Film: Some years back, I took part in a conference on Irish film at Iowa State University. Luke Gibbons (who has written a generous foreword to Ruth Barton's book) gave one of the lectures.
It was, as one would expect, illuminating, passionate and incisive. I left the hall struck with a new enthusiasm and appetite for some of the Irish films he discussed, films that I had previously dismissed as dull and uninspired.
Later, on seeing those films again, they still struck me as dull and uninspired but I retained a renewed respect for those who make the study of Irish film their vocation. They seem to believe in Irish film in a way that we, Irish film-makers, do not. They certainly appear to understand it better. Or differently, at least. As fully engaged viewers, as stern critics, as passionate advocates for Irish cinema, they imbue our film culture with both substance and meaning.
Acting Irish In Hollywood is a study of "Screen Oirishness", a comprehensive and scholarly look at Irish stars in Tinseltown exile, from Barry "Bejaysus" Fitzgerald to our contemporary rebel mammy's boy, Colin Farrell, taking in the likes of Maureen O'Hara and Gabriel Byrne on the way. (Comprehensive, that is, if you ignore the notable and somewhat perverse absence of Liam Neeson, which Ruth Barton regrets though does not explain.)
Drawing on the work of scholars such as Prof Dana Polan and Dr Diane Negra, Barton has analysed our Hollywood Greats in terms of narratives of emigration and exile, how they have been portrayed in Hollywood in both the films and the attendant publicity, but also, interestingly, she examines issues of accent, acting style, and ethnicity.
For despite the intimations of its rather tacky and cliched cover, this is primarily an academic text. In this regard, it will make a handsome contribution to Irish film and cultural studies.
However, Barton has diminished her interpretation by locking her writing into the trappings of a doctoral thesis. The constant use of obtuse terms such as "performativity" and "liminality" only serve to frustrate both her meaning and her reader. There is also something of a lack of cohesion in her approach which leads one to read the book as a collection of essays rather than as a whole, and subsequently her style veers between the oppressively theoretical and the purely biographical.
Tellingly, the book finds its feet when it steps momentarily away from the shackles of academia and simply tells the poignant and tragic tale of Constance Smith, "Ireland's forgotten star". Born in Limerick around 1928, Constance was brought up in the tenement slums of Dublin's Mount Pleasant Buildings. A chance entry into a lookalike contest won Constance first prize for her impression of the Austrian screen beauty (and later telecommunications inventor), Hedy Lamarr. This led, in the unbelievably fairytale way of the 1940s film industry, to acting contracts with Rank and later Fox. After a fitful early career, she starred in major Hollywood films such as Man in the Attic, Lure of the Wilderness, and The Treasure of the Golden Condor, as well as presenting the Oscar ceremony in 1953.
But her star was short-lived. By the late 1950s, there were rumours of overdoses and unspecified hospital visits. In 1959, Constance Smith married the respected British documentary-maker, Paul Rotha. Theirs was, by all accounts, a passionate and destructive relationship to rank with the best of them. Alcohol added fuel to the already uncontrollable fire and, in December 1961, Rotha was found stabbed in his London flat. He survived, and Constance (who had subsequently attempted to cut her wrists) was imprisoned for three months for this attempt on Rotha's life. Their love undiminished, they resumed a life of abuse, financial ruin and genuine affection until the late 1970s.
Virtually destitute, Constance ended up in and out of psychiatric institutions and hostels throughout the 1980s and finally appears to have ended her days on the streets of London, reputedly dying in 2003.
For this story alone (and that of the also forgotten George Brent, movie star and rebel messenger for Michael Collins) the book is worth its price - for the lay reader at least. Ruth Barton claims her motivation in writing the book was partly recuperative and in this she has made an important contribution to Irish cinema history.
Barton concludes that "one of the greatest challenges facing those Irish actors who do pursue Hollywood careers has been to transcend national stereotyping".
Arguably, the same could be said of any ethnic group represented in or by Hollywood. But the history of the Irish in Hollywood remains, as Barton has argued, a reflection of our particular story as a nation, and now at least, that story has, in part, been told.
Alan Gilsenan is a film-maker and theatre director
Acting Irish in Hollywood: From Fitzgerald to Farrell By Ruth Barton Irish Academic Press, 229pp. €25