Clodagh Finn: The Irish 'firecrackers' who led the way on the US stage

Social columnist Judy O'Grady enthused that her blue eyes sparkled in the painfully clichéd piece that appeared in January 1935: “She wore a sparkling afternoon frock that exactly matched those dancing eyes, too. She talked of tea in Ireland which is composed of homemade cake and heavily buttered scones…” (which, O’Grady added, somewhat controversially, were to be “pronounced scons”).

A few months before, the Chicago Herald declared Aideen O’Connor “the toast of the evening” at one of the post-performance supper dances that were a regular feature of the Abbey Theatre's nine-month tour of the US and Canada.

When 14 players and an entourage that included three stagehands, costumes, scenery and props, set off in October 1934, it was considered one of the largest theatrical tours on record.

It must have been incredibly exciting for a young woman, born Una Mary O’Connor, in the middle of the Dublin Lockout in 1913 to find herself on board a liner with her dream of being an actress firmly in her sights.

One of the older actors in the troupe agreed to act as an unofficial chaperone. Aideen O'Connor — she took the name to distinguish herself from a better-known Belfast actress called Una O'Connor — was happy to present the stage-Irish version of the sweet Irish girl, but she was embracing all that the experience could offer her.

She wrote newsy letters home, offering a tantalising glimpse of a young woman determined to learn her craft and carve out a career as an independent professional.

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She was part of one of the first waves of Irish actresses who struck out for the US in search of fame — with some success — but why, then, don't we know of her?

She might have disappeared entirely had author and consultant Ciara O’Dowd not come across an archive of her letters in the James Hardiman library at NUI Galway while studying for a Master’s in Writing in 2009.

Her discovery, however, was double-edged. The first handful of letters that emerged from their unexplored boxes were vibrant and exciting, telling her sisters in Dublin about the parties and joy she experienced during two tours of America (a second followed in 1937).

She wrote about buying her first electric hairdryer, about the parties and the exciting world of New York. She confided in them about her relationship with a divorced man called Bob whom she hoped to bring to Dublin. “I’m glad you don’t have a fit at the idea of a divorced man, it cheers me up,” she wrote.

But the woman who would shake off ingenue roles to reveal a physicality and passion on stage was not long for this world. The second document to emerge from the archives was Aideen’s death certificate. She was just 37 when she died in Hollywood in 1950 from complications from alcoholism

Ciara O’Dowd became consumed with finding out what happened to this talented and adventurous woman in her too-short life.

The result is Wild-Looking but Fine, Abbey Theatre Actresses of the 1930s (UCD Press). It is an exceptional piece of work that tells the story of Aideen O’Connor and other female actresses who in the 1930s and 40s were striving for something that was still out of reach for Irish woman — a professional career that could be kept separate from her private life.

O’Dowd draws on forgotten archives, but her act of retrieval goes far deeper. She followed in Aideen’s footsteps, sought out family connections and discovered many new documents (some kept safely by friends in a Milk Tray box) which she has assembled into a tender, lyrical and innovative book about female creative endeavour.

In the process, she has not only brought Aideen O’Connor back into the limelight but several other women — her close friend and actress Frolie Mulhern, burgeoning director Ria Mooney, May Craig, and Eileen Crowe — and the male-dominated theatrical world in which they were trying to flourish.

Pushing boundaries

What is striking is their hope, their passion and their fearlessness. It comes as an unexpected thrill to read that Aideen and her fellow player Frolie Mulhern (27) went shopping with film star Maureen O'Sullivan and, according to Aideen, “they all became great friends”.

“They worked hard — and they played harder,” writes Ciara O’Dowd. These two Irish women were striving, against monumental odds, to forge an artistic career for themselves in the 1930s.

They were also pushing the boundaries. Ria Mooney might be remembered as the first actress to play Rosie Redmond, the prostitute in Seán O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie, but there is so much more to this pioneer of the theatre than emerges from her own memoir.

She performed with, and became an assistant director of, the Civic Repertory Theatre Company in Greenwich village in the 1920s, the revolutionary group led by Eva Le Gallienne who followed the work of Stanislavski. Ria brought those techniques, with their focus on empathy and understanding, back to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, even if they were not always appreciated.

At the Gate Theatre, however, Micheál MacLiammóir saw something special in her: “Small, with night-black hair and long, slow-glancing green eyes, she had … a curious intensity like a steadily burning inner fire, and her acting was poised, shapely and full of intelligence.” 

She went on to become the first feminist director at the Abbey where she led an experimental theatre group, trained generations of actors and, as Director of Plays in English, had a particular eye for new talent. She was the one to give the stage to an unknown playwright by the name of Brian Friel.

Meanwhile, Aideen O’Connor was deepening her craft — and her ambition. The review of her performance in Paul Vincent Carroll’s play Shadow and Substance in London was light years away from the twee remarks of the American press two years before:

“Aideen O’Connor’s rendering of the canon’s niece, the only person not afraid of him, was outstanding not merely for her priceless giggle, but for the use of [her] body to suggest a gawky ‘flapper’ whose mind, clothes, coiffure, and voice were all of a piece with her passion for bullseyes — her best performance for a long time.” 

Off-stage, though, Aideen O’Connor’s relationship with the married actor Arthur Shields would cast a lasting shadow over her career. In late February 1937, Shield’s wife Bazie Magee burst into the green room in the Abbey Theatre and slapped Aideen across the face.

“O’Connor was shamed in front of her colleagues: Shields’ reputation was unaffected,” writes O’Dowd.

The fall-out, for all involved, is told in Wild-Looking but Fine, a line used to describe Pegeen Mike in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. To read it is to understand the deep misogyny that was finally exposed in the Waking the Feminists movement of 2016.

Indeed, author Ciara O’Dowd was involved in the groundbreaking research commissioned at the time which showed, in black and white, that Irish theatre had a gender problem. Her new book offers part of the solution — she has raised the curtain on the female pioneers of the 1930s, “firecrackers”, as she calls them, so that they blaze bright again.

That deserves a standing ovation.