problems meant that none of the films they had shot in summer 1917 were actually available to exhibitors until the end of October, when an Evening Herald ad announced the appearance of Rafferty’s Rise. A trade show or “private exhibition” referred to in some reviews likely took place at this point, at the end of October or beginning of November. Despite some indications in July that the film had been edited down from three reels to the two reels picturegoers expected of a comedy, the Rafferty’s Rise that went on release in November 1917 was still three-reels long (“Rafferty’s Rise” Jul). “It is a mark of the originality of the Company,” the Mail optimistically asserted, “that it is bold enough to go beyond the stereotyped 2-reels in the production of a humorous story” (“Film Company of Ireland”).

Dublin Evening Mail 12 Nov. 1917: 2.

Both the Dublin Evening Mail and the Evening Telegraph previewed the film in their Saturday entertainment columns prior to its three-day run at the Bohemian beginning Monday, 12 November. “The record of this Film Company in 1916 aroused great interest in their productions,” the Telegraph observed. “Those who have seen the private exhibition of the film speak highly of the progress the company has made in technique over last year’s work” (“Really Irish Films”). The writer in neither paper, however, seems to have attended the private exhibition, and the previews have similarities that suggest that the writers not only hadn’t seen the film but were working from publicity material or other secondary accounts.

Nevertheless, the Telegraph preview is particularly interesting for the way it defines “really Irish films.” “While the company keeps free from propaganda of every kind in its stories so as to be able to appeal to all the Irish people,” it argued,

it nevertheless sticks steadfastly to the idea that its business is to idealise everything Irish that it photographs. In this, the Film Company of Ireland only takes a leaf from the book of the producers of other nations. The Americans always give us in the parts of chivalry and honour – American; the English companies show in the same roles – Englishmen; and the Film Company of Ireland continues, in its attitude and in its interpretations, strictly Irish.

Avoiding overt ideological positions, appealing to all Irish people, idealizing everything Irish and putting Irish people in heroic roles: this usefully provides some kind of framework for thinking about what “really Irish films” might have meant to observers at the time. But to explore the relevance of these characteristics to Rafferty’s Rise, we will need to look at the film’s reception.

Of the newspapers, only the Telegraph reviewed the film, and its review is brief and largely descriptive of what it saw as “an excellent three-reel comedy [that is] packed with clean, healthy fun” (“On the Screen”). The only substantial extant review seems to be in the Limelight, which from its opening issue had associated itself very closely and uncritically with FCOI. “The film is typically Irish,” Limelight reviewer R.A.O’F. commented after attending the private exhibition, “for you will find a Constable Rafferty in every little village in the country – and to anyone who has any experience of the ways and means of a stripe-chaser, it is simply IT.” Specifically, s/he praised the “clean and healthy” humour, the beautiful Dublin Mountains’ scenery and the quality of the photography and acting.

Irish Limelight May 1917: 4.

Much of R.A.O’F review is an extended plot summary that represents the most substantial account of the film. More than this, because the film is lost, this account is most of the film. The review is written in a comic style intended, no doubt, to be entertaining but as a result, it is not always clear or wholly accurate. For example, it includes the line: “All the girls loved Rafferty, and he could well afford to ignore the goo-goo eyes and tootsy-wootsy advances of silly Cissie.” The writer overreaches him/herself with the alliteration here because the name of the character who makes eyes at Rafferty is Peggy, played by Queenie Coleman. The following is a paraphrase in the interests of clarity: Rafferty is an officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) stationed in a mountain village who wants to get promoted to sergeant by using methods of scientific detection. He is admired by the local girls, including farmer’s daughter Peggy McCauley. When a Traveller (“tinker,” in the original) visits the village, Kitty Hogan, daughter of the local RIC Sergeant, gives him an old pair of her father’s boots. The Traveller steals a dog from Peggy’s father, leaving footprints with the Sergeant’s boots. Rafferty sees the footprints and traces them to the Sergeant’s house, where he is forced to hide to keep his investigations secret, but the Sergeant finds him under Kitty’s bed. Rafferty accuses the Sergeant of stealing the dog, but his mistake is revealed. While Rafferty doesn’t get his promotion, he has some compensation by ending up with Peggy.

Irish Limelight May 1917: 5.

Given that the crime Rafferty investigates is a theft by a Traveller, discussion of ethnic stereotypes seems appropriate, but R.A.O’F language proves opaque here. “An honest tinker in a story would be responsible for the author being stamped as a ‘loony.’ However, the author of this scenario was quite sane, for his tinker was a rogue.” This is clear enough, but ethnic tensions are seemingly dispelled by the following sentence when the Traveller turns out possibly to have been honest after all: “He stole a dog—no he did no, he only exchanged dogs.” The Traveller is merely added as extra local colour in what might be described as a romantic comedy.

The main thing that R.A.O’F seems to want to convey about Rafferty’s Rise is that it was good clean fun and as such, it was typically Irish. This was also how the Mail’s preview  assessed it, as “a good-natured, laughable Irish story without malice and replete with amusing situations” (“Film Company of Ireland”). Good and clean it may have been, but the somewhat more laconic and less positive response of one other contemporary observer suggests that it was not much fun. “I caught tram at Rotunda & went on to the Bohemian Picture House, Phibsboro, to see ‘Rafferty’s Rise,’” Joseph Holloway wrote as part of his diary entry for 12 November 1917, “with O’Donovan as the blustering Constable, seemed the plot was by Nicholas [Hayes], but the humour in the playing was forced & did not make for laughter as intended.” For Holloway, it was not a successful comedy.

Ad for Tralee’s Picturedrome including a synopsis of Rafferty’s Rise; Kerry News 19 Nov. 1917: 4.

A general acknowledgement that Rafferty’s Rise was not very good may account for why the film received so little attention at the time. FCOI’s loss of such key publicity personnel as Joseph Boland, their travelling salesman whom the Bioscope reported had left the company to represent Geekay in Ireland, can’t have helped (“Irish Notes”). The only other run of the film in 1917 appears to have been on 23-24 November at Tralee’s Picturedrome, where locals were encouraged to “support home industry” by seeing it. Beyond these factors, it might also be worth considering why a romantic comedy about the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) recommended itself to FCOI. Granted, Rafferty’s Rise doesn’t seem that different from the company’s 1916 dramas and comedies of Irish rural life, which among other topics had included a comedy about leprechauns. And of course, many film comedies of the period represented the police. But while US comedies tended to see the police either as buffoons or unsympathetic authority figures tasked with keeping (other) elements of the working class in line, Rafferty’s Rise represents the RIC as benign. Although Rafferty is foolish and over-ambitious, these faults are attributable to the follies of youth, and Sergeant Hogan – who “did not want to be a district Tzar” (R.A.O’F.) – is ultimately able to put a stop to them. The RIC is part of the “everything Irish” that should be idealized.

The General Film Supply placed this ad prominently on the cover of the December issue of the Irish Limelight.

As 1917 drew to a close, the other main Irish film production company of the period, the General Film Supply (GFS), was idealizing the new technologies of war. The GFS took out a large ad on the cover of the Limelight’s December issues, offering Christmas greetings and publicizing the various aspects of its business, particularly its Irish Events newsreel and the Irish-themed fiction films it had for hire. The most striking feature of the ad is a photograph of a tank leading soldiers over an embankment. The text under the photo reads: “Irish enterprise in producing a wonderful film of the tanks in Dublin is now having its reward by the unstinted praise bestowed on Irish Events.” An interview with GFS cameraman J. Gordon Lewis reveals that the company were releasing their film of the tanks that was on manoeuvres near Dublin in instalments over four weeks. “I was agreeably surprised at the wonderful Tanks,” he enthuses:

I took a very nice picture from the inside of one of the Tanks. I sat on the driver’s seat and held the camera on my knees with the lens protruding through the look-out hole and held on to [the] side of the hole like grim death as we crawled along. […] I must say they are fine to ride in, and the heat of the inside will be welcome to many of Tanker Tommy during the winter months that are now among us. (“Filming the Tanks in Dublin.”)

There was as much fascination in Ireland with the spectacular new war technologies as there was anywhere else. In January 1918, the Limelight would reported that Lewis had topped his tank film by filming in a “battle-plane with the result that while 1,500 feet above the earth he secured a picture of another aeroplane in flight that is nothing short of sensational” (“Notes and News”).

With their focus on the police and army, Rafferty’s Rise and the GFS film of tanks in Dublin suggest in their different ways that at the end of 1917, Irish film producers were serving social stability and the war effort.

References

“A Camera Expert: Interview with Mr. William Moser of the Film Company of Ireland.” Irish Limelight Jul. 1917: 14.

“Film Company of Ireland.” Dublin Evening Mail 10 Nov. 1917: 2.

“Filming the Tanks in Dublin.” Irish Limelight Dec. 1917: 18.

Holloway, Joseph. Holloway Diaries. National Library of Ireland.

“On the Screen: Bohemian.” Evening Telegraph 13 Nov. 1917: 4.

Paddy. “Irish Notes.” Bioscope 1 Nov. 1917: 109.

“Picture House Novelties: New Productions of Film Company of Ireland.” Freeman’s Journal 12 Nov. 1917: 4.

“Rafferty’s Rise.” Irish Limelight May 1917: 4.

“‘Rafferty’s Rise.’” Irish Limelight Jul. 1917: 15.

R.A.O’F. “Rafferty’s Rise: Review of an Irish Comedy by Irish Players.” Irish Limelight Nov. 1917: 6.

“Really Irish Films.” Evening Telegraph 10 Nov. 1917: 3.

Exhibiting Tanks to Irish Cinema Fans, February 1917

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A tank goes into battle in The Battle Ancre and Advance of the Tanks (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1917) from the Imperial War Museums.

A tank goes into battle in The Battle Ancre and Advance of the Tanks (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1917); Imperial War Museums.

Cinema was so popular in Ireland in February 1917 that the press had to search for a name for its adherents, and they found it in American vernacular. “This morning there is a heart-cry from a cinema fan,” the “Gossip of the Day” columnist in the Evening Telegraph noted on 21 February 1917:

He doesn’t know that he is a cinema fan, and that is the crux of the trouble – he is ignorant of the great American language. I gather from his pathetic note that he is a regular patron of the “silent drama,” yet he finds a difficulty in understanding the explanatory inscriptions with which American producers seek to help the intellects of those who sit in the outer darkness.

Although cinema was primarily a visual medium and as such offered the promise of an international language, it still required words to specify the meaning of what might otherwise be ambiguous images. The silent film’s intertitles carried those words, but they were often in a dialect not universally understood. The columnist was surprised at this because s/he believed that “regular patrons of this form of amusement were able to understand any announcement on the screen from the ‘slick’ slang of East Side New York to the weird attempts at English of the Italian, French and Danish producers.”

Most of the films that Irish cinemagoers saw were indeed American, but it was a British film that sought to attract as many Irish cinema fans as possible in February 1917. Monday, 19 February saw the Irish opening of The Battle of the Ancre and Advance of the Tanks (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1917), a War Office-sponsored propaganda film more often called simply The Tanks. Despite this foreshortened title, tanks featured only occasionally in the film. “Throughout the five scenes,” the Evening Herald’s Man About Town complained, “the Tanks are seen about four times altogether, each time only for a very brief passing moment.”

Whatever about the coming disappointment, anticipation for the film could build on tantalizing glimpses of this new war machine that had been accumulating for several months. In autumn 1916, Irish people had read about the first battlefield deployment of tanks, and in November 1916, Dubliners had even had the opportunity of seeing a tank film, albeit it the animated Tank Cartoon (Britain: Kineto, 1916). The cinema trade press had also informed its Irish readers about the shooting of the War Office tank film (“About Those Tanks!”).

faugh-a-ballaghs-il-feb-1917

The Dublin Evening Mail appears not to have been exaggerating when it noted that the “coming of the “Tanks’ Film’ to Dublin has been eagerly anticipated.” Publicity for the film could draw on what appears to have been a widespread fascination with this new weapon, in a similar way to which the earlier propaganda films had focused on artillery or aircraft. Previewing the coming shows at Dublin’s Theatre Royal, the city’s largest entertainment venue, the Mail writer observed that the “film portrays the most interesting happenings during the Battle of the Ancre, when the Tanks were first heard of, and promises to prove one of the most successful of the many interesting war films already seen in Dublin. The Battle of the Ancre stands out as one of the most striking phases of ‘The Big Push’” (“‘The Tanks’ at ‘The Royal’”).

