1901-1984 [William Denis Johnston]; b. 18 June, 54 Wellington Rd., Ballsbridge, Co. Dublin; son of Kathleen (née King, b.1860, m. Sept. 1894) and William Johnston, later a High Court and finally a Supreme Court judge in 1939; descended from 17th c. Covenanters [dissenters] in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, who settled nr. Magherafelt, Co. Derry; a grandfather, James (d.1906), throve as an enterprising tea-merchant and built houses on Adelaide Ave., Belfast and environs, incl. his own home Dunarnon, Malone Rd.; ed. St. Andrew’s, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and later at Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh; ‘by far the most horrible period of my life’; family home at 61 Landsdowne Rd (‘‘Etwall’’), commandeered by Volunteers during 1916 Rising; returned to St. Andrews, 1917; proceeded to Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1919; romantic involvements with Ethna MacCarthy and with Olive Barrett (aetat. 15), 1919; spoke effectively in ‘Ireland a Dominion’ debate and elected secretary of the Union, 1919-1920; elected president, autumn 1921; invited George Lansbury, Eas-End socialist, to address Union; attempted to sign on against Republicans in Dublin, 1922; grad. (history and law; 3rd class) 1923; proposed to Olive, summer 1923; saw O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman; proceeded Harvard Law School on Pugsley Schol., travelling out on S.S. Majestic; read and saw plays by G. B. Shaw, as well as expressionist plays of Karel Capek (The Madras House) and Kaufman and Connelly (Beggar on Horseback); travelled to Canada and Mexico, working passage on S.S. Spaulding; returned to Ireland on S.S. Columbia, July 1924; took law lectures at Kings’s Inns and Inner Temple; joined Dublin Drama League and played in Benavente’s School for Princesses, meeting Shelah Richards (aetat. 21); active in Dublin Drama League and the New Players 1925-29; successfully sits Irish and English Bar exams, May 1925; buys Triumph motor-bike (‘Margot’); plays in Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversation (Dublin Univ. Dram. Soc.), Iphigenia (Drama League, dir. Lennox Robinson), Strindberg’s Dance of Death and Shaw’s Major Barbara, meeting parental dissent; briefly visited Algiers, 1926, and commenced sketching and ‘Shadowdance’; serves in law office at Hare Court, London, as pupil to Reginald Croom Johnson, 1926; joines Kensington Shakespeare Soc.; seems Toller’s Masses and Man in an ‘amazing production’ by Peter Godfrey at Gate Theatre (nr. Covent Garden), as also Georg Kaiser’s From Morn to Midnight, with Claud Rains; writes draft novel (now lost) as well as draft plays, ‘Continuous Performance’ and ‘Tuppence Coloured’, the former sent to Lennox Robinson (now lost); returned to Dublin and played Ulysses in Euripides The Cyclops, at Lennox Robinson’s ‘at home’, August 1926; adopts nom-de-plume and stage name E. W. Tocher for professional reasons; fnd. The Dramick, intended as experimental branch of Dublin Drama League, with Shelah; played in Robinson’s The Whiteheaded Boy, and lectured on Joyce, both for for Irish Lit. Soc. London, 1927; completed two-act version of ‘Shadowdance’, later called ‘Rhapsody in Green’; sent letter to Irish Statesman criticising play-selection at the Abbey and proposing a new reading committee (a suggestion rebutted by AE in an editorial note to same); sends ‘Shadowdance’ to Robinson soon after; acted in Margaret Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph (dir. Richards), May 1927; negotiated cuts in ‘Shadowdance’ with Robinson, and received notice that Yeats wanted some parts reinstated, June 1927; left lodgings at Bloomsbury House Club and returned to Dublin, July 1927; begins to get briefs espec. in pleas; travelled to Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Budapest, Innsbruck