Life
1883-1950, actress; b. Dublin, 31 Oct., sis. Molly Allgood; raised
in a Dublin orphanage following death of her father; apprenticed as upholsterer
(his profession); joined Inghinidhe na hÉireann [Daughters
of Ireland] (founded by Maud Gonne MacBride in 1900); appeared in Cathleen
Ni Houlihan, 1902; joined Irish National Dramatic Society, 1903, playing
Princess Buan in Yeats’s The King’s Threshold; Cathleen
in Riders to the Sea, 1904, creating the character of Maurya by
basing her mannerisms on her own grandmother; brought Riders to
Belfast with the Abbey; joined the Abbey Theatre in 1904; played Mrs.
Fallon in Lady Gregory’s Spreading of the News, 27 Dec. 1904;
Mrs Delane in Lady Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey, 1906; Widow
Quin in Playboy, 1907; played Isabella in William Poel’s prod.
Measure for Measure for Miss Horniman in Manchester; joined John
Hartley Manner’s touring company and enjoyed great success with sentimental
play, Peg o’ My Heart, 1915; m. leading man Gerald Henson
1916; toured Australia and New Zealand, where both he and her only child,
a girl, died of the influenza, the father a year after the child; brother
Frank killed on the Western Front; made her first film in Sydney, 1918;
returned to Europe and played Mrs Geoghegan in 1920 revival of Lennox
Robinson’s The White-Headed Boy; played Juno and Bessie Burgess
in O’Casey’s Juno and The Plough successfully
in Ireland, England, and America, 1924-1926; elected to Dublin Arts Club,
1923; played Bessie Burgess in the Plough and the Stars, 1924;
and Mrs Boyle in the London premier of Juno and the Paycock in
1925, opposite Arthur Sinclair; appeared in Hitchcock’s first ‘talkie’
Blackmail, 1929, and in his Juno and the Paycock, 1930,
issued in America as The Sins of Mary Boyle; successful as Honoria
Flanagan in Bridie’s Storm in a Teacup, London 1936; last
appeared on stage in New York, 1940; stayed on in Hollywood after the
1940 tour, and appeared in How Green Was My Valley, dir. John Ford
(1940, Academy Award film); became US citizen; died in poverty at
Woodland Hills, California, 13 Sept. DIB DIL FDA
DIH OCIL
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- Dawson Byrne, The Story of Ireland’s National Theatre: The Abbey Theatre (Dublin & Cork: Talbot Press 1929; facs. rep. NY: Haskell 1971), [infra];
- Máire Ní Shuibhlaigh, The Splendid Years (Dublin: J. Duffy 1955), p. 85 [infra];
- Elizabeth Coxhead, Daughters of Erin: Five Women of the Irish Renascence (London: Secker & Warburg, 1965; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979);
- Fintan O’Toole, ‘Going West, the Country Versus the City in Irish Writing’, Crane Bag, Vol. 9. No. 2 (1985), pp.111-16;
- Patricia Boylan, All Cultivated People, A History of the United Arts Club (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1988), pp. 129-30, 144, 149 [infra];
- A. E. Twomey and A. F. McClure, The Versatiles: A Study of Supporting Character Actors and Actresses in the American Motion Picture, 1930-1955 (London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1969);
- John T. Weaver, ed., Forty Years of Screen Credits, 1929-1969 (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press 1970) p57ff.;
- David Ragan, Who's Who in Hollywood, 1900-1976 (NY: Arlington House 1976) p.539ff.;
- James Robert Parish, Hollywood Character Actors. (Westport: Arlington House, 1978);
- Felice Levy, ed., Obituaries on File (NY: Facts on File 1979); Evelyn Mack Truitt. Who Was Who on Screen (NY: R. R. Bowker Co., 1983);
- Biography Index: A Cumulative Index to Biographical Material in Books and Magazines (NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1953-1992), Vol. 2 (August 1949-August 1952); Vol. 7 (Sept. 1964-Aug. 1967); Vol. 17 (Sept. 1990-August 1992).
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Notes
Peg of My Heart returned to the Gaiety Th., Dublin, shortly after the 25 March 1923; see Nathan Halper, ‘The Date of Earwicker’s Dream’, in Jack P. Dalton & Clive Hart, eds., Twelve and a Tilly: Essays on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Finnegans Wake (London: Faber & Faber 1966), p.86.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)