Indeed, the Royal starting advertising the film as early as 10 February, when a short item warned patrons to book the film to avoid disappointment: “Your remember the trouble you had getting a seat at the ‘Battle of the Somme’ films, but you say to yourself that there will be no difficulty with ‘The Tank’ films, and you delay booking only to find yourself in the same position as before” (“‘The Tanks’ Film at the Theatre Royal”). The added attraction of The Tanks was that it included footage of Irish soldiers: “There were no Irish regiments shown in the Somme film, but Lieut. Malins, who took the pictures, succeeded in getting some splendid films of our gallant Irish Brigade.” Despite such extensive publicity of the film, the Royal only showed it at matinees (beginning at 2.30pm), except on Wednesday, when the film replaced the Royal’s two evening variety shows (beginning at 6.45pm and 9pm). Nevertheless, the film was presented at the Royal with “special music and effects that […] should help one to realise ‘what it is like.’ The band of the famous Faugh-a-Ballaghs will play at every performance” (“‘The Tanks’ at ‘The Royal’”). Unfortunately no review of the Royal shows appears to exist that specifies what effects – presumably sound effects imitating exploding shells – were used during the shows and how the audiences responded.

tanks-grafton-dem-21-feb-1917

Dublin Evening Mail 19 Feb. 1917: 2.

The Royal was far from the only Dublin venue showing the film that week. Another large theatre, the Empire, showed the film all week alongside a somewhat reduced variety programme. Several of the most prestigious picture houses also screened it, with the Bohemian, Carlton, Masterpiece and Town Hall, Rathmines showing it for the first three days of the week, and the Grafton retaining it into the second half of the week. The Bohemian managed to show the film four times daily at 3, 5, 7 and 9, but this was eclipsed by the six shows that the Grafton managed to squeeze in at 1.45, 3.15, 4.45, 6.15, 7.45 and 9.15, “so that business men and others can all have an opportunity of making acquaintance with these new machines of war, of which Sir Douglas Haig says he cannot speak too highly” (“Grafton Picture House”).

While Dublin’s newspapers reviewed the film positively – even the Herald‘s Man About Town, despite his disappointment about the little screen time devoted to the tanks themselves – the Irish Times printed the longest review, and it was most forthright in clarifying the film’s ideological intent. Its “exhibition creates many thrills, and gives a very vivid conception of the war in all its phases,” the writer argued. S/he admitted that this had been done before, most notably by the very popular Battle of the Somme (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1916), but it had been criticized for showing British soldiers being killed. “[I]n the Tank films one is spared the somewhat gruesome side of the fighting. The tanks are awesome but not gruesome” (“‘Tanks in Action’”). In the face of so much evidence to the contrary, the film therefore helped recruiting by propagating a myth of British military invulnerability. “Should they stimulate our young men to help those Irishmen whom they see manning the trenches,” the Times writer concluded a lengthy review, “‘The Tanks in Action’ will be doing good work in Dublin.”

ultus-sydney-master-dem-24-feb-1917p2

Dublin Evening Mail 24 Feb. 1917: 2.

The Times did not usually offer extensive reviews of films, but other newspapers were taking cinema increasingly seriously. On 19 February, the Evening Telegraph – the evening edition of the Freeman’s Journal – resumed publication after a hiatus caused by the destruction of its premises during the Easter Rising. Among its innovations was a Saturday column entitled “Kinematograph Notes and News.” The first series of notes on 24 February included both international items and some of particular Irish relevance. The latter included a notice that Aurele Sydney, star of Ultus series, would attend the Masterpiece Cinema during the following week’s screenings of Ultus and the Secret of the Night (Britain: Gaumont, 1917). Another note concerned the views of John Bunny, a film star who had visited Ireland five years previously and discussed the possibilities for film production in the country. Given that it made no mention of the Film Company of Ireland’s recent filmmaking efforts, the reason for the inclusion of the note on Bunny is unclear, unless it was to quietly contradict the claim made in the Masterpiece’s ad that Sydney was the first cinema star to visit Ireland.

This column was praised by a writer in the Irish Limelight, the cinema magazine that had begun publication in January 1917. “Readers of the Saturday Evening Telegraph got an agreeable surprise recently when they found that cinema notes were introduced,” “Movie Musings” columnist Senix observed. The surprise that the staff at the Limelight got on seeing the column may not have been all that agreeable, given that a weekly newspaper column might steal much of the thunder of the monthly journal. Nevertheless, Senix took it to be a positive development, commenting that “[t]his recognition of the people’s amusement proves pleasant reading after the many bitter attacks which have been made in the local Press. And the fact that it comes so soon after the appearance of the Irish Limelight sets us thinking.”

Dublin Evening Mail 17 Feb. 1917: 2

Dublin Evening Mail 17 Feb. 1917: 2

Despite Senix’s optimistic reading of the appearance of the Telegraph‘s column, bitter attacks on cinema were still very much evident in February 1917, both in the press and in the auditorium. When the “Gossip of the Day” columnist had attempted to define “cinema fan” for his/her readers, s/he speculated that “‘fan’ must be American for ‘fanatic,’ as it is used to designate people who are peculiarly addicted to any pastime.” However, there may be reasons for distinguishing between cinema fans and cinema fanatics. Certainly serial protestor William Larkin was a fanatic often to be encountered in cinemas but not a cinema fan. Since 1914, Larkin had mounted periodic protests in Dublin’s picture houses against films that he and the Catholic Irish Vigilance Association (IVA) considered to be morally dubious. These protests occurred in the auditorium during the screening of the films and involved Larkin shouting about the need for a Catholic-influenced Irish censorship and/or throwing ink at the screen. Larkin sought arrest to magnify the reach of the protest through the newspaper reports of the disturbance and subsequent trial. He had usually found that the magistrates treated him leniently – even indulgently – but in December 1915, he had been jailed when he refused to pay a fine imposed for a cinema protest.

After a period of apparent inactivity during 1916, Larkin’s latest – and last for some years – cinema protest took place on 21 February 1917 during a screening of The Soul of New York (US: Fox, 1915; released in the US as The Soul of Broadway) at the Pillar Picture House in Dublin city centre (“City Cinema”). It followed a well-established pattern. At about 10.25pm, the picture-house porter heard a commotion in the auditorium, found that Larkin had thrown “a blue liquid” at the screen and went to get manager J. D. Hozier. Larkin made no attempt to escape and admitted to having thrown the liquid, which not only caused damage estimated at £30 to the screen but also “bespattered” the instruments and clothes of musicians Herbert O’Brien, Joseph Schofield and Samuel Golding in the orchestra (“City Cinema Scenes”). After several court appearances, the case seems to have been struck out at the end of March.

Evening Telegraph 22 Feb. 1917: 1.

Evening Telegraph 22 Feb. 1917: 1.

Although this “exciting episode” certainly garnered press coverage, how Larkin’s direct-action methods complemented the Irish Vigilance Association’s ongoing campaign for cinema censorship is not clear. Indeed, despite his previous affiliation with the IVA, Larkin may have been acting on his own in this instance. The IVA’s well organized political lobbying for the introduction and effective exercising of film censorship was well advanced by February 1917. In June 1916, Dublin Corporation had appointed Walter Butler and Patrick Lennon as film censors, and in January 1917, it had engaged two women as “lady inspectors” of picture houses (“Amusement Inspectors,” “Dublin Lady Censors”). The IVA found a ready welcome at Dublin Corporation. On the last day of February, its Public Health Committee (PHC) invited a seven-member IVA deputation to address them on Sunday opening (“Cinema on Sundays”). Answering the deputation’s complaint that many cinemas opened at 8 o’clock on Sunday evenings, thereby intruding on hours set aside for Catholic devotions, PHC chairman and former mayor Lorcan Sherlock assured the deputation that the Corporation would enforce a 8.30pm Sunday opening.

Therefore, Irish cinema was engaging both fans and fanatics in February 1917.

References

“About Those Tanks! Extraordinary Interest of the Latest ‘Big Push’ Films.” Bioscope 12 Oct. 1916: 121.

“Amusement Inspectors: Reports to Be Made on Dublin Performances.” Evening Herald 10 Jan. 1917: 3.

“Cinemas on Sundays: Vigilance Association and the Hours of Opening.” Evening Telegraph 1 Mar. 1917: 2.

City Cinema: Exciting Episode: Blue Liquid Thrown.” Evening Telegraph 22 Feb. 1917: 1.

“City Picture-House Scene.” Dublin Evening Mail 28 Feb. 1917: 2.

“Dublin Lady Censors: Names Submitted.” Freeman’s Journal 15 Jan. 1917: 4.

“Gossip of the Day: Comments on Current Events.” Evening Telegraph 21 Feb. 1917: 2

“Grafton Picture House.” Dublin Evening Mail 17 Feb. 1917: 5.

“Kinematograph Notes and News.” Evening Telegraph 24 Feb. 1917: 5.

The Man About Town. “Thing Seen and Heard.” Evening Herald 19 Feb. 1917: 2.

Senix. “Movie Musings.” Irish Limelight 1:3 (Mar. 1917): 3.

“‘The Tanks’ at ‘The Royal.’” Dublin Evening Mail 17 Feb. 1917: 4.

“‘The Tanks’ Film at the Theatre Royal.” Dublin Evening Mail 10 Feb. 1917: 5.

“‘Tanks in Action’: Cinema Pictures in Dublin.” Irish Times 20 Feb. 1917: 3.

“Would We Ever Have It in Reality?” Ireland a Nation “For Two Days Only” in January 1917

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Joseph Holloway spent the last evening of 1916 wandering around Dublin, celebrating the end of a momentous year in Ireland, when he came across a poster for Ireland a Nation (US: Macnamara, 1914). “For a week or more,” the architect and theatre buff observed, “I’ve been reading on the hoardings on a large 15 feet by 9 feet poster bordered with shamrocks – with large ones at angles & printed on green which tells me of the finest picture film ever produced / Ireland a Nation / Nothing like it has been seen before!” (Holloway, 31 Dec. 1916: 1608).

Ad for Ireland a Nation in New York and Chicago-based Motography 26 Dec. 1914: 22.

Ad for Ireland a Nation in New York and Chicago-based Motography 26 Dec. 1914: 22.

When Waterford-born but New York-based scriptwriter and producer Walter Macnamara had made Ireland a Nation in 1914, the film reflected a very different political situation. Macnamara conceived a film that would trace the history of Irish struggles against British rule from the passing of the Act of Union by the Irish Parliament in 1800 to the passing of the Home Rule bill by Westminster in 1914. He had shot historical scenes – among them the Irish parliament, Robert Emmet’s 1803 rebellion and Daniel O’Connell’s duel with political rival D’Esterre – on location in Ireland and at studios in London, but the film had ended with actuality footage of crowds of Irish nationalists jubilantly welcoming what they thought was the achievement of Home Rule.

The film had been shown in US cities, debuting at New York’s Forty-Fourth Street Theatre on 22 September 1914, but it had not been seen in Ireland (McElravy). The outbreak of World War I had not only caused the suspension of Home Rule, it had also delayed the Irish exhibition of Ireland a Nation. “When Dame Fortune refuses to smile upon a venture,  things will somehow manage to go wrong if only out of sheer cussedness,” commented an article in the second issue of Ireland’s first film journal Irish Limelight on the sequence of events that prevented Ireland a Nation reaching the country to date. Two prints of the film sent to Ireland had been lost en route: “[I]t is understood that the first copy dispatched by [the Macnamara Co. of New York] was lost with the ill-fated Lusitania; a duplicate copy was substituted, but as this also failed to successfully run the submarine ‘blockade,’ it became necessary to forward a third” (“Between the Spools”).

Masthead of the Irish Limelight, Feb. 1918. Courtesy of the National Library.

Masthead of the Irish Limelight, Feb. 1918. Courtesy of the National Library.

These delays meant that it was to a Dublin with many new hoardings erected around buildings destroyed during the Easter Rising that the film returned in late 1916. A large green poster with the slogan “Ireland a Nation” emblazoned on it meant something different in this context. “You read it & wonder when it is to be shown & what is to be the nature of it!” Holloway marvelled. “I have heard it whispered that it is a fake – there’s no such film at all, but those who love Ireland thought that a good way to keep ‘Ireland a Nation’ in the public eye. And the wideawake authorities haven’t tumbled to its purpose!”

