Two of the brightest Irish stars ever produced in the entertainment firmament were both top of the pops 50 years ago, but are largely and undeservedly forgotten today, namely Ruby Murray the singer and Stephen Boyd the film actor, writes Hugh Oram
Both were from the Belfast area.
By today' s standards, Ruby Murray' s songs were decidedly saccharine and sentimental, but in the 1950s, audiences couldn' t get enough: they adored the young singer from Belfast. At one stage, in 1955, she had five hits in the Top 20 in Britain all at the same time; subsequently, she was only bettered by Elvis Presley and Madonna.
She owed much of her fame to her unusual voice, acquired accidentally, the result of an operation she had had for swollen glands in her throat. Ruby Murray was just six weeks old; that was in 1935. A permanent effect of that operation was to give her a unique-sounding husky voice, which became her trademark.
Born in Belfast, she won her first talent competition there, at the age of 11. The following year, 1947, she made her first television appearance, with the BBC in London. By the time she was 14, she was on the road in Scotland, doing her first ever tour. Then she came home and spent two years touring the length and breadth of Ireland.
Her big break was when she was still a teenager, appearing in a variety show at the Metropolitan Theatre in London. The BBC was looking for a singer/ presenter for a show called Quite Contrary and signed up Ruby Murray. Murray's gentle ways and her soft singing voice were an instant hit with viewers.
She went on to do many more programmes over the years with the BBC. When the BBC in Belfast started a new television series in 1968 called Rinnce Mór, she and the Dundalk -born tenor Brendan O'Dowda, that great interpreter of Percy French songs, were the two stars.
Ruby Murray' s theatrical work blossomed as well in the 1950s and for an incredible seven months, she topped the bill at the London Palladium. But she also did over 40 single records, starting with Heartbeat, when she was 19. Her last chart success was in 1959 with Goodbye Jimmy, Goodbye. Of all her songs, her most famous was Softly, Softly, which became her signature tune.
But by the end of the 1950s, her days as a chart-topper were over.
These days, her style of singing is totally at odds with current musical trends; perhaps one of these fine days, she might find favour once again, if the tide ever turns back to the simpler musical tastes of the old days.
Married twice, she carried on performing right into the 1980s, touring the cabaret circuit. For many years, she lived in Torquay, Devon, a genteel seaside resort that was a complete antithesis to her native Belfast. Despite her fondness for her native city, she had made England her permanent home since 1957. She died in December, 1996, from liver cancer. Incongruously, her name survives as Cockney slang for curry.
While Ruby Murray was climbing the hit charts, a Belfast-born actor called Stephen Boyd was making it big in Hollywood. Born in 1931 as William Millar into a very poor family, with nine children altogether, in Glengormley, he began acting in Belfast, then moved to stage work in Canada and the US, where had some success.
He then broke into films in Britain, without making much impact. Boyd' s lucky chance came in 1957. He appeared in a French film, The Night Heaven Fell, playing opposite Brigitte Bardot. Immediately, Hollywood sat up and took notice.
Soon, he was starring in a couple of epics, Ben-Hur and The Fall of the Roman Empire.
His duel to the death with Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur is considered one of the classic American film scenes, but after that performance, he was virtually typecast for life as a spear-carrying Roman.
Stephen Boyd nearly played opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the epic Cleopatra, but he couldn' t because of other contractual commitments.
The part went instead to Richard Burton and Boyd always used to say later in life that it was he who was responsible for introducing Taylor and Burton to each other.
He also missed out on the James Bond films. Boyd had been the original choice to play Bond in Dr No, but in the end, Sean Connery got the part.
Boyd made many other films and considered that the sci- fi adventure that he starred in, Fantastic Voyage (1966) was his best performance apart from Ben-Hur.
Also in the 1960s, he starred in an epic about Ghenghis Khan, filmed in what was then Yugoslavia.
He also appeared in another French film, a story of Napoleon, Imperial Venus, in which he played opposite Gina Lollobrigida.
But in the 1970s, his career nosedived and Boyd descended into appearances in several mediocre European potboilers. He was all set for a comeback in a 1977 British-made gangster film, The Squeeze, but at the comparatively young age of 45, dropped dead from a heart attack when playing golf in California.
Stephen Boyd and Ruby Murray were two extraordinary entertainment talents from Ireland, both from very modest backgrounds, yet such is the ephemeral nature of the business that neither is much remembered these days.
But they deserve their places in the pantheon of Irish stars who really made it on the international circuit.