and Mayrhofen; Shelah departs for six-month tour in USA with Irish Players, reuniting in London; Johnston appears in Evreinov’s The Chief Thing (Peacock); produced Eugene O’Neill’s The Fountain (Drama League); m. same, 28 Dec. 1928 (St. Anne’s Church, Dawson St.), with whom children Jeremy, Michael, Jennifer and Rory; honeymoon in Fez and Rituan; directs King Lear for Abbey in his own adaptation with F. J. McCormick in the lead, 1929; directs Ernst Toller’s Hoppla for Drama League against moral opposition from Gabriel Fallon and others; informed by Yeats at Dalkey that the Abbey would give him £50 to mount ‘Shadowdance’ elsewhere, Autumn 1928; Hilton Edwards agrees to produce it at end of first Gate season; staged by the Gate at the Peacock as The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, (3 July 1929) with MacLiammóir in lead and Meriel Moore as Sarah Curran; Jennifer Prudence, b. 12 Jan. 1930; influenced by Theodore Dreiser, Johnston joins Friends of the Soviet Union, 1929; plans Irish Film Society with Mary Manning; works on Gate Revue; makes solo trip through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Greece and Italy; showed first act of The Moon in the Yellow River to Lennox Robinson; continued writing at Kitzbühel, on skiing holiday with Shelah and Pet Wilson; Dec. 1930; spent Easter 1931 with Oliver St John Gogarty at Renvyle; supposedly anti-clerical section in his Gate Revue attacked by Hugh Allen (CTS) and others; premier of The Moon in the Yellow River (Abbey 27 April 1931); played at Birmingham Rep. and later Malvern Festival (1933), prob. on instigation of G. B. Shaw, who invited Johnston to lunch in London; joined Dublin University Club; travelled to Leningrad, Dec. 1931; New York Theatre Guild applies to perform Moon for fee of $500; purchases Prevost’s Tower, Portmarnock; appt. Director of Gate Theatre in place of Gordon Campbell, 1931-36; beaten into second place in Tailteann Games by play of Ulick Burke, Nov. 1931; with Shelah in America with Players; travels to meet Shelah in Cincinnati; Moon played in Philadephia and New York with Claud Rains as Dobelle, Feb. 1932; with F. R. Higgins and others, supported Jim Gralton, the Roscommon socialist deported to America by the Fianna Fáil government, in Rotunda Meeting, 1932; holiday with Shelah (returned in March), to Aran, where Robert Flaherty is filming; purchased Seabird, 5-ton sloop, for £30, Summer 1932; Commences writing A Bride for the Unicorn (Gate 1933); Lady and Moon appear in Jonathan Cape edn. (1932); holidays in west of Ireland with Shelah, and observes Flaherty at work, 27 Dec.; premier of A Bride for the Unicorn (Gate 9 May 1933), dramatising J. W. Dunne’s theory of serial time with Pirandellian devices, and using archetypal characters, of which Percy the Prosperous is the most developed; generally ill-received by Dublin critics; shoots film of Frank O’Connor’s ‘‘Guests of the Nation’’ to a script by Mary Manning, with Barry Fitzgerald, Cyril Cusack, and Hilton Edwards in the first entirely Irish production, filmed at Ticknock and the Scalp in Co. Wicklow, with improvised cottage set at Etwall, Summer 1933; writes Storm Song (Gate 6 Jan. 1934), completed staying solo at Palace Hotel, St. Helier’s (Jersey), and dealing with a film production on Aran (‘Crioch’) with Leo Szilard in place of Flaherty, Gordon King as his mutinous disciple, and Jal Joyce as the love-interest; Szilard dies filming in the storm having trained the islanders to use harpoons contrary to custom; filled in for Edwards when the latter was struck by appendicitis, and simultaneously directed Franz Molnar’s Liliom (Gate, 13 Feb. 1934); Storm Song regarded as ‘an attempt at a ‘popular play’; Johnston dir. Mary Manning’s Happy Family; The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ revived (Abbey, May 1934); Betty Chamberlain joins