A week later, however, a new poster near Holloway’s home on Haddington Road confirmed that this was, in fact, a film by providing more details of the coming exhibition. “I saw on hoarding near Baggot St end of Haddington Rd. that – ‘Ireland a Nation’ for ‘one week only’ was announced for Rotunda commencing Monday next & week,” he noted, “& I thought would we ever have it in reality – for ‘one week only’ even.” (Holloway, 5 Jan. 1917). Holloway’s melancholy reflection related to the distant possibilities for a self-governing Irish nation beyond filmic representation, but even a film of Ireland achieving nationhood would prove impossible to show in January 1917.

ireland-a-nation-home-rule

Framegrab from Ireland a Nation, preceded by the intertitle: “A New Hope 1914. / A Home Rule Meeting.”

Frederick Sparling was responsible for this poster campaign, after he secured the British and Irish distribution rights to the film in March 1916. The imposition of martial law in the aftermath of the Rising in April made it impossible to screen the film until late in 1916, when Sparling submitted the film to the military press censor (“Irish Film Suppressed”). The censor wrote back to Sparling on 1 December 1916, allowing exhibition if six cuts were made:

  1. Scene showing interruption of a hillside Mass by soldiers.

  2. Scene showing Sarah Curran roughly handled by soldiers.

  3. Scene of execution of Robert Emmet – from entry of soldiers into Emmet’s cell to lead him away.

  4. Scene of Home Rule Meeting in 1914.

  5. Telegram from Mr. Redmond.

  6. Irish Flag displayed at end of the performance.

The following should also be omitted:—from the titles of scenes shown, (in addition to all titles referring to portions of the film which have been censored as above,) “A price of £100 dead or alive on the head of every priest.” (CSORP.)

This constituted much of the contentious political material, including the actualities of the Home Rule meeting, but Sparling had no choice but to make the cuts. And although he was the proprietor of the suburban Bohemian Picture Theatre, he hired Dublin’s largest picture house, the city-centre Rotunda, which had a capacity of 1,500 people, a third more than the Bohemian (“Irish Film Suppressed”).

Ad for Ireland a Nation; Dublin Evening Mail, 8 Jan. 1917: 2.

Ad for Ireland a Nation; Dublin Evening Mail, 8 Jan. 1917: 2.

Prominent press ads that followed the poster campaign ensured that potential patrons far and near were well informed of the coming shows. Although the Dublin Evening Mail published these ads, this did not stop a Mr Whitehead from the Daily Express office, which published the Mail, writing to the Chief Secretary’s office, enclosing a copy of the ad and warning that “[i]t is an American Cos film & is of a bad type, indeed, the man in charge of it expresses astonishment that it has passed the British Censor” (CSORP). Inspector George Love of the Dublin Metropolitan Police attended the 2-3pm show on the opening afternoon, Monday, 8 January 1917. Love reported that Sparling had adhered to the censor’s stipulations, but his most interesting comments were those about the effect on the audience:

About 100 persons were present at the opening production and the Picture was received with applause throughout, except some slight hissing, when Lord Castlereagh and Major Sirr were exhibited.

The Films deals mainly with Rebel Leaders and their followers being hunted down by the Forces of the Crown and Informers, and has a tendency to revive and perpetuate, incidents of a character, which I think at the present time are most undesirable and should not be permitted.

While Chief Secretary Edward O’Farrell considered Love’s suggestion that the film be banned by the authorities – and a military observer reported on the opening night to Bryan Mahon, the General Officer Commanding British forces in Ireland – Holloway went to another afternoon screening that had a far larger attendance than the sparse 100 that Love reported at the 2pm show. Indeed, because of the queue at the box office of the ground-floor “area,” Holloway ended up on the balcony. However, the film did not impress him. It reminded him of the increasing repertoire of Irish nationalist history plays by Dion Boucicault, J. W. Whitbread, and P. J. Bourke that had been staples of Dublin’s Queen’s Theatre for decades. Holloway had long been a regular at the Queen’s, but he favoured the kind of restrained acting introduced by the Abbey Theatre. The gestural melodramatic style used by Queen’s actors in the film also contrasted with evolving screen-acting practices. Nevertheless, the film uniquely preserves Irish melodramatic performance of the period.

Other commentators provided more positive reviews than Holloway’s. Perhaps not surprisingly for a nationalist newspaper whose slogan was “Ireland a Nation,” the reviewer in the Freeman’s Journal was enthusiastic, calling the film “[f]rom a historical standpoint, and indeed, from the standpoint of realism, […] undoubtedly excellent” and bound to “attract numerous visitors to the Rotunda during the week” (“Irish History Films”). Although not so wholeheartedly appreciative, the reviewer at the unionist Irish Times confirmed its popularity, noting that “[t]he film, which treated the rebel cause with sympathy, and the music, which included a number of Irish patriotic tunes, were received with loud and frequent applause by the audiences” (“Rotunda Pictures”).

Framegrab from Ireland a Nation, in which Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet (Barry O’Brien) is astonished by the help Napoleon agrees to send for an uprising in Ireland.

Framegrab from Ireland a Nation, in which Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet (Barry O’Brien) is astonished by the help Napoleon agrees to send for an uprising in Ireland.

Holloway suggested that although the audience was aware of the film’s limitations, it was determined to make the most of this opportunity to celebrate a still imagined Irish nation. “The audience was willing to applaud national sentiments,” he noted, “but was far more impressed by the words card on the screen than by the way the various characters played their parts before the camera.” Indeed, he believed that the film’s title and intertitles carried particular importance. “Truly the man who thought of the title ‘Ireland a Nation’ was worth his weight in gold to the Film Co that produced it,” he argued. “It is the title and not the film drama will attract all patriotic Dublin to the Rotunda during the week.”

Indeed, he was in no doubt that the film did draw unprecedented crowds to the Rotunda. Passing the picture house again later on Monday evening, he recorded:

I rarely saw anything like the crowds that stormed the Rotunda about eight oclock seeking admission. I am sure several thousands were wedged up against the building […].  The night was piercingly cold but the patient waiters kept themselves warm and in good humour by cheering all who left the building & made room for others behind.  On the other side of the streets around the Rotunda crowds of people stood looking at the dense black masses clinging on to the walls of the Rotunda like barnacles to the bottom of a ship.

When these later audiences got inside, they were more rowdy than those earlier in the day had been. Love reported that “the Picture was received with applause throughout, except some slight hissing, when Lord Castlereagh and Major Sirr were exhibited” and Holloway that the Irish airs played by the augmented orchestra “were taken up by the audience & sung.” As the evening wore on, audience behaviour grew more explicitly political. “At the last performance of the film on Monday night,” the Bioscope reported, “a large section of the audience sang the song, ‘A Nation Once Again’” (“Irish Film Suppressed”). The military observer advised Bryan Mahon that “the film in question was likely to cause disaffection, owing to the cheering of the crowd at portions of the Film, the hissing of soldiers who appeared in the Film and the cries made by the audience” (CSORP).

As a result, Mahon decided to ban the screenings, but on finding that Sparling had sought and got permission from the military censor, he agreed to try cutting the film further and observe how the Tuesday night screening would be received. “The result of the reports of Tuesday night were more adverse than those of Monday night,” O’Farrell noted, “and in consequence Sir B. Mahon issued an order prohibiting the performance of the Film throughout Ireland, which was served on Mr. Sparling at about 1 o/c on Wed. Afternoon” (CSORP).

The order served to Sparling made clear that the audience’s behaviour caused the prohibition:

The reports received from witnesses, of the affect produced on the audience at the display of the above Film last night, the 9th inst., and the seditious and disloyal conduct apparently caused thereby, make it clear that the further exhibition of the Film in Ireland is likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty, and to prejudice the recruiting of His Majesty’s forces.

I therefore forbid any further exhibition of the said Film in Ireland, and hereby warn you that any further such exhibition will be dealt with under the Defence of the Realm Consolidated Regulations, 1914.

“The Military only allowed Ireland a Nation ‘for two days only,’ at Rotunda,” Holloway lamented. He also pointed out that even the posters did not escape the general prohibition: “In O’Connell Street a man was pasting green sheets of paper on the announcement on the hoarding of IRELAND A NATION.  Only a field of green would soon show where Ireland a nation once proclaimed itself.”

Despite the authorities’ efforts to cover over all traces of the film, it continued to be discussed in the following weeks and years. Indeed, Ireland a Nation was and is one of the most significant films of the 1910s in Ireland. In part, this was because its title made it a particular attraction for nationalists at this historical moment, as Holloway suggested, but there are other reasons. Its fascination for nationalists in the aftermath of the Rising made it also of interest to the police and military, who rarely gave much attention to films. As a result, the nature and extent of the surviving sources on the film – particularly Holloway’s diary entries and the official police and military documents – are unusually varied and comprehensive. They allows us to say something about individual screenings of the film in Dublin on 8 January 1917, especially in relation to audience response, which is often the least documented element of an individual film showing.

Ireland a Nation also appeared in Ireland at a significant moment in the press engagement with cinema. The Freeman’s Journal, one of the country’s main daily papers, published an editorial on cinema on 6 January, the Saturday before the film opened. This was not, however, focused on the film, but on the fact that since cinema had taken the place of live theatre, it was “imperative that we should consider how the new theatre can be made subservient to the public utility” (“Cinema”). Nevertheless, with the excitement caused by the release of Ireland a Nation and then its prohibition, cinema had unprecedented visibility on the editorial and news pages of Dublin’s and Ireland’s newspapers well into mid-January.

The debut of the Irish Limelight in January 1917 clearly represented an extremely significant development, not only in its contribution to cinema’s visibility that month but also in its promotion of a more extensive and sophisticated public discourse on cinema over the three years it remained in print. The Limelight was published by Jack Warren, the editor of the Constabulary Gazette, who “for a very long time has taken a serious interest in the cinema world” (Paddy). Because it was a monthly journal, however, the first issue was published before the Ireland a Nation controversy at the Rotunda. The February issue, however, included two significant items on the film: one on its historical inaccuracies and the other – already mentioned – on its ill-fated Irish exhibition. With Warren’s police contacts, the latter could no doubt have provided more insight into the banning than attributing it to the workings of “Dame Fortune.”

As was the case for most of the articles in the Limelight, no author was named for the historical inaccuracies piece, which was instead attributed to a “Student of Irish History” who had sent in a letter in the wake of the banning. Although this correspondent detailed the film’s historical mistakes, s/he nonetheless considered them “too patently ridiculous to call for serious criticisms.” Not that s/he thought the film irredeemably bad, arguing that “the theme was treated by both producer and players with every sympathy and respect, and with a clear eye to propagandism as well as simple picture setting.” Such errors as showing revolutionary priest Fr John Murphy reacting to the 1800 Act of Union when he had been executed in 1798 would have been obvious to any contemporary Irish person with an interest in history. Having pointed out such anachronisms, the writer accounted for them as arising from “a desire to get in prominent figures in the Ireland of the period and weave them into a complete story without any regard for chronological order or historical connection” (“Irish Film Suppressed”).

ireland-a-nation-erin-sculpts

Erin, the figure of Ireland, inscribes Emmet’s epitaph onto his headstone in Ireland a Nation.

Ireland a Nation argues that the telling of tales is a political act, and that was certainly the case in Ireland in 1917. But this was not the end of the film in Ireland or indeed in America. It was revived – indeed reinvented – first in America and then in Ireland. One of its most vivid storytelling motifs relates to Robert Emmet, who having being condemned to death, famously declared that his grave should be unmarked: “When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth,” he ordered in his famous speech from the dock, “then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.” In the film, a woman representing Erin, the embodiment of Ireland, inscribes an epitaph onto Emmet’s gravestone because with Home Rule, Irish nationhood had seemingly been achieved. When Ireland a Nation was revived in America in 1920, this material was out of date, and Ireland had not been granted Home Rule. As a result, later newsreel footage of Sinn Féin leader Eamon De Valera’s visiting New York in 1919 to seek recognition of an independent Ireland was added as a further inscribing of the national story. Later again, newsreel of the Irish War of Independence and the funeral of republican hunger striker Terence McSwiney was included.

