Kevin Lehane, who died on April 20th aged 80, was a cinema manager and, under the nom-de-plume Tom Corkery, regularly wrote for The Irish Times in the 1950s. A collection of his newspaper articles, Tom Corkery's Dublin, was published in 1980 and has never been out of print.
Thomas Kevin Lehane was born on June 3rd, 1921, the son of Denis and Mary (née Fitzgerald) Lehane of Herbert Road, Sandymount, Dublin. His father, a master tailor, was a partner in Lehane and McGurk, Eustace Street.
Kevin Lehane was raised by two aunts in Limerick, spending school holidays in Dublin. He attended Crescent CBC and played for the school rugby team. He later turned out for Old Crescent.
On completing his education, he returned to Dublin where he took up employment in the cinema business. The city's film audience was one of the biggest in Britain and Ireland, second only to London in terms of tickets sold per annum.
Film was the glamour medium of the time and many cinema-goers went to "the pictures" two or three times a week.
Cinema-goers had a wide range of venues to choose from: the Adelphi, Carlton and Corinthian were among the most popular city-centre cinemas, while venues like the De Luxe, Camden Street, the Grand, Fairview, and the State, Phibsboro, added to the choice. Kevin Lehane managed the Mary Street cinema, among others, before going on to manage two of Dublin's best-known cinemas, the Capitol and Ambassador.
He enjoyed writing and, at the suggestion of a friend, he submitted an article to The Irish Times. It was accepted and published under the pseudonym Tom Corkery. He was a regular contributor from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, writing occasionally thereafter.
He drew on his experiences as a cinema manager, his knowledge of Dublin's pub culture, and his affection for his native city. He did not indulge in urban sentimentality but wrote of the Dublin he lived and worked in.
Of his regular job, he wrote that "until a man has tried to run a children's cinema matinee on a wet weekend in winter he has not really encountered the true meaning of the word ferment". He found selecting a matinee programme the easiest part of the job: "A chap on a white horse. A pal on a black horse (to put the pal on a white horse would be tantamount to shaking hands with the butler). A villain on a stolen horse. A love interest for the oul' wans. Mix them all together in a story as old as the Trojan horse and you cannot go wrong."
A keen student of Dublin pub life, he wrote in praise of the pint and of how the "true pintman" regards it as drink "to be contemplated as well as to be drunk". The true pintman, he observed, has no need of company because his pint is company enough. Further, "he knows that truth lies at the bottom of his glass, or if not that glass the next one, or, at the very most, the one after that . . . when finally he does condescend to speak it will be invariably with wisdom, if not always, alas, with perfect enunciation".
Kevin Lehane wrote of the strict etiquette of the "singing houses" which predated the ballad bars and cabaret lounges; of the undervalued intellectual and artistic capacities of the street-wise messenger boy since made redundant by the motorised courier; of the football supporter who preached fair play for all except the referee; of the newspaper contributor publicly humiliated when his knowledge of Dublin history was found wanting by a couple of old-timers in a pub; of blow-ins, chancers, go-be-the-walls, gougers, gurriers and much more.
He captured the innate contrariness of Dubliners as expressed in attitudes to two city landmarks, the 18th-century Custom House and the 20th-century Busáras, writing that "they were both planned against the wishes of the citizenry, raised to a chorus of derision from the citizenry, and completed to the ecstatic admiration of the citizenry . . . that is the form of the city, and the form of the citizens".
Kevin Lehane also contributed to This is Ireland, a magazine for tourists. Arising from an article he wrote on James Joyce, he was regularly contacted by visiting scholars for advice and guidance. He usually guided them to the public houses associated with Joyce, and later recalled: "I don't know what they learnt about Joyce but they certainly learnt about Dublin pubs."
Jim Bartley, currently of Fair City, adapted Tom Corkery's Dublin for his one one-man show, The Long and the Short of It, which was first produced at the Embankment, Tallaght, in 1983 and revived a decade later at Andrew's Lane Theatre.
Kevin Lehane is survived by his wife Mary (née Mooney), brother Paddy and sister Maura.
Kevin Lehane: born, 1921; died, April 2002