Cambridge Festival Theatre, July 1934; Storm Song produced by Shelah and Mary Manning at Shere Theatre Fest., Surrey (July 1934); The Moon produced at Malvern Festival (26 July 1934); Johnston purchases with Shelah for £400 the moored schooner Hermione at Chiswick; served as stage-manager for Hugh Ross Williamson’s Hand in Glove (Westminster Th.) for Baxter Sommerville as condition of himself directing The Moon (24 Sept. 1934); meets J. B. Priestley and the Lynds; transfers to Haymarket, West End, to critical acclaim directed by Fred O’Donovan in production by Priestley and Bronson Albery, with Joyce Chancellor as Blanaid (against Johnston’s wishes) and without Esme Percy and Godfrey Kenton from the first production; premier in Dublin of Guests of the Nation (20 Jan. 1935); BBC broadcast of The Moon (14 May 1935); rejected Dartington College for Jennifer; Unicorn revived at Gate (1935) but The Old Lady played in London during ensuing tour to suit acting and directorial preferences of MacLiammóir and Edwards (‘the skunks’); ; lectured at Amherst College, Mass., as guest of Curtis Canfield, rehearsing students there in The Old Lady; also lectured at Mount Holyoke, Yale Theatre, and Smith College; researched Jonathan Swift at Amherst; The Moon played to muted criticism in New York; Unicorn played unsuccessfully at Harvard (dir. Joseph Losey); The Moon attacked in London by St. John Ervine and Denis Ireland; takes part in filming of Riders to the Sea as Micheál at Renvyle in Hurst-Flanagan production, financed by Gracie Fields; settles at Berlin Lodge, Leinster Sq., Dublin, for birth of Michael [William Michael Robin Johnston, b. 27 Oct. 1935]; engaged as remedy script-writer on Ourselves Alone at Elstree Studios; proposes compromise between ‘The Boys’ and Lord Longford; directs Eugene O’Neill’s Ah Wilderness for Lord Longford in London tour, 1935; Johnston directs A Bride for the Unicorn for Longford as a replacement at the Westminster; his Storm Song ill-received at Embassy [Ambassador’ Th.]; met H. G. Wells (‘You Irish nave no political sense’); at Shelah’s suggestion sought BBC job, and accepted post of Feature Programme research assistant at £700 p.a. offered by John Sutthery (NI BBC Programme Dir.), Oct. 1936; formally quit the practice of law; Longford tours Moon and his own Yahoo in Irish provinces; appeared with Shelah in Fanny’s First Play (Abbey 1936); resigns from Gate Board before departure to Belfast; meets Nancy Horsbrugh-Porter in Patrick Campbell set, Dublin; writes Blind Man’s Buff (Abbey Theatre, 26 Dec. 1936), an adaptation of Toler’s Die blinde Göttin [The Blind Goddess] (1932), arising from a meeting with the refugee-playwright in London; travelled to New York with his father, Sept. 1937; writes crime-drama ‘Death at Newstownstewart’ (BBC 7 Oct. 1937), based on events of 1873 and introduced in Radio Times by his father; broadcasts readings of Somerville and Ross, and feature on Harland and Wolff shipyard; The Old Lady revived (Jan. 1938); wrote ‘Lillibulero’ (March 1938), a documentary on the Siege of Derry, prefaced by an article in the Radio Times (‘doughty conflict ... what one side lost in charm it made up by rugged dignity, and what the other side lacked in efficiency it made up in colour and warmth’); adapted A Bride for the Unicorn for ‘Experimental Hour’ (BBC NI July 1938); wrote and produced ‘The Parnell Commission’ and ‘Weep for Polyphemous’, on Swift, using expressionist alternation between characters and actors; produced and directed two plays of Teresa Deevy (1938); put himself forward for television, and accepted, autumn 1938, occupying an office at Alexandra Palace (‘Ally Pally’), living at first with her Aunt Belle in Barnes; amid resistance from technical staff, directs ‘St Simeon Stylites’, his first TV work; directs ‘The Last Voyage of Captain Grant’ (Nov. 1938), based on novel