It was only with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 that this film – an incomplete version of which still survives – could be shown in Ireland. The political situation had again changed dramatically in the aftermath of the debates on the Anglo-Irish Treaty by the Dáil (Irish parliament). At least part of Ireland was in some way independent, and one of Dublin’s largest cinemas celebrated by giving an uninterrupted run of Ireland a Nation.

References

“Between the Spools.” Irish Limelight 1:2 (Feb. 1917): 19.

“The Cinema.” Freeman’s Journal 6 Jan. 1917: 4.

CSORP/1919/11025. National Archives of Ireland.

Holloway, Joseph. Holloway Diaries. National Library of Ireland.

“The ‘Ireland a Nation’ Film: Criticisms of Historical Inaccuracies.” Irish Limelight 1:2 (Feb. 1917): 3.

“Irish Film Suppressed: ‘Ireland a Nation’: Military Stop Exhibition at Dublin.” Bioscope 18 Jan. 1917.

“Irish History Films: ‘Ireland a Nation’ at the Rotunda.” Freeman’s Journal 9 Jan. 1917: 3.

McElravy, Robert. “‘Ireland a Nation’: Five-Reel Production Giving Irish History in Picture Form.” Moving Picture World 3 Oct. 1914: 67.

“Rotunda Pictures.” Irish Times 9 Jan. 1917: 3.

Watched by Millions of Eyes: Irish Cinema’s Manifold Potentialities in October 1916

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British military personnel sift through the wreckage of Airship SL11, shot down near Cuffley, Hertfordshire, on 3 September 1916. Image from Europeana.

British military personnel sift through the wreckage of Airship SL11, shot down near Cuffley, Hertfordshire, on 3 September 1916. Image from Europeana.

“The potentialities of the picture-theatre are truly manifold,” a writer in the Belfast Evening Telegraph contended in a lengthy article at the end of September 1916. “The cinematograph is the popular drama of the day,” s/he argued; “it arrests the eye, and is led by its avenues straight to the heart. It has touched a public which every day is growing vaster.” Although the ability of cinema to show things that could only be told about on the stage was particularly highlighted by the article’s subheading – “Shows What Theatre Only Tells” – the potentialities were widespread, ranging from the cheapness and comfort of picture-house seating, through the advantages of its complete darkness to a young man and his sweetheart, and on to cinema’s promotion of temperance among the poor. Cinema’s commercial nature and its potential for harm were also addressed, with the article concluding that “[b]eing a commercial concern […] the entrepreneurs of cinemas provide the people with what is most likely to pay, and, as in the boxing ring, where the cry is for gore, so in the cinema the authorities find it in their interests to yield to the popular clamour for sensation” (“Cinema’s Popularity”).

Film lover Dr Knott. Holloway Diaries.

Joseph Holloway sketched film enthusiast Dr John Knott in his diary in August 1914. National Library of Ireland.

In the course of a chat on the tram into Dublin city centre on 26 October 1916, architect and diarist Joseph Holloway heard from his young neighbour Jack Murray that the growing popularity of cinema over theatre had to do with the speed of the new medium. “Then he told me,” Holloway wrote, “he was mad on Movies & went at least twice a week to see them. He saw Bella Donna on the pictures & afterwards saw it at Gaiety when he found it hard to sit out,– it dragged so & was so slow.” When Holloway told Murray that several prominent Dublin citizens also had a picture-house “infatuation” – including dancing teacher Professor Maginni, authors Æ and D. J. O’Donoghue, and Dr John Knott – “he said he was pleased to be in such good company in his taste” (Holloway 26 Oct 1916: 1002).

Leaflet issued by the National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland. Available at Century Ireland.

Leaflet issued by the National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland. Available at Century Ireland.

“Comedy, tragedy and melodrama,” the Telegraph writer observed on cinema’s potential for speed; “[t]he picture palace caters for the whole of these, and they pop up successively in the space of a few minutes.” Not everyone was so impressed by this potentiality. At a meeting of the Dublin branch of the National Union of Women Workers (NUWW) of Great Britain and Ireland, the Hon. Mrs. Frankland argued that “it was not good for children to see different things as quickly as they did in picture houses.” Unlike the working-class Irish Women Workers’ Union founded by Delia Larkin in 1911, the Dublin branch of the NUWW had been “formed at a Drawingroom meeting held, by invitation of Lady Wright, in November” 1915. At a subsequent meeting in June 1916, Wright was elected president of the branch, “and a resolution was passed urging the appointment of women police in Dublin, submitted by the Irish Girls’ Protection Crusade”. By the time of the October meeting, picture houses had come to the NUWW’s attention as suitable for patrols. “With regard to cinemas,” Frankland reported, “about which people were thinking a good deal, though they had their educational value, they also had possibilities for harm.” A model for activity in Dublin was provided by branches in Britain, where “[s]ome of the police authorities had asked the Union to lead some of their patrols to go round to cinemas and report on various questions, such as lighting, general control of buildings, etc.” (“Union of Women Workers”).

However, British exhibitors vigorously opposed the activities of “lady inspectors.” Noting that a Birmingham cinema owner had been pleasantly surprised by the lady inspector who visited his business, Rambler in the Bioscope’s regular “Round and About” column on 19 October 1916 commented rhetorically that “[t]here is no reason to doubt the charm and tact of lady inspectors; the point is, are they properly qualified to give an opinion on the suitability of films?” The title of another article in the same issue described lady inspectors of another organization, the Women’s Local Government Society, as “Spies Manufactured Wholesale!” with the unambiguous subtitle “A Glimpse of the British Prude Factory at Work.” “It is a colossal outrage,” it concluded, “that a crew of impertinent idlers should be allowed to make themselves public nuisances in the name of public interest. And this is war-time?”

The appointment of lady inspectors of cinemas would take some time in Dublin, but concern about cinema’s potential for harm manifest itself in renewed efforts to introduce Irish film censorship in October 1916. “I am gratified to observe that the crusade against sheer indecency in our theatres has promptly borne fruit,” columnist the Man About Town told readers of Dublin’s Evening Herald on 6 October:

I know one cinema house where a certain picture which claimed to be artistic, but was nothing but an appeal to the lowest human passions, was not shown after the “trial” exhibition. Cutting down and chopping was no use. The film was considered valueless without the objectionable features!

The crusade against indecency in cinemas was waged with particular vigour by the Catholic Irish Vigilance Association (IVA), which in June had welcomed the appointment by Dublin Corporation’s Public Health Committee of building inspector Walter Butler and Councillor Patrick Lennon as film censors. At the same time, the IVA had criticized the delay in putting the censors to work, which required the confirmation of the whole Corporation, and this did not happen until the 2 October. On that day, a deputation of lay and clerical members of the IVA addressed the meeting. Canon Dunne urged that the wording of the Corporation’s licence be emended to ensure that the job could not be done by “a man from some other country, a man from the Continent, or a man who was connected with some of these [picture] houses.”  IVA solicitor Thomas Deering appealed to the nationalism of the majority of councillors: “When the English Parliament put this power into their hands he did not see why the Council should hesitate to exercise this small measure of Home Rule” (“Censorship of Films”).

On 9 October 1916, the Corporation effectively introduced local film censorship by adopting the Public Health Committee’s report but with the IVA’s emended stipulation that “[a]ll films exhibited shall bear the mark of the Censor of Cinematograph Films for the City of Dublin or any censor duly appointed in Ireland pursuant to the Cinematograph Act, 1909” (“Cinema Films”). The IVA condemned the four councillors – out of 47 – who voted against adoption of the report. One of these, Councillor John Ryan wrote to the Freeman’s Journal explaining that he voted against the appointment of Butler and Lennon not because he opposed censorship but because “it is impossible for two men to examine and pass (or otherwise) all the films shown in twenty-six picture houses simultaneously.” He explained that

[t]he films arrive in Dubllin on Monday and Thursday mornings and are screened at one o’clock thus leaving about three hours for examination. As it takes about two hours to show a programme in each house, viz., fifty-two hours in all, I cannot yet see how two men are to accomplish it. (“Cinemas and Censors” 17 Oct.)

This was a legitimate point, albeit with some exaggeration. However, the IVA disputed it without addressing Ryan’s argument about the sheer number of films but by merely asserting that such unimpeachable authorities as Dublin’s Archbishop, Alderman Lorcan Sherlock and the two censors themselves said it could be done (“Cinemas and Censors” 20 Oct.).

Cinema’s potentialities were evident to the newspapers, who in their reporting of film censorship and other cinema-related matters in October were also positioning themselves in relation to the new medium. Most of the Catholic nationalist papers, including the Freeman’s Journal, Irish Independent and Evening Herald positioned themselves in opposition to cinema by actively supporting the campaign to introduce film censorship. A Herald editorial, for example, noted with satisfaction Home Secretary Herbert Samuel’s speech on 23 October, in which he undertook to introduce a centralized official film censorship (“Censorship of Cinemas”). Such a stance did not mean that these newspapers in any sense rejected the revenues from cinema advertising on their entertainment pages. Such ordinary business pragmatics were not to be disrupted by the introduction of film censorship. Indeed, Deering in his address to the Corporation argued that Irish picture-house owners would not be adversely affected by censorship because “there were hundreds and thousands of people in the City of Dublin who would neither go to picture houses themselves, not allow their children to go, on account of a certain class of pictures shown there (hear, hear)” (“Censorship of Films”).

Dublin audiences could first experience The Diamond from the Sky serial in written form before seeing it on screen at the Masterpiece and Camden. Dublin Evening Mail 28 Sep. 1916: 8.

Other papers allied themselves more closely with cinema in autumn 1916. These included the Protestant unionist Dublin Evening Mail – along with its sister papers the Daily Express and Irish Weekly Mail. “Now that ‘serials’ are the fashion in the moving picture world,” the Evening Mail observed, “it is gratifying to be able to recommend to the attention of serial readers and picture-goers the wholesome story and film to be published and exhibited in Dublin under the title of ‘The Diamond from the Sky’” (“Diamond from the Sky”). Film serials were by no means a new phenomenon; they had been showing in Ireland since November 1913. And The Diamond from the Sky was not wholly new either; it had already been shown in Irish cities and in such towns as Tralee (beginning 29 May 1916) and Cavan (beginning 10 July 1916). Serials that appeared in newspaper at the same time as they were being screened in the picture houses were also as old as 1913’s What Happened to Mary. The novelty in autumn 1916 was that the story appeared in an Irish paper rather than in a British one.

Lottie Pickford in The Diamond from the Sky (US: American, 1915)

Lottie Pickford in The Diamond from the Sky (US: American, 1915). Image from Wikipedia.

Beginning on 2 September 1916, the story was serialized in weekly episodes in the Irish Weekly Mail. Although “[c]rowded with sensational incidents and full of that ‘punch’ which successful films and stories must always possess,” it was “absolutely free of crude sensationalism, and anything ‘grisly’ in the nature of crime” (“Diamond from the Sky”). Starring Lottie Pickford, sister of the more famous Mary, its title referred to a diamond found in a meteor that became an heirloom of the aristocratic Stanley family, who to ensure a male blood line fatefully buy a baby boy from an unscrupulous gypsy. This wholesome subject matter first hit the screen of the Masterpiece Theatre on, Monday, 4 September to coincide with the story’s release in the previous Saturday’s Weekly Express. It was also being serialized at the same time in the Westmeath Exminer and the Mullingar Cinema Theatre (“Mullingar Cinema Theatre”). The film had a second Dublin run at the Camden Picture House beginning on 29 September, by which point the tie-in with the Express was well out of sync.

