FIONNGHUALA MANON FLANAGAN: IRISH PERSONALITY

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan (1941) is an Irish actress and political activist. Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, the daughter of Rosanna, née McGuirk, and Terence Niall Flanagan. Her father was an Irish Army officer and Communist who had fought in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. Although her parents were not Irish speakers, they wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the Irish language, thus she grew up speaking English and Irish fluently. She was educated in Switzerland and England. She trained extensively at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and travelled throughout Europe before settling in Los Angeles, California in early 1968.

Flanagan came to prominence in Ireland in 1965 as a result of her role as Máire in the Telefís Éireann production of the Irish language play An Triail, for which she received the Jacob's Award in Dublin for her outstanding performance. With her portrayal of Gerty McDowell in the 1967 film version of Ulysses, Flanagan established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of James Joyce. She made her Broadway debut in 1968 in Brian Friel's Lovers, then appeared in The Incomparable Max (1971) and such Joycean theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown, as Molly Bloom, and James Joyce's Women (1977). It was subsequently filmed in 1983, with Flanagan both producing and playing all six main female roles (Joyce's wife, Nora Barnacle, as well as fictional characters Molly Bloom and Gerty McDowell).

More information: Irish America

A familiar presence in American television, Flanagan has appeared in several made-for-TV movies and she made guest appearances in three of the Star Trek spin-offs.

She appeared in such films as The Others opposite Nicole Kidman and with Helen Mirren in Some Mother's Son, written and directed by Terry George, as the militantly supportive mother of a Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker in 1981. Subsequently, she spoke at a memorial hosted by Sinn Féin at the Citywest Building in Dublin for Irish republicans and their kin who were killed during the latest installment of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Flanagan and her husband, since 1972, Dr. Garrett O'Connor, an Irish nationalist from Dublin, are known to host parties at their Hollywood Hills home for people in the Irish community. In July 2009, she joined Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams for a series of lectures across the USA supporting Irish unity. In October 2011, she announced her support for Sinn Féin politician Martin McGuinness in his unsuccessful bid in Ireland's 2011 presidential election.

I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. 

Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them 

in ways other than just splitting apart. 

Fionnula Flanagan

LADY GREGORY: IRISH LITERARY THEATRE CO-FOUNDER

Lady Gregory

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852-1932) was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. 

Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime.

Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway, served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people.

A trip to Inisheer in the Aran Islands in 1893 re-awoke an interest in the Irish language and in the folklore of the area in which she lived. She organised Irish lessons at the school at Coole and began collecting tales from the area around her home, especially from the residents of Gort workhouse. 

Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory's, and it was during a visit to his home, Tullira Castle, in 1896 that she first met W. B. Yeats. Discussions between the three of them over the following year or so led to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899.

The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901, when it collapsed due to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge, Æ, Annie Horniman and William and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre Society. The first performances staged by the society took place in a building called the Molesworth Hall. When the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building in Marlborough Street became available, Horniman and William Fay agreed to their purchase and refitting to meet the needs of the society.

On 11 May 1904, the society formally accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As Horniman was not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent required were paid for by her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory. One of her own plays, Spreading the News was performed on the opening night, 27 December 1904.

More information: Irish Writers

What makes Ireland inclined toward the drama 
is that it's a great country for conversation.  

Lady Gregory

MAUREEN O'HARA IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD

Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara (born Maureen FitzSimons, 1920-2015) was an Irish actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara was known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She worked on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne, and was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

O'Hara grew up in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh to an eccentric devout Catholic family, and aspired to become an actress from a very young age. She trained with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She was given a screen test, which was deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw potential and arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moved to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquired the nickname The Queen of Technicolor, something which she detested, believing that people saw her only for her beauty rather than talent.

More information: Biography.com

Ireland's first Hollywood superstar, O'Hara paved the way for a future generation of actresses seeking their own voice. With her mahogany hair, her hoydenish ways, and her whip-smart delivery of lines, she created a character prototype that seemed to define her country of origin and much as Ireland defined her. He notes though that O'Hara was loved for her naturalness and her lack of a diva quality. She dismissed method acting as tommyrot, believing that acting should be acting, and placed great emphasis on work ethic and punctuality. Insisting on doing her own stunts, O'Hara became so prone to injuries during her productions that her colleagues remarked that she should have been awarded a Purple Heart. Her closest rival in the 1950s was Rhonda Fleming, the two both being prolific in westerns and action films.

In March 1999, O'Hara was selected to be Grand Marshal of New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade. In 2004, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Film and Television Academy in her native Dublin. The same year, O'Hara released her autobiography 'Tis Herself, co-authored with Johnny Nicoletti and published by Simon & Schuster. She wrote the foreword for the cookbook At Home in Ireland, and in 2007 she penned the foreword to the biography of her friend and film co-star, the late actress Anna Lee.

On 24 October 2015, Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho from natural causes. She was 95 years old. O'Hara was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles Blair.

 I was born into the most remarkable and eccentric family 

I could possibly have hoped for.

Maureen O'Hara

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: IRISH LEGENDS BECOME POETRY

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms.

He was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeats's debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 

More information: Poetry Foundation

From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. 

Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly supportive of the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of the late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage, and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. 

A book signed by William B. Yeats

Yeats's childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement; the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had a profound effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his country's biography.

n 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and George Moore began the Irish Literary Theatre to hold Irish and Celtic plays. The ideals of the Abbey were derived from the avant-garde French theatre, which sought to express the ascendancy of the playwright rather than the actor-manager à l'anglais. 

The group's manifesto, which Yeats wrote, declared, We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted & imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory ... & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed.

In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation. He was aware of the symbolic value of an Irish winner so soon after Ireland had gained independence, and sought to highlight the fact at each available opportunity. 

His reply to many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: I consider that this honour has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe's welcome to the Free State.

He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28 January 1939, aged 73.

More information: Nobel Prize Organization

We are happy when for everything inside us 

there is a corresponding something outside us. 

William Butler Yeats