of Robert Flaherty; settles in Glen Ellyn, Wise Lane, Mill Hill; adapted Moon for television; adapted ‘Death at Newtownstewart’ for television (Feb. 1939); also ‘The Parnell Commission ’; directed his own play The Golden Cuckoo (Gate 1939; revived 1956 with Maureen Potter), a semi-naturalistic farce dealing with the ‘one-man Republic’ of Dotheright (based on real-life Doheny); Jeremy, a son with Betty, b. 7 June 1939; work as director on BBC TV ‘Picture Page’; engaged on rehearsing a play, Queen of Spades when war was declared and TV transmission closed down; moved to ‘American Control Unit’ (later American Liaison Unit); travelled back and forth between London and Dublin during phoney war; The Golden Cuckoo played in London, dir. Hugh Hunt (Duchess Th., 2 Jan. 1940); revised ‘Weep for Polyphemous’ as The Dreaming Dust (Gate, March 1939), on Swift; sent by BBC to make programmes in Dublin with effect of enlisting Irish war support through Overseas Service, and encountered censorship difficulties with George Marshall, the pro-Unionist Regional Director in Belfast; recorded talks for NBC and CBS at Radio Eireann studios; interview with Frank Aiken and broadcast on Home Service feature on Garibaldi; William Johnston d. 29 Nov. 1940; produced ‘Nansen’ (BBC 25 Dec. 1940) and ‘Christmas under Fire’; made half-and-half St. Patrick’s Day programme for Ministry of Information linking NI BBC and RE studios, 17 March 1941 (treated as ‘appeasement’ by Northern Whig); broadcast ‘Great Parliamentarians’ on Burke and Palmerston, and ‘High Command’, a play with Ivor Vinogradoff, and ‘The Gorgeous Lady Blessington’, historical drama (all 1941); Kathleen Johnston moves to 131 Strand Rd.; Etwall converted to flats; Betty under pressure from Leo’s school employers; joined Local Security Force; served as Drama Critic on The Bell; appt. BBC War Correspondent, 1942-45, on capture of Eddie Ward (later Lord Bangor of Castle Ward) in N. Africa; sailed for Lagos on Highland Brigade out of Liverpool, 9 May 1942; by plane to Kharthoum and on to Cairo; kept War Field Books which formed the basis of Nine Rivers from Jordan (1953), an attempt to ‘puzzle out the war’; carried Ulysses everywhere; moved up to Front, 23 June 1942; worked as Front reporter first under Richard Dimbleby, later under Godfrey Talbot; duties incl. interview with Winston Churchill at El Alamein, 22 Aug. 1942; made victory broadcast from Alam Halfa, 6 Sept. 1942; travelled to Tel Aviv and Jordan; flew in RAF bombing mission from Tel Aviv to Benghazi, 22 Oct. 1942; followed rout of Rommel from Cairo, recording Montgomery’s words, ‘We’ll hit him for six right out of Africa’; received surrender of a German; rejected stories of German booby-trap atrocities; returned to Britain via Gibraltar, 24 Jan. 1943; spent much of 1943 in Ireland; his returned announced by Patrick Kavanagh in the Irish Press; scripted ‘The Battle of Egypt’ with Alan Moorhead (5 March 1943); resigns from what be perceives as war-propaganda, 1 April 1943; wrote programme on Amanda McKittrick Ros (BBC 27 July 1943); re-enlisted to serve as journalist in Italy, 1943, landing at Brindisi; stationed at Vasto (‘Dysentry Hall’); dissensions with his recording truck driver Vizard; fighting up through towns Moozagrogno, Lanciano, et al.; interview with Monty and invested with own jeep; posted at Naples to record Christmas Day programme; associated with fellow-reporter Wynford Vaughan-Thomas; visited Partisans on Vis (island) off Dalmatia, bringing back 24 recordings, March 1944, acknowledged as a first-rank ‘scoop’; covered Anzio landing; witnessed casual bombing of Civita Vecchia from the air; raced to Rome and met German armour en route, June 1944; reached Bristol via Gibraltar, 20 July 1944; travelled to Ireland by mailboat, 26 July 1944; Kathleen d. 29 August, 1944; left Ireland, 24 Oct. 1944; to Ostend in