With The Miser's Gift, the Dame Street Picture House became the cinema that premiered the Film Company of Ireland's productions. Dublin Evening Mail 26 Oct. 1916: 2

After The Miser’s Gift, the Dame Street Picture House became the cinema that premiered the Film Company of Ireland’s productions. Dublin Evening Mail 26 Oct. 1916: 2

Although not noted in contemporary sources, the film The Diamond from the Sky had local interest in its Carlow-born co-director William Desmond Taylor, but more obvious Irish filmmaking interest was raised by the October release of the Film Company of Ireland’s (FCOI’s) second film The Miser’s Gift (Ireland, 1916). The film premiered at Cork’s Coliseum on 12 October, ran at Tralee’s Picturedrome 19-21 October, before opening at Dublin’s Dame on 26 October 1916. In its advertising of the film, the Dame announced that it had secured the “initial presentation of all the films produced by the Film Co.” (“Dame Street Picture House”). The FCOI’s third film, The Food of Love, would open there on 2 November. This arrangement with the Dame seems to have been part of the arrangements that FCOI made in the successful wake of their first film. At the end of September, Paddy, the Irish correspondent at the Bioscope, revealed that they had fitted out their offices at 34 Dame Street with developing rooms and advised that “[s]cenario writer could do very much worse than submit them a sample of their work” (Paddy 28 Sep.). For aspiring scenario writers, the Irish Times recommended J. Farquharson’s Picture Plays and How to Write Them, which included Benedict James’s film scenario for Arthur Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray, which was on release at Rathmines’ Princess Cinema for the three days beginning Monday 23 October 1916 (“Picture Plays”).

Paddy – identified for the first time in the Bioscope of 28 September 1916 as Godfrey Kilroy of 34 Windsor Road Dublin – assessed The Miser’s Gift as “greatly in advance of the first [film] as regards the quality and if this company stick to their guns they should still be well in the front rank of British producers.” Seeing it at the opening screening, Joseph Holloway noted that Abbey actor J. M. Kerrigan, who also directed,

played the role of miser. It was a story of dreaming of Fairy gold three times & the miser giving as wedding gift the contents of the crock he came by owing to his dreaming. It was effective & interesting & many scenes in the fair at Killaloe etc were really delightful glimpses of country life.

Others were more forceful in promoting the film’s potential to raise the general quality of cinema offerings. “I do not really think that the majority of people can be so degraded n their tastes as to prefer the rubbish trans-Atlantic films to really good pictures,” wrote HTH in a letter to the Evening Herald. S/he thought that by encouraging home produced film such as those from the FCOI, “in time, they would tend to oust numbers of inanities and vulgarities which at present fill up the programmes of nearly every cinema theatre. Such pictures would elevate the mind as well as to amuse, and they would be clean” (“Clean Amusement”).

James J. Fisher wasthe Irish agent for the official war films; Dublin Evening Mail 31 Oct. 1916: 2

James J. Fisher was the Irish agent for the official war films; Dublin Evening Mail 31 Oct. 1916: 2.

While the potential of Irish film production was just beginning to be realized, cinema’s role in wartime propaganda was quickly developing with a realization that military technology offered opportunities for the kind of spectacle that could harness the popular audience to the war effort. Newspapers that had long carried sensational stories of submarines, airships and airplanes now added accounts of such innovations as tanks – first mentioned in mid-September 1916 – and flamethrowers (“German Flame Attacks”). Artillery, tanks and flamethrowers would remain battlefield weapons, but long-range weapons that brought the war to civilian populations had a particular ideological charge that could be exploited by filmmakers. Nevertheless, the press remained the fast news medium, with newspapers offering lengthy and vivid accounts of successes against the feared airships. On the night of 1 October, an airship downed near London was reported to have been “watched by millions of eyes as it fell, lighting up earth and sky like some great celestial torch” (“Another Zeppelin”). This and other reports appeared in Irish papers on 2 October, and although by the following day, Dublin’s Picture House, Grafton Street and Masterpiece Theatre were showing a film of downed Zeppelins, it was  The Wrecked Zeppelins in Essex (Britain: Gaumont/War Office, 1916), which had been filmed the previous week.

Beyond their news value, however, the official war films were also popular in Ireland, following the success of The Battle of the Somme (Britain: British Topical Committee on War Films, 1916). The War Office and film companies recognized the high demand for such films, and in October, James J. Fisher – “military correspondent and author of the work entitled ‘Immortal Deeds of Our Irish Regiments’” (“Battle of the Somme”) – was appointed Irish agent for the British official war films. Fisher premiered the films at Dublin’s largest theatre, the Theatre Royal, usually with military bands providing accompaniment. Despite incidents of Republican attacks on soldiers in the streets of Dublin, several picture houses also exhibited the films. When William Kay took over management of the Rotunda Pictures on 2 October 1916, he arranged with Fisher to show the recently released French film of the battle of the Somme for the week beginning 30 October 1916. The programme included “the wonderful cartoon showing how Lieut. Robinson, V.C., brought down the Zeppelin,” the first official film from the Egyptian front, music by the band of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and recitations by Sergeant W. H. Jones of the 5th Lancers (“An Attractive Programme,” “Platform and Stage”).

These were just some of cinema’s manifold potentialities in October 1916.

References

“An Attractive Programme.” Dublin Evening Mail 26 Oct 1916: 5.

“Another Zeppelin Brought Down in Flames Near London.” Dublin Evening Mail 2 Oct 1916: 3.

“Censorship of Cinemas.” Evening Herald 24 Oct. 1916: 2.

“Censorship of Films: Deputation to the Corporation.” Freeman’s Journal 3 Oct. 1916: 2.

“Cinema Films: Corporation and Question of Censoring.” Evening Herald 9 Oct. 1916: 2.

“Cinemas and Censors.” Letters. Evening Herald 17 Oct. 1916: 2; 20 Oct. 1916: 2.

“Cinema’s Popularity: Manifold Potentialities: Shows What Theatre Only Tells.” Belfast Evening Telegraph 29 Sep. 1916: 4.

“Clean Amusement: Chance for Good Irish Films.” Evening Herald 23 Oct. 1916: 3.

“Dame Street Picture House.” Dublin Evening Mail 24 Oct. 1916: 4.

“Diamond from the Sky.” Dublin Evening Mail 30 Aug. 1916: 4.

“German Flame Attack: Driven Off by the British.” Dublin Evening Mail 16 Oct. 1916: 3.

Holloway, Joseph. Holloway Diaries. National Library of Ireland.

“Ireland’s Claim.” Dublin Evening Mail 21 Oct. 1916: 2.

The Man About Town. “Things Seen and Heard.” Evening Herald 6 Oct. 1916: 2.

“Mullingar Cinema Theatre.” Westmeath Examiner 7 Oct. 1916: 5.

“Picture Plays.” Irish Times 21 Oct. 1916: 9.

“Platform and Stage.” Irish Times 28 Oct. 1916: 8.

“Provincial.” Weekly Irish Times 28 Oct. 1916: 3.

Rambler. “Round and About.” Bioscope 7 Sep. 1916: 869.

“Spies Manufactured Wholesale!” Bioscope 19 Oct. 1916: 224.

“Union of Women Workers: Meeting of the Dublin Branch: The Work of the Women Patrols.” Irish Times 21 Oct. 1916: 4.

History Without Tears in Irish Cinemas, June 1916

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Framegrab from The Fight at St. Eloi; Imperial War Museums.

Framegrab from The Fight at St. Eloi (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1916); Imperial War Museums.

The London-based trade journal Bioscope opened its first June issue with an editorial entitled “The Moving Picture: The New National Weapon” and subtitled “A Force which Cannot Be Destroyed and Should Therefore Be Utilized.” “The new Defence of the Realm Regulations contain a warning that penalties will be incurred by the exhibition of unpatriotic cinematograph films,” it began, before confidently asserting:

We are happy to believe that the precaution was unnecessary. The power of the pictures has never yet been used in this country for the furtherance of disloyal or anti-British objects. It has, on the other hand, not seldom been employed with the utmost success in patriotic causes.

Nevertheless, the British government did see a reason for tighter legislative control of cinema in pursuit of the ideological goal of promoting patriotism, unanimity and support for recruitment in the context of a lengthy and costly war. The economic need to fund the war through increased tax had most directly affected cinema through the recently introduced Entertainment Tax.

"Trade Topics." Bioscope 1 Jun. 1916: 958

“Trade Topics.” Bioscope 1 Jun. 1916: 958

In many ways, cinema in Ireland in June 1916 looked like a mature industry, regulated by these laws, but also highly cognizant of and largely aligned with the London-based trade. Even Ireland’s laggardly film production showed considerable development when the Film Company of Ireland press-showed its first production, O’Neil of the Glen, on 29 June at Dublin’s Carlton Cinema (“Irish Film Production”). The Bioscope was one of the ways in which this alignment was achieved, and although it was certainly read in Ireland, members of the Irish cinema trade might have been less confident of the claims of this editorial. In the same 1 June issue, the journal’s “Trade Topics” column published the assertion of J. Magner of the Clonmel Theatre that the Bioscope was the best of the cinema trade papers. And in 22 June issue, Irish columnist “Paddy” informed readers that the Bioscope was available at Mrs Dunne’s shop in Dublin’s Brunswick Street – close to the Queen’s Theatre, Norman Whitten’s General Film Supply, distributor Weisker Brothers, and other cinema businesses.

In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, however, it was questionable to what the Irish population at large was loyal. Support for the war still dominated the mainstream Irish press, but antiwar and pro-republican sentiments were becoming less marginal. By June, some theatres and picture houses anxious to maintain displays of their loyalty to the Crown – and by extension, that of their patrons – encountered protests. The large Theatre Royal had been one of the first places of amusement to open after the Rising, when it had offered British Army propaganda films. This did not, however, mean that its audience could all be considered loyalists.

On 26 June, for instance, William Charles Joseph Andrew Downes, a church decorator living at 15 Goldsmith Street, Dublin, was arrested for riotous behaviour during a live show at the Theatre Royal. He had shouted abuse related to the Boer War at a uniformed soldier who had responded to a magician’s call for a volunteer from the audience (“Scene in City Theatre”). The Boer War of 1899-1902 had been extremely divisive in Ireland, with popular support for the Boers’ stand against the British Empire extending from fiery speeches by Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster to attacks on British soldiers in the streets of Dublin, and it was directly linked to the Rising in the person of executed leader and former Boer Irish Brigade major John McBride (Condon). As Downes was being escorted out the door of the Theatre Royal, he drew attention to the Irish republican badge he was wearing – a display of solidarity with the Easter rebels – and suggested that it was the reason he was being expelled.

Downes’ outburst could not be completely dismissed as the actions of a drunk – the arresting constable described him as neither drunk nor sober but “half-and-half” – and it was not isolated. The previous week, seven young people between the ages of 17 and 29 – four men and three women – had been charged in Dublin’s Police Court with offenses under the Defence of the Realm Act and with assaulting the constables who had attempted to seize the green flag at the head of a procession of 400 republican supporters that had been followed through the city centre by a crowd of around 2,000 (“Amazing City Scenes”). The crowd had also shouted republican slogans and booed and groaned passing soldiers. The mass arrests and deportations in May had failed to quell advanced nationalist activism that was now consciously identifying itself as republican.

Town Topics June 1916

Dublin Evening Mail 19 Jun. 1916: 2.

This republican riot on Dublin’s streets provided an immediate if unacknowledged context for press commentary on the educational value of the official war films. “The boys of the future will have many advantages over the boys of the past,” observed the Dublin Evening Mail’s “Town Topics” columnist. “They will learn by picture-houses as well as by paradigms. It has been said that there is no Royal road to learning. There may be a Theatre Royal road, however” (“Town Topics”).

Official war films at the Gaiety; Evening Herald 14 Jun. 1916: 2.

Official war films at the Gaiety; Evening Herald 14 Jun. 1916: 2.

In a telling slippage, he was in fact discussing a new programme of official war films at the Gaiety Theatre rather than at the Royal. Although his point was about the ease or gaiety with which cinema could teach history, it is clear that this history would inculcate loyalty to the crown and war effort. “When I was in statu pupillari,” he continued,

history was taught me not without tears. The boys of the future will learn of the great war at the picture-palaces. I saw some of the official war films last week at the Gaiety Theatre. I saw the Irish regiments marching to Mass. I saw the heavy artillery attacking a German block-house. […] I saw our men in the trenches, preparing to seize the crater of a mine explosion. I saw them lobbing bombs like cricket balls at the enemy. Then I saw them – gallant Canadians at St. Eloi – fix bayonets and out over the parapet to charge across No Man’s Land and leap at the foe. Who would read the dull chronicles of Caesar of Livy after that?

Framegrab from Destruction of a German Blockhouse by 9.2 Howitzer; Impeial War Museum.

Framegrab from Destruction of a German Blockhouse by 9.2 Howitzer (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1916); Imperial War Museums.

In making this argument, the Town Topics writer was aligning himself with the Bioscope early 1916 description of the cinema as the “nation’s historian.” Although certainly exciting, these official films were not mere entertainment but a new kind of visual historiography. And this was not just a boon for schoolboys but also a new historical method that could help historians to overcome the wartime measures introduced by governments to control the flow of information. He argued that while “[a]t the beginning of the war it was thought the historians would be bankrupt, because the censorship hid deeds of our men in the mystery of the night,” in fact, “[t]he cinema will save the historian, and at least help him to pay ten shillings in the pound.”

Other press coverage of the Gaiety shows gives further details of how this new history was presented and received. The choice of a large “legitimate” theatre such as the Gaiety rather than in a picture house associated the films with a site of serious cultural production aimed at a discerning audience. On the other hand, the Gaiety adapted picture-house exhibition practices in showing the films at three shows a day beginning at 3pm. “[T]he Gaiety Theatre opens a practically new chapter in its career,” the Freeman’s Journal commented, “by the fact that the attraction is not the familiar drama, musical or otherwise, but the production of a series of official war pictures which are, beyond all doubt, of transcendent interest” (“Amusements”). “In imagination,” observed the Irish Times, “one may see Irish soldiers at work and play, the Connaught Rangers and Munster Fusiliers amongst them, and Captain Redmond is seen leading his company to the front lines” (“Public Amusements”). Similar to other entertainments at the theatre, “a most excellent musical accompaniment is supplied by the Gaiety orchestra” (“Amusements”). Although music might contribute to the ease with which these images could be perceived, the musical director would presumably have had to be careful to avoid evoking not tears of schoolboy struggle but those of poignant loss among audience members with relatives and friends in France.

More chapters of this history that could – a least theoretically – be assimilated without tears, were on the way. “At the General Headquarters of the British Army in France,” reported the Dublin Evening Mail on 22 June, “there was last night exhibited before a large gathering of distinguished officers and their guests the latest series of the official war films, which in due course will be presented to the public at home and to neutral Powers, amongst which the desire to learn what our troops are really doing is unquestionable very keen” (“Pictures Taken at the Front”). This first run before an expert military audience could not, however, guarantee how resistant audiences in Ireland or elsewhere might react.

The Irish Catholic Church seemed to also believe that the cinema could not easily be destroyed and should therefore be, if not utilized for its own purposes, at least shaped by its ideology. With the appointment in June 1916 by Dublin Corporation’s Public Health Committee of Walter Butler and Patrick Lennon as film censors, a milestone was reached in the church’s campaign to introduce local censorship that would reflect a distinctly Irish Catholic sensibility (Rockett 50). Films shown in Ireland already bore the certificate of the British Board of Film Censorship, which had been established by the film trade as a form of self-regulation to avoid government-imposed censorship. Even as Butler and Lennon were being appointed, the British industry was discussing renewed government determination to introduce official censorship. Among the cases cited that raised this issues in London was the banning of A Tale of the Rebellion, a film about the Easter Rising that showed an Irishman being hanged (“London Correspondence”). Even as they announced the introduction of censorship in Dublin, however, the Irish Vigilance Association (IVA) expressed impatience with the lack of urgency demonstrated by the Corporation in appointing censors (“Film Censors for Dublin”).

Musical attractions at the Pillar; Dublin Evening Mail 1 Jun. 1916: 2.

Musical attractions at the Pillar; Dublin Evening Mail 1 Jun. 1916: 2.

From the IVA’s perspective, censorship was increasingly urgent given cinema’s growing appeal for the middle class, epitomized by improvements to cinematic music in June 1916. Three Dublin picture houses led the musical field: the city-centre Pillar and Carlton and the suburban Bohemian. Reviewing the Pillar at the end of June, the Irish Times revealed that its “orchestra including such favourites as Mr. Joseph Schofield, Mr. Harris Rosenberg, Mr. H. O’Brien, Miss Annie Kane and Mr. S. Golding, continue[s] to delight large audiences” (“Pillar Picture House”). Just a few doors away from the Pillar on Sackville/O’Connell Street, the Carlton boasted in Erwin Goldwater an internationally renowned violinist as its orchestra leader and soloist.

Dublin Evening Mail 10 Jun. 1916: 2.

Dublin Evening Mail 10 Jun. 1916: 2.

The Bohemian, however, outdid both of these when it engaged Achille Simonetti. “Dubliners will keenly appreciate the enterprise of the management of the Bohemian Picture Theatre in permanently engaging the services of one of the most noted violinists of the day in the person of Signor Simonetti,” the Dublin Evening Mail argued. “Henceforth Signor Simonetti will act as leader of the Bohemian orchestra – which has won such a wide repute – and will give solos, as well as Mr. Clyde Twelvetrees, Ireland’s greatest ’celloist” (“Play’s the Thing”). Simonetti debuted alongside Twelvetrees at the Bohemian on Whit Monday, 12 June 1916, when the bill was topped by Infelice (Britain: Samuelson, 1915), based on a novel by Augusta Evans-Wilson and starring Peggy Hyland. And if this was not enough to draw a large audience, the Bohemian announced that it would revise its pricing back to pre-Entertainment Tax rates, adding the line “We Pay Your Tax” to future advertisements.

No ordinary musicians need apply to Bangor’s Picture Palace; Irish Independent 9 Jun. 1916: 6.

No ordinary musicians need apply to Bangor’s Picture Palace; Irish Independent 9 Jun. 1916: 6.

The Bohemian added violist George Hoyle two weeks later. “The management now consider that they have the most perfect arrangement of stringed instruments and performers for a picture theatre,” the Irish Times reported (“Platform and Stage”). In a rare article focused on “Picture House Music,” Dublin Evening Mail columnist H.R.W. agreed that the Bohemian’s orchestra was the best in the city and that Simonetti’s “distinguished abilities attract large numbers of people from the most distant parts of the city.”

Commenting favourably on the tendency for picture-house orchestras to add strings and avoid brass and woodwind, s/he observed that while “the theatre orchestra was allowed to degenerate into mere noisy accompaniments to conversations in the auditorium during the interval,” in the picture house, “conversation is subdued, the music is subdued, the lights are subdued. The whole effect is soothing to the nerves.” Referring to Twelvetree’s impressive rendering of Max Bruch’s arrangement of “Kol Nidre,” s/he speculated that “the exact atmosphere is created by the fact that the solos are played in half light. The attention paid by the audience shows that this new feature is appreciated to the fullest extent.” S/he concluded that “the picture houses are affording us an opportunity of hearing the very best music, and in the hands of such fine artists as I have mentioned we can hear anything from a string quartet to a symphony.”

Although the official war films were not shown at the Bohemian, music of this kind could certainly play a role in assimilating the new tearless history.

References

“Amazing City Scenes.” Dublin Evening Mail 19 Jun. 1916: 3.

“Amusements: The Gaiety Theatre.” Freeman’s Journal 13 Jun. 1916: 6.

“Bohemian Picture Theatre.” Irish Times 13 Jun. 1916: 2; 20 Jun. 1916: 7.

Condon, Denis. “Politics and the Cinematograph in Revolutionary Ireland: The Boer War and the Funeral of Thomas Ashe.” Field Day Review Issue 4 (2008); and “Receiving News from the Seat of War: Dublin Audiences Respond to Boer War Entertainments.” Early Popular Visual Culture Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011).

“Film Censors for Dublin.” Freeman’s Journal 22 Jun. 1916: 6.

H.R.W. “Picture House Music: Its Growth and Development.” Dublin Evening Mail 28 Jun. 1916: 5.

“Irish Film Production.” Irish Times 30 Jun. 1916: 6.

“London Correspondence.” Freeman’s Journal 16 Jun. 1916: 4.

“The Moving Picture: The New National Weapon.” Bioscope 1 Jun. 1916: 955.

“Pictures Taken at the Front: Splendid New Series: Operator Gets Bullet Through His Cap.” Dublin Evening Mail 22 Jun. 1916: 3.

“The Pillar Picture House.” Irish Times 27 Jun. 1916: 6.

“Platform and Stage.” Irish Times 24 Jun 1916: 10.

“The Play’s the Thing.” Dublin Evening Mail 10 Jun. 1916: 6.

“Public Amusements: The Gaiety Theatre.” Irish Times 13 Jun. 1916: 2.

Rockett, Kevin. Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography. Dublin: Four Courts, 2004.

“Scene in City Theatre: ‘There Is a Brave Man.’” Dublin Evening Mail 26 Jun. 1916: 4.

“Town Topics: Being a Casual Causerie.” Dublin Evening Mail 19 Jun. 1916: 2.

“The Nation’s Historian” or a “Violent Stimulant to the Eyes”?: Irish Cinema at the Beginning of 1916

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Balfour Bio 6 Jan 1916

Arthur Balfour, “Cabinet Minister as Cinema-Lecturer,” touts the importance of war films; Bioscope 6 Jan. 1916: 16.

On 29 December 1915, Arthur Balfour, Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, attended a screening of the war film Britain Prepared (Britain: Urban, 1915) at London’s Empire Theatre, Leister Square. “[T]these pictures constitute something more than an afternoon’s amusement,” he asserted. “They contain a lesson of the deepest import to us and the world” (“Britain’s Might Revealed”). The trade journal Bioscope was delighted with Balfour’s comments before the screening, drawing attention to them in a prominent article in its first 1916 issue. “This is, we believe, the first time in the history of the cinematograph that a Cabinet Minister has made a formal speech of introduction at an exhibition of moving pictures,” it claimed, “and as such it is an event of no small significance.” The Bioscope of 20 January clarified the magnitude of its significance, when it declared that cinema was now – finally – “The Nation’s Historian”:

The Trade has just cause for pride and gratification in the complete unanimity with which Press and public, Cabinet Minister and man-in-the-street alike, have welcomed the official cinematograph pictures of the war and the life and training of our soldiers and sailors. It has, we admit, taken a very long time to convince the Government and the Fourth Estate of the value of the cinematograph as the national historian, but now that their approval is forthcoming and the work pronounced to be good, we can well afford to regard the time as well spent. (“Nation’s Historian.”).

Doubtless Balfour’s endorsement of Britain Prepared was a valuable governmental recognition of the British film industry, and as such it is an important historical document. It is more doubtful that a film clearly conceived as propaganda – showing how Britain had prepared and was prepared to fight its enemies – can be considered a work of history. Nor was the Bioscope really interested in making a case for the film as history; it was enough of an achievement that Balfour’s presence and words showed how useful cinema had become to the war effort.

Metro ad DEM 3 Jan 1916

David Lloyd George and H H Asquith feature in this ad for Metro Pictures; Dublin Evening Mail 3 Jan. 1916: 5.

While Balfour argued that Britain Prepared was not mere entertainment but a film that British politicians should take seriously, one distribution company suggested that two other Cabinet ministers were watching its films for relaxation. In January 1916, the Dublin Evening Mail carried a series of ads placed by Ruffell’s, British agents for US production and distribution company Metro Pictures. The ads featured the Ruffell’s mascot, a parrot in a top hat, and in the first of these ads – which is in comic-strip form – the parrot convinces Minister for Munitions David Lloyd George and Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith to watch a Metro film as a needed break from their war duties. The incongruity of the images of these senior politicians visiting a cinema with the behatted and cigar-chewing parrot might distract from the no-less significant if admittedly less spectacular incongruity of this and other ads appearing in an Irish daily newspaper. Distribution was a wholesaling business; it acted as the intermediary between the manufacturers – film production companies such as Metro – and the retailers – the cinema-owners who actually showed the films. In the ordinary course of business, a distribution company such as Ruffell’s would advertise in such cinema trade journals as the Bioscope but not in the dailies. Ruffell’s did advertise in the trade press, but this series of ads sought to create recognition among cinema-goers of the relatively new Metro brand name and of the Ruffell’s parrot.

British Army DEM 20 Jan 1916

Official war film British Army in France at the Provincial Cinematograph Company’s Dublin picture houses. In the fist half of this week, the Grafton had shown With the Indian Troops in France. Dublin Evening Mail, 20 Jan. 1916: 5.