MTB, returning soon to Dover with ‘War Report’; flew to Paris; visited Aachen; advanced with Gen. Patton’s Twelfth Army; injured elbow in fall and operated; peripatetic reportage in S. France, Bonn, and Paris; travelled to Ireland on leave to marry Betty, then acting in Othello (Gaiety), March 1945; m. in Dungannon, returning when the Rhine was crossed; acquired utility vehicle and proceeded to Bonn; attempted unsucessfully to deliver letters by Wehrmacht soldier Georg Sichermann, found in N. Africa, to Annaliese Wendler in Eckartsberga, nr. Weimar; entered Buchenwald Concentration Camp among the first to reach it after the retreat of the Germans (‘those who are capable of such things will have to be killed themselves’), April 1945; attended Goering press conference at Augsberg, 11 May 1945; returned to London via Paris, 13 May 1945; returned to Dublin, c.21 May; awarded OBE, 1946; filmed G. B. Shaw’s ninetieth birthday, July 1946; BBC Director of TV Programmes, 1946-47; moved to America and worked for Theatre Guild of the Air, 1948; ‘taught college’ at Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Mass. and Smith, USA, 1952-60; advised Mary O’Malley on production of Mary Manning’s adaptation of Finnegans Wake as The Voice of Shem (Belfast Lyric Th., 1955); Guggenheim Fellow, 1955-1956, producing In Search of Swift [1959]; Theatre Dept., Smith Coll., Mass., 1961; elected MIAL; produced nine plays and works of autobiography including Nine Rivers from Jordan, a wartime narrative (1953); wrote and produced The Táin, a pageant about Cúchulainn produced at Croke Park 1956; settled in Alderney, Channel Islands, 1967; returned to Dublin, 1970; broadcast talks from his ‘Records’ [diaries & papers] during the 1970s; issued The Brazen Horn (1976), a novel inspired by an incident during his time as a war correspondent and containing speculations on science in a mystical and philosophical vein; d. 8 Aug. Ballybrack, Co. Dublin; bur. St. Patrick’s Cathedral (outside), with Betty Chancellor; papers presented to TCD Library by his children in 1986; The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ successfully revived by National Youth Theatre in Dublin, 2001, there is a head by Marjorie Fitzgibbon in the RDS. NCBE DIW DIH HOG OCEL KUN FDA OCIL
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Works
Plays (First Performances), The Old Lady Says ‘No’! (rejected Abbey 1928; Gate, 3 July 1929; 1929; revived Abbey 1977); The Moon in the Yellow River [3 acts] (Abbey, 27 April 1931; 1st. publ. Cape 1932; another edn. 1935), 154pp.; A Bride for the Unicorn (1933); Storm Song (1934); Blind Man’s Buff (Abbey, 26 Dec. 1936); The Golden Cuckoo (Gate 1939); The Dreaming Dust (Gaiety 1940) [on Swift]; A Fourth for Bridge (1948); ‘Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye’ (Abbey Theatre, 20 Aug. 1956) The Scythe and the Sunset (Cambridge, Mass.; Abbey Theatre, 19 May 1958).
Plays (Contemporary Editions), Two Plays: The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ [and] The Moon in the Yellow River (London 1932); Storm Song and A Bride for the Unicorn (London 1935); Blind Man’s Bluff (London: Johnathan Cape 1938; NY: Random House 1939); The Golden Cuckoo and Other Plays (London 1954); The Moon in the Yellow River, in E. Martin Browne, ed., Three Irish Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1959), pp.9-98 [with others of Joseph O’Conor and Donagh MacDonagh]. NEW EDITIONS, Collected Plays, 2 vols.(London: Jonathan Cape 1960), in US The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ [1 vol.] (NY: Atlantic Little Brown 1960); Joseph Ronsley, ed., Selected Plays (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; Washington: CUA Press 1983); Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, Vols. 1 & 2 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977, 1979, 1993) [infra].
Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, with General Introduction and prefatory remarks on each play. Vol. 1 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977), ‘General Introduction’; The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ (1929); ‘A Note on What Happened’; The Scythe and the Sunset; Storm Song; The Dreaming Dust (Gaiety 1940), and ‘Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye’. Do., Vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), Contents: ‘Preface: Concerning the Unicorn’; A Bride for the Unicorn (1933), The Moon in the Yellow River; A Fourth for Bridge; The Golden Cuckoo; Nine Rivers from Jordan [opera libretto]; The Táin [pageant]; Appendix: ‘Introducing the Enigmatic Dean Swift’. Vol. 3: Broadcast Plays and Essays (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), Contents: Blind Man’s Bluff; Riders to the Sidhe. Reprint Editions, Christine S. Peters, ed. & intro., The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ (Irish Dramatic Texts 1992).
Autobiography, Nine Rivers from Jordan (London: Derek Verschoyle 1953); ‘The Abbey in Those Days’ [memoir], in Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), pp.66-70 [with photo-port.]; ‘Did you Know Yeats? And Did You Lunch with Shaw?’, in Des Hickey & Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), pp.60-72 [interview]. See also Rory Johnston, ed., Orders and Desecrations: The Life of the Playwright Denis Johnston (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1992), 256[236]pp.
Miscellaneous, In Search of Swift (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1959) [var. Hodges Figgis]; John Millington Synge [Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, No. 12] (NY & London: Columbia UP 1965), 48pp.;The Brazen Horn: A Non-Book for Those Who, in Revolt Today, Could be in Command Tomorrow (Dublin: Dolmen 1976), 254pp. [ltd. edn. of 1,050 copies].
Criticism, ‘Sean O’Casey: An Appreciation’ (Daily Telegraph 11 March 1926), rep. in Ronald Ayling, Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan 1969), pp.83-90; ‘The Mysterious Origin of Dean Swift’, in Dublin Historical Record, III, 4 (June-Aug. 1941), pp.81-97 [see extract under Jonathan Swift, infra]; ‘A Short View of the Progress of Joyceanity’, in Envoy: A Review of Literature and Art, ed. John Ryan [“James Joyce” Special Issue ] (1951), pp.13-18 [infra]; ‘Sean O’Casey’, in G. Phelps, ed., Living Writers: Critical Studies Broadcast in the BBC Third Programme (Sylvan Press Ltd. 1947) [q.pp.]; ‘Joxer in Totnes: A Study in Sean O’Casey’, in Irish Writing, No. 29 (Cork 1954) [q.pp.]; ‘Sean O’Casey: A Biography and An Appraisal’, in Modern Drama, IV, No. 3 (Kansas 1961) [q.pp.]; ‘Clarify Begins At: The Non-Information of Finnegans Wake’, in Robin Skelton & David R. Clark, eds., Irish Renaissance: A Gathering of Essays, Memoirs, and Letters from the Massachusetts Review [prev. ‘An Irish Gathering’] (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1965), pp.120-27; ‘The Abbey in Those Days: A Memoir’, in Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), pp.66-70; Rory Johnston, ed., Orders and Desecrations: The Life of the Playwright Denis Johnston, foreword by Hugh Leonard (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1992), 256pp.
Posthumous editions, Rory Johnston, ed., Orders and Desecrations: The Life of the Playwright Denis Johnston (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1992), 256[236]pp.; Christine St. Peter, ed., The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), 131pp. [based on 1977 revision].
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Criticism
Robert Hogan, ‘The Adult Theatre of Denis Johnston’, in After the Renaissance (Minnesota UP 1967), pp.133-146.