And the parrot was right: cinema was more likely the nation’s – or the world’s – entertainer than its historian. Amusement was the primary reason that Irish patrons visited a picture house, even if they did also come for other reasons, including to see how the war that they mostly read about in newspapers actually looked, and to cheer or to boo at a film that sought to use such images to engender patriotic feelings towards a nation that was invariably Britain. Nonetheless, the notion of the cinema as national historian had particular resonances for Ireland in 1916, as it has in 2016 as the country commemorates 1916. The experience of the more than 200,000 thousand Irishmen in the British armed forces were, of course, represented to some extent by Britain Prepared and other propaganda films that were appearing in increasing numbers. The Picture Houses in Grafton Street and in Sackville/O’Connell Street, which were owned by the British chain Provincial Cinematograph Theatres, made a particular feature of these films, promoting them with prominent illustrated ads, such as the one for British Army in France on 20 January. The Bioscope quoted Balfour as regretting that Britain did not “have a permanent record of the grand deeds of our armies in France and Flanders” (“Britain’s Might Revealed”). A number of such films did exist, but filmmakers would answer this call for a permanent record most spectacularly later in the year in the form of the film The Battle of the Somme (Britain: British Topical Committee for War Films, 1916).

As one of the main purposes of such films was to show the unity of the kingdom, they could not represent the motives of Irish nationalists, who had to look elsewhere for elements of an Irish historical experience on film. This was clearly so in the case of the separatist nationalists who sought Irish independence from Britain and opposed recruitment, but it also included the many more moderate Irish nationalists, even soldiers who had joined the war in answer to John Redmond’s call to fight for Home Rule. Nationalist MPs at Westminster ensured Ireland was treated as a special case even in relation to military recruitment, a fact emphasized in January 1916 when the Military Service Act excluded the country from the compulsory conscription. Given the paucity of film production in Ireland, there was little prospect of cinema providing a detailed film record of the struggle for Irish national self-determination. The nearest thing to such a film was Ireland a Nation (US: Macnamara, 1914), shot in Ireland in 1914 but not shown in the country until 1917. Newsreel films of armed National and Irish Volunteers parading do exist, albeit that the Ulster Volunteers were better at media management, including arranging for cinematograph operators to record significant demonstrations. Fiction films representing Ireland’s rebellions in 1798 and 1803 had been made by US companies such as Domino and Kalem, Sidney Olcott shooting many Irish-shot films for the latter. The special Sunday shows at Dublin’s Phibsboro Picture House on 23 January featured For the Wearing of the Green (US: Domino, 1914), in which “Paddy Dwyer, the Irish blacksmith, and his helper, Dennis Grady, who is also his daughter Norah’s sweetheart, are the prime leaders in the conspiracy against the Crown” (“Domino”). The Hibernian Electric Theatre’s Sunday feature a week later was Olcott’s The Mayor from Ireland (US: Kalem, 1911), in which two Irish immigrants follow each other in the office of New York mayor. Neither of these films was a new release, but their revival suggests their importance for Irish audiences in offering fictional self-representations that included revolutionary romances.

Hibernian ad ET 29 Jan 1916p1

Ad for Hibernian, Evening Telegraph 29 Jan. 1916: 1.

Indeed, the Hibernian Electric Theatre may provide one of the most direct links between Irish cinema and the revolution that was being planned for 1916. This picture house at 113 Capel Street, Dublin, had previously been called the Irish Cinema and had been owned and run by Richard Graham. Financial difficulties including rent default forced Graham to sell in late 1915 (“Capel Street Picture House”). No account of the reopening as the Hibernian appears to exist, but it was advertising in the Evening Telegraph by the start of January. The ads and short notices that month give an indication of some of the people involved, including manger Thomas Fullam and musical director Miss M. Grundy (“Hibernian Electric Theatre”). It is possible that it was owned or part owned by Michael Mallin, as later recalled by his son (Hughes 76-78.). Dublin silk weaver, British Army bugler, union organizer and leader of the Irish Citizen Army, Mallin would be executed in May 1916 for his role in the Easter Rising. How his picture-house experience may have had a bearing on his revolutionary activity or vice versa is difficult to say. Nevertheless, the Hibernian was located beside the Trades Hall – a fact noted in ads – and it is likely that its programming aimed to attract union members, as well as the many working class people who lived in the slum districts that would have been the catchment area for the cinema’s audience. In 1913 and 1914, the Irish Cinema had been the only picture house and one of the few entertainments of any kind that advertised in the radical labour journal The Irish Worker. However, apart from The Mayor from Ireland, its offerings seem little different from those of other Dublin picture houses.

Larkin Prison II 4 Jan 1916p4

Irish Independent 4 Jan. 1916: 4.

If Irish picture-house owners – even radical ones – had only moulded cinema in limited ways to produce a national moving image, religious groups were working more deliberately to ensure that cinema reflected the churches’ worldview. This was particularly the case with Catholic groups, such as the Dublin Vigilance Committee, which in December 1915 had coalesced with other vigilance groups around the country to become the Irish Vigilance Association (IVA). Following his arrest on 31 December 1915, serial cinema protester and militant IVA member William Larkin was released from Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail on 4 January 1916. He had been imprisoned for non-payment of the fine imposed on him in October and November for his protest at the Bohemian Picture Theatre in September (“Picture Theatre Protest”). The IVA arranged a parade of welcome from Larkin’s house in Sherrard Avenue in the north city to Foster Place, a favoured place to hold speeches beside the city-centre building that had until 1800 had been the Irish parliament. Larkin’s short prison term had done nothing to lessen his activism on the introduction of film censorship; indeed, it allowed him to claim a certain martyrdom. “I was treated as a low criminal in Mountjoy Jail for protesting against a film,” he claimed in an exchange of correspondence published by the Evening Telegraph. “I had to don a convict’s garb, eat skilly, lie on a board, and refuse hard bread. I had to parade with degenerates in a prison yard; and all, that our youth might be spared gazing on suggestion” (“Proposed Cinema Censorship”).

This concern with young people also prompted calls for censorship from reformers seemingly unaligned with the IVA. In a letter to the Telegraph, E. Gordon urged regulation of picture houses to prevent children from attending late evening shows. “I have seen toddlers and youngsters, aye, and smoking cigarettes (another Dublin byelaw more honoured in the breach than the observance) in picture houses at 10.30 p.m,” he observed:

Where did they get the money, and where were their homes? Where were their parents? Why are those children allowed to spend their lives thus? Perhaps the housing question would account for a lot of it. Now, those youngsters go in to a picture house (“It’s only tuppence, Billy”). They do not go in to look at a moral lesson faithfully learned, or for education – only for a laugh, and “it’s comfey.” (“Children at the Cinema.”)

Gordon wished for an educational cinema, recognizing it as “a great, wonderful and fascinating optical achievement (if directed in the proper channel) that was never dreamt of twenty years ago.” As such, it was an “accomplishment which makes old lanternists blush, and yet their blush can be condoned, for the old scientific lantern will still hold its own, at least in the class-room and lecture hall.”

In the Dublin township of Rathmines, the ongoing controversy on the opening of picture houses on Sunday continued into early 1916. At a meeting on 5 January, the council eventually split 8-8, and the chairman cast the deciding vote in favour of closing cinemas on Sundays; they had had limited opening hours before this. Councillor Thomas Kennedy spoke in favour of keeping them open, reading a supporting letter from the Ratepayers’ Protection Association that argued that soldiers’ relatives particularly liked seeing war reports and that closing cinemas on the only day when many people could visit them would drive these people to the pubs for recreation. Rejecting such arguments, Chairman Sibthorpe explained that he had cast his vote in favour of Sunday closing because oculists had “stated that their work had been more than doubled since these cinemas had been applying a violent stimulant to the eyes of the young people, and they were absolutely ruining the sight of the rising generation” (“Cinema Shows”).

Young people who got into trouble with the law – and their legal representatives – were well aware of these discourses on cinema’s pernicious effects on the young and of how to use them to their advantage. When “two young fellows” named Richard Barnes and Thomas Farrell appeared before Mr. Swifte at Dublin’s Southern Police Court on 27 January 1916, their solicitor argued that they had entered a banana store illegally because of watching burglaries at the picture houses and playing slot machines (“Cinema and Slot Machines”). These new forms of popular culture “were the means of leading many a young fellow astray,” he argued.

Charlie at the Bank

Chaplin foils a robbery in Charlie at the Bank (US: Essanay, 1915).

The person responsible for a good amount of this violent visual stimulation in Ireland in 1916 was Charlie Chaplin, but in January 1916, he was foiling robberies rather than committing them. The writer of the Evening Telegraph’s “Gleaned from All Sources” column, however, had picked up the news that Chaplin’s career was on the wane, “which is the obvious and inevitable result of overdoing the Chaplin ‘boom.’ When it came to imitations in music-hall revues and Charlie Chaplin calendars and pin-cushions,” s/he observed, “a reaction was inevitable.” Despite merchandizing and overexposure, that reaction was not apparent in Dublin picture houses, according to the review writer in the same issue of the Telegraph. Charlie at the Bank had recently been released, and the reviewer was assessing the show at the Pillar Picture House. “There is more riotous fun packed into this two-reel comedy than any other photo-play of a like length. The world’s great comedian, Charlie Chaplin, has outdone himself in this new production. While all his other comedies are funny, this one is a scream. It abounds in real humour and comic situations, with Chaplin at his best in his inimitable antics” (“Pillar Picture House,” 18 Jan.). Charlie at the Bank was shown at more picture houses than any other film that month, suggesting that cinema-owners did not believe that Chaplin’s career was experiencing a dip. Audiences seemed to agree: on account of the “hundreds who could not gain admission” during the three day run, the film was held over for a further three days (“Pillar Picture House,” 20 Jan.).

As 1916 began, Irish audiences enjoyed a thriving cinema culture that more often offered them a violent stimulant of the Chaplin kind than national history.

References

“Britain’s Might Revealed by Film: A Cabinet Minister as Cinema-Lecturer.” Bioscope 6 Jan. 1916: 16A.

“Children at the Cinema.” Evening Telegraph 8 Jan. 1916.

“Cinema and Slot Machines.” Dublin Evening Mail 27 Jan. 1916: 5.

“Cinema Shows: Sunday Performances in Rathmines: Action of Urban Council.” Evening Telegraph 5 Jan. 1916: 5.

“Domino: The Wearing of the Green.” Moving Picture World 3 Mar. 1914: 1302.

“Dublin and District: Picture Theatre Protest.” Irish Independent 1 Jan. 1916: 6.

“Gleaned from All Sources: The Late Charlie Chaplin.” Evening Telegraph 18 Jan. 1916: 1.

“Hibernian Electric Theatre.” Evening Telegraph 29 Jan. 1916: .

Hughes, Brian. Micheal Mallin. Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2012.

“The Nation’s Historian: Triumphant Vindication of the Cinematograph.” Bioscope 20 Jan. 1916: 229.

“Pillar Picture House.” Evening Telegraph 18 Jan 1916: 5; 20 Jan 1916: 5.

“Proposed Cinema Censorship.” Evening Telegraph 11 Jan. 1916: 3.

Irish Cinema’s Alluring Enticement to Evil in November 1915

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Punishment cartoon 6 Nov 1915p154

This cartoon from the fan magazine Pictures and the Picturegoer (6 Nov. 1915: 154) suggests that children were particularly interested in cinema. Although published in London, the magazine received frequent letters and competition entries from Irish readers, including to its “Young Picturegoer” column. Source: Media History Digital Library.

“Though in our towns we have no theatres or music halls,” noted Cardinal Logue, head of the Irish Catholic church, in a letter published in the Freeman’s Journal on 1 November 1915, “we have the pictures everywhere, and these require close watching” (“Clean Amusements”). November 1915 saw the culmination of some strands of the struggle to regulate Irish cinema, which occurred first between Dublin’s picture-house owners, church groups and city councillors. In a way, of course, this showed that cinema was now too ubiquitous a part of Irish culture to be ignored, as it largely had been by the Catholic church until 1915. The purpose of Logue’s letter was to praise the changed focus of the Dublin Vigilance Committee’s (DVC’s) campaign from “combating unclean and demoralising literature” to “purify[ing] the theatres, music halls and picture houses” (ibid.). Such efforts were especially needed in the case of picture houses because a “great body of those attending them are mere youths and children, and it is to be feared that suggestive and exciting scenes are often presented to them which have a most injurious effect on character and morals” (ibid.).