Harold Ferrar, Denis Johnston’s Irish Theatre (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1973).
Gene A. Barnett, Denis Johnston (NY: Twayne 1973).
Joseph Ronsley, ed. Denis Johnston: A Retrospective (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1981).
John Boyd, ‘Denis Johnston 1901-1984: A Personal Note’, Threshold, 35 (Winter 1984-1985), pp.1-3.
Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston 1901-1984 (Dublin: Lilliput 2001), 320pp.
Adams, Bernard, Denis Johnston 1901-1984 (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2001), 320pp.
Brooks Atkinson, review of The Moon and the Yellow River, in The New York Times (13 March 1932).
Mary McCarthy, review of The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, in Partisan Review (q.d., April 1948).
Denis Ireland, From Irish Shore (1939), pp.209ff.
Bonamy Dobrée, ‘Sean O’Casey and the Irish Drama’, Malvern Festival Lecture, given before performance of Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River in 1934; first published in Ronald Ayling, Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements, 1969, pp.92-105.
E. Martin Browne, ed., Three Irish Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1959). An Introduction.
John Philip Cohane, The Indestructible Irish (NY: Hawthorn Books 1969), p.166.
Fergus Linehan, review of Rory Johnston, ed., Orders and Desecrations: The Life of the Playwright Denis Johnston (1992), in Irish Times ( 21 Nov. 1992).
Robin Skelton & David R. Clark, eds., Irish Renaissance: A Gathering of Essays, Memoirs, and Letters from the Massachusetts Review (Dolmen Press 1965), pp.120-27.
Des Hickey & Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), pp.60-72; p.71.)
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Notes
D. E. S. Maxwell, A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891-1980 (Cambridge UP 1984), lists The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, 2 vols. (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977 & 1979), with general intro., and with preface and prefatory remarks on each play by Johnston. Also cites cites The Tain - a Pageant; Introducing the Enigmatic Dean Swift, et. al.
Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992) incls. extract from Nine Rivers from Jordan (London: David Verschoyle 1953).
Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), selects ‘The Abbey in Those Days’, a memoir, with photo-port., pp.66-70.
Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988) erroneously cites Brazen Head for Brazen Horn.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects from The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ [176-81]; presented Gate, 3 July 1929; revived 1931, 1934, 1938, and Gaiety 1941 and 1947; REMS, 171-173 [‘even DJ’s second play, The Moon in the Yellow River, Abbey 1931, forsook experiment for a realism that the Abbey directors indeed could welcome (despite the fact that the play had its origins in a parody of ‘the Abbey play’); its focus on precise political issues in the Free State (although achiev[ing] universal statement on paradox of conflicting ideals) prompts the recognition that much of the success of even The Old Lady had depended on a sure local knowledge; that had been a quintessentially Dublin play, an extravaganza of local lore, legend and feeling (never travelled well); the universalising theatrical impulses of Expressionism checked by Dublin man’s ambiguous feelings for his native place, metaphysical solemnity ... dispelled by Anglo-Irish sprezzatura, a wit bred of excruciatingly complex loyalties [here quotes ‘Strumpet City ...’; see infra]; the play concludes identifying Emmet’s terminal condition with a malaise symptomatic of the city’s experience’, ed. Terence Brown, 175]; also 657 [when Johnston wanted to criticise the Free State he had to reject the tenement play for the play of the streets, Fintan O’Toole, ‘Going West, the Country versus the City in Irish Writing’, in Crane Bag, 9.2 (1985)]; BIOG, 232, as above. WORKS, Collected Plays, Vols. I & II (Jonathan Cape 1960); Collected Plays Vol. 1 (Gerrards Cross 1977); Vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross 1979); COMM, Gene A. Barnett, Denis Johnston (Twayne 1978); Harold Farrar, Denis Johnston’s Irish Theatre (Dolmen 1973); Joseph Ronsley, ed. Denis Johnston: A Retrospective (Gerrards Cross 1981), critical essays.
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTÉ/Mercier 1987), lists TV films, The Dreaming Dust, dir. Michael Barry (1966); The Glass Murder, dir. Peter Collinson (1963); The Moon in the Yellow River, dir. Shelah Richards (1964); the Scythe and the Sunset, dir. Chloe Gibson (1965); That Rooted Man, dir. Tony Barry (1971). Also, silent version of O’Connor’s Guests of the Nation (1936), with Barry Fitzgerald, Cyril Cusack, and Hilton Edwards [Walter Reade Theatre, 1994 Program].
TCD Library holds an extensive collection of diaries, from age 15 until shortly before his death covering his day-to-day life, his work, and the people he knew, together with much correspondence and unpublished writing.
University of Ulster Library (Coleraine) holds a collection of mostly published playscripts, radio talks, newspaper cuttings, microfilms of many of the diaries, &c.
Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye (1956): The historical event around which the play turns is the Kirwan murder, documented in Mathias Bodkin’s Famous Irish Trials (1914; rep. edn. 1956). Note that One Frances Hoey (née Johnston) wrote a novel on Ireland’s Eye. (See Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction, 1919; also under Hoey, supra.)
The Moon in the Yellow River (Abbey 27 April 1931), concerns an extremist republican plot to blow up a hydroelectric power-station, with Darrell Blake as the Irreconcilable, Tausch as the German manager, Lanigan as the policeman who eliminates Blake, and Willie Reilly as Blake’s side-kick; also Roddy Dobelle (played by F. J. McCormick), the occupant of a naval fortress and his 13-year old daughter whose mother’s death in childbirth has blocked his love for her;
Moon in the Yellow River: On quitting his room in Bloomsbur House Club in 1927, Johnston inscribed on the wall lines from Pound: 'And Li-Po/Also died drunk./He tried to embrace a Moon/In the Yellow River.' (See Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life, 2002, p.90.)
Hilton Edwards remarks on The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ at its premiere in 1929, ‘It read like a railway guide and played like Tristan and Isolde.’ (See The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, Colin Smythe; Washington; Catholic Univ. of America Press 1992).
James Plunkett took ‘Strumpet City’, a phrase in The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, as the title of a novel in 1969, substituting ‘so rich with memories’ for ‘so sick with memories’ in the original. The erroneous version was reprinted in the Sean McMahon, ed., Book of Irish Quotations (Dublin: O’Brien Press), and repeated [presum. from that source] in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (1991), under Johnston [see References, supra].
Bolder & Bowlder: A corrupted version poem of a Thomas Davis poem appears in Orders and Desecrations following the version sourced by the publisher in Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (1991), being copied there from a bowlderising Victorian editor.
Records & omnibus: Johnston himself deposited microfilm of his diaries with autobiographical links (‘omnibus’) in the University of Ulster (Coleraine) and seven American universities, these forming the basis of study by Joseph Ronsley. His papers were presented to TCD Library by his children in 1986 incl. manuscripts and unbuttoned diaries kept continuously from the age of 15, forming the basis of a biography by Adams in 2002.
Bernard Adams, Johnston’s biographer, was b. in Dublin and ed. at Portora, Enniskillen and TCD (English); BBC journalist in N. Ireland and BBC TV producer in London; full-time writer. (See Clé catalogue, 2002.)
“The Old Orange Flute”: Denis Johnston sang the song (originally by Peadar Kearney but adopted by the Ulster Orange Order) it in St. Peter’s Square to symbolise his freedom from papal thraldom (Nine Rivers from Jordan). Cited by Patrick Maume on the Irish Diaspora List, Bradford (Feb. 2004), going on the call the Nine Rivers ‘an interesting pastiche on Ulysses’.
Namesake: One Denis Johnston b. Dromahair, Co. Leitrim, in 1869, is represented in W. J. Paul, Modern Irish Poets (1894).
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)