The timing of the publication of Logue’s letter was no accident but part of a strategy to build a consensus that a distinct layer of Irish film censorship was required. On 2 November, a DVC deputation was permitted to address Dublin Corporation’s Public Health Committee (PHC), the body that issued picture-house licences under the Cinematograph Act (1909) (“Cinematograph Licences in Dublin”). The delegation noted that they had “exercised supervision over the cinema theatres for some time past, and they had to say, with the exception of one particular house, they had no serious complaint to make” (ibid). They discussed their suggested amendments in relation to music, Sunday opening, auditorium lighting, closing on important religious festivals and censorship. PHC chairman James J. Kelly assured them that “he, and the Committee, were in entire sympathy with the views of the Vigilance Committee” and that the PHC “would as far as they could legally go, assist the Vigilance Committee in attaining the objects they had in view” (ibid). The first substantial steps towards a church-sanctioned film censorship had been taken.

Dublin’s Protestant churches were also determined to assert their authority over cinema. A deputation protesting against Sunday opening appeared before the urban council of the Dublin township of Rathmines on 3 November. Although it also included the Catholic parish priest Archdeacon Fricker, it was mainly constituted of Church of Ireland clerics – Ernest H. Lewis Crosby, James Sandys Bird and James Hawthonthwaite – as well as the Methodist minister William B. Lumley (“Rathmines Urban Council”). Three cinemas fell within Rathmines Courcil’s remit: the Princess Cinema and the Town Hall in Rathmines and the Sandford Cinema in Ranelagh. The Rathmines councillors were just as deferential to this deputation as Dublin Corporation had been to the DVC. Chairman John Russell expressed the council’s “very sympathetic feeling with the deputation in the matter” and promised that “[w]hen the time came for the renewal of those licences the Council would try to merit by their action the approval of the deputation” (Paddy, 11 Nov.).

The churches attention extended even to the ways the cinema industry communicated with its audience through advertising. In October, Dublin’s Catholic archbishop, William Walsh had written to the Freeman’s Journal complaining that the advertising hoardings around the city remained “widely open for the display of alluring enticement to evil” (“Objectionable Performances in Dublin Theatres”). “There is surely very little to be gained by the efforts of parents who conscientiously seek to guard their children from the evil influences of lascivious displays in the theatre,” he reasoned, “if some of the most seductive of the sights to be witnessed there are openly displayed along the highways, and even the by ways, of our city” (ibid.). The newspapers – who derived a substantial part of their income from advertising entertainments – had been quick in following up this story about a rival. On the day following the Archbishop’s letter, the Freeman’s Journal had “made inquiries regarding the powers of the Corporation and the police, and the attitude of the principal firm of billposters in the metropolis, in connection with the display of indecent or suggestive pictorial publications” (“Picture Posters”). It found that a poster censorship committee already existed – or had quickly been formed in answer to the controversy – consisting of theatre and picture-house proprietors and the main billposting company, David Allen and Son. If this suggests a close collaboration between these parties, other developments suggest that complete harmony did not exist. On 8 November 1915, the Irish Court of Appeal affirmed a judgement that William King of Madras Place, Phibsboro, Dublin, was in breach of contract with the firm of David Allen and Son Bill Posting, Ltd. King was ordered to pay £80 to Messrs Allen because they had not been able to put an advertising hoarding on the side wall of the Phibsboro Picture House as agreed (“Phibsborough Picture House”).

However, the churches did not have it all their own way. On 19 November, the Recorder of Dublin – the city’s chief magistrate – struck down an appeal by William Larkin of the DVC against his conviction and fining in October on a charge of offensive and riotous behaviour. This was something of a personal victory for Frederick Sparling, proprietor of the Bohemian Picture in Phibsboro. When Larkin had been arrested on 14 September for his protest at the Bohemian against A Modern Magdalen (US: Life Photo Film, 1915), the case had been summarily dismissed by the magistrate as Larkin had publicly predicted it would be. Having been the victim of Larkin’s protests on previous occasions, however, Sparling was determined to teach him a lesson, so he prosecuted him again. This second prosecution was unprecedented and gave rise to some consequences Larkin had not foreseen. At this second trial, Larkin argued that his protest against A Modern Magdalen was legitimate because in the film’s so-called mad-cap scene, protagonist Katinka danced topless, a detail the prosecution and most of the witnesses disputed. The case was adjourned for a week while the magistrate viewed the film, and he concluded that it was not indecent or objectionable, imposing a fine and costs on Larkin. The Recorder confirmed this judgement.

More interestingly, in order to prove the charge that Larkin had caused a panic, Sparling called cinema staff and audience members to testify, and Larkin’s lawyers called the DVC members who had been present as defence witnesses. As a result, this is one of the few instances in which the views – or even the names – of ordinary members of an Irish audience were recorded. The court provided a forum for these ordinary audience members to confront the coercive behaviour of the DVC.

Map showing from where members of the audiences travelled from to get to the Bohemian Picture Theatre on 14 Sep. 1915. Purple stars represent people who supported William Larkin’s account of his protest; green stars represent people who challenged Larkin’s account. Yellow squares represent picture houses in north Dublin.

Map showing from where members of the Dublin audience travelled from to get to the Bohemian Picture Theatre in Phibsboro on 14 Sep. 1915. Purple stars represent people who supported William Larkin’s account of his protest; green stars represent people who challenged Larkin’s account. Yellow squares represent picture houses in north Dublin.

Like Larkin himself, however, these people have left very few archival traces beyond their names, addresses and professions. In all, fifteen people testified in court, including Larkin, Sparling and Mathewson. The DVC members, for the defence, were Richard Jones, chairman of the Richmond Asylum; Mrs. A Murphy of Capel Street; P.J. Walsh, a Phibsboro accountant; Philip Lavery, a justice of the peace from Armagh; and Peter Tierney, a china and glass merchant of Bolton Street. The cinema staff who testified were the operators William Jones and Scallan; advertising agent Robert Moss; and cashier Rachel Smith. Three “unaffiliated” witnesses also spoke for the prosecution: Mrs. Evans of Grangegorman, civil servant Charles Millen and Daisy Sandes. They said similar things, perhaps best put by the youngest of them, Daisy Sandes, who worked at a retouching studio in Henry Street and lived with her working-class family in an artisan dwelling about ten minutes walk from the Bohemian. “I was amazed,” she commented, when asked about Larkin’s behaviour. “I did not see why anyone should object” (“Scene in Dublin Picture Theatre”). Sandes’ utter rejection of Larkin’s arguments refuted the DVC’s claim to speak for ordinary people too timid and accepting to speak for themselves. It seems also to mark a point at which she and other young working-class men and women were increasingly going to the cinema for their entertainment.

Although Sparling seems to have had little support from other exhibitors, other individual picture-house proprietors and the industry as a whole also responded to these attacks by presenting cinema as a public good. The directors of the Grand Cinema in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, gave their premises on Saturday, 30 October to a local committee who had organized a matinee entertainment that raised over £10 for the Red Cross and St. John’s Ambulance (Paddy, 4 Nov.). Such charitable gestures had long been an important way in which picture-house proprietors had asserted the direct utility of their business to local communities. By November 1915, bringing someone to the cinema was considered socially acceptable not only for children or dating couples. As part of her efforts to support recruiting, Florence Blacker-Douglass invited 90 wives of soldiers in the Irish Guards to meet her for a film shows at Dublin’s Sackville Picture House followed by tea at the nearby D.B.C. restaurant (“Entertainment to Wives of Soldiers”).

Princess Ambulance Fund FJ 23 Nov 1915p4

Ad for a command performance at the Princess Cinema, Rathmines to mark Cinematograph Trade Ambulance Day, for which patrons were encouraged to attend their favourite cinema. Freeman’s Journal 23 Nov. 1915: 4.

A much more ambitious cooperation of the industry as a whole also occurred in November. Following a very successful event in England on 9 November, Irish representatives of the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association set 23 November as Ireland’s Cinematograph Trade Ambulance Day. On that day, participating picture-house owners agreed to donate a portion – in most cases, all – of their takings to fund ambulances for the war effort. Addressing a meeting of exhibitors from southern counties at Cork’s Metropole Hotel on 19 November, exhibitor David Frame argued that “the trade should associate itself with a scheme ambitious in scope, useful in purpose, and which will be more closely identified with the kinematograph industry, as an industry, rather than with its individual members” (“Kinematograph Trade and the War”) The generous press coverage suggests that Cinema Ambulance Day was a successful public relations event for the industry as a whole. “The public-spirited action of the Cinema proprietors is deserving of the most cordial support,” observed the Irish Times, “and there is no doubt that they will get it in the fullest measure” (Cinema Ambulance Day”). The cinema industry as a whole had aimed “to provide the sum of £30,000 to equip and present a fleet of fifty motor ambulances for Red Cross work at the front, so that every picture-goer should make a special effort to attend his or her favourite picture house to-day” (“Cinema Ambulance Day in Dublin”).

Elaine Sackville 28 Oct 1915

Illustrated ad for The Exploits of Elaine at the Sackville; Evening Telegraph 28 Oct. 1915: 4.

Although such good causes drew crowds on 23 November, the acknowledged ubiquity of cinema in 1915 was based largely on the attractiveness of the films provided. On 18 October, the first episode of The Exploits of Elaine (US: Wharton, 1914)), one of the most popular serials of the period, was released. The trade press had long heralded it arrival with a wide variety of advertisements from distributors Pathé. An article in the Bioscope noted that the

stories of the film will be published in the News of the World each Sunday, commencing October 17th, and in conjunction with this paper, Messrs. Pathé have arranged to give away to each of the first thousand applicants an “Elaine” hat, which is an exact facsimile of that worn by Miss Pearl White. (“Publicity for ‘The Exploits of Elaine.’”)

Elaine Rotunda II 18 Oct 1915p4

Ad for the opening episode of The Exploits of Elaine at Dublin’s Rotunda; Irish Independent 18 Oct. 1915: 4.

This was just the beginning of the publicity stunts arrange for the launch of the serial in Britain. The opening in Dublin was less spectacular. James T. Jameson of the Rotunda had secured first run, and he set his patrons a literary competition, offering in the newspaper ads “£25 for the cleverest epitomised version, or the new literary negative reading of what this extraordinary serial of animated episodes might suggest in the opposite sense of that of original story, and in which could be introduced criticisms of the realisms, or otherwise, of the respective tableaux.”

Paddy, the Irish correspondent at the trade journal Bioscope, had little to say about the Irish launch of The Exploits of Elaine, saving his praise for The Million Dollar Mystery (US: Thanhouser, 1914), another serial that opened at the Rotunda on 22 November. “I had the pleasure of seeing this last Monday, and it held me more enthralled than the first part of any serial ever has,” he revealed. Offering the public two mysteries, it was “the right kind of serial that forces you to come again. It was loudly applauded as only the patrons of the Rotunda know how to applaud” (Paddy, 25 Nov.).

It was such compelling films that helped to make cinema ubiquitous by 1915.

References

“Cinema Ambulance Day.” Irish Times 20 Nov. 1915: 9.

“Cinema Ambulance Day in Dublin.” Irish Times 23 Nov. 1915: 3.

“Cinematograph Licences in Dublin.” Irish Times 4 Nov. 1915: 9.

“Clean Amusements: Letter from Cardinal Logue.” Freeman’s Journal 1 Nov. 1915: 6.

“Entertainment to Wives of Soldiers.” Irish Times 6 Nov. 1915: 8.

“Kinematograph Trade and the War: Ambulance Day in Cork.” Cork Examiner 23 Nov. 1915: 6.

“Objectionable Performances in Dublin Theatres: Letter from Archbishop.” Freeman’s Journal 11 Oct. 1915: 4.

Paddy. “Pictures in Ireland.” Bioscope 4 Nov. 1915: 596; 11 Nov. 1915: 667; 25 Nov. 1915: 960.

“Phibsborough Picture House: Bill Posting Litigation.” Irish Times 9 Nov. 1915: 3.

“Picture Posters for City Theatres and Picture Houses: The Archbishop’s Letter.” Freeman’s Journal 12 Oct. 1915: 8.

“Publicity for ‘The Exploits of Elaine.’” Bioscope 26 Aug. 1915: 969.

“Rathmines Urban Council.” Irish Times 4 Nov. 1915: 2.

“Scene in Dublin Picture Theatre: Question as to the Morality of the Film.” Evening Herald 11 Oct. 1915: 5.