O'Donoghue's Opera

Once upon a time - Fadó, Fadó, 1965 to be exact, an astonishing event occurred in the history of Irish independent film-making, the first Irish Film Musical, O'Donoghue's Opera, was made.

At the start of filming, fresh from an Oscar nomination in 1962 for the Abbey Film "Cradle of Genius", I was drafted in to the shoot as a father figure or Line Producer as they would say today. The presumption was that I knew quite a bit about independent fim making, a presumption which perhaps was not too soundly based.

The prime movers on the project were Kevin Sheldon, an about-to-resign RTE producer and Barry Kelly, cameraman extraordinaire, also from RTE. Another ace in the pack was Stewart Barrett, entrepreneur and presentation colleague of Terry Wogan's early days in RTE, a man of many parts who filled the role of an executive producer in those days and came up with the money - £6000.

At that time, Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weil's "Threepenny Opera" was all the rage (Remember Louis Armstrong's version of "Mack the Knife"). And so Ireland's answer to "The Threepenny Opera" was to be O'Donoghue's Opera. O'Donoghue's in Merrion Row is probably the most famous tavern in Dublin and the film and The Dubliners, who starred in this film, contributed to this renown. The Boston Kennedys dropped in for the occasional jar down the years. Our genial host Paddy O'Donoghue and his strong-minded wife Maureen ran the show. Maureen provided the soup and kept good order among actors, singers, crew and extras and nobody stepped out of line. She was the real production manager. Arthur Guinness provided the life blood of the film and between Maureen and Arthur, the rampant libido and fighting qualities of artists and crew were safely channelled into production values.

Our think-tank got going and came up with building the film around the famous Dublin song - "The Night Before Larry Was Stretched", to be sung by Johnny Moynihan who is your only man when it comes to singing this ballad, a view which will be hotly disputed in this town.

The film opens on an exterior shot of O'Donoghue's pub in Merrion Row. We move inside and find The Dubliners in full flight, led by Ronnie Drew looking vastly handsome with a whiff of danger from him. Barney McKenna, Ciaran Bourke, John Sheehan, Bob Lynch, all The Dubliners are in full support in acting and singing roles. Alas the great Luke Kelly was A.W.O.L. at the time. A neat transition from the live scene in O'Donoghue's to the life and times of Larry is conjured up by an artist with drawing pad while Johnny Moynihan sings the story line.

Maeve Mulvaney, a traditional chanteuse of the time, now living and performing in America, plays Polly, Larry's wife, and Amanda Douglas, a model with a touch of Brigitte Bardot about her in those days, plays Larry's inamorata. The Grehan sisters get everybody stomping with their spirited rendering of "We're off to Dublin in the Green, in the Green", and Ted McKenna and his famous Trio give sterling musical support. Many other famous faces can be seen in the film - John Molloy, Dublin comedian and actor-manager who first drew attention to The Dubliners, Andy Rynne and Sean Nós singer, Sean O'Conaire.

During the making of the film, I encountered a young Tony McMahon dueting with maestro Seamus Ennis. It was the first time I ever heard the Clare shout, when Tony was carried away by the rhythms of the music.

O'Donoghue's Opera was to have all the hall-marks of a "Deanta in Eirinn" movie and a most notable contribution was made by Captain Bill Stapleton who founded Silver Pine Studios out in Bray and who handled the film processing, assisted by Mick O'Driscoll. Before this all film processing in Ireland, with the exception of Bill Cooper's The Dawn, was handled in London, so we were breaking new ground. Silver Pine also provided Mike Corr to handle the sound, a critical factor in any musical.

There were many lively incidents in the making of the film apart from the general mayhem in O'Donoghue's, which was always brought to order by the redoubtable Maureen. As Frank O'Connor said about the board of the Abbey - Yeats, Lady Gregory, The Fay Brothers et al... "They fought regular and bitter, like man and wife, and as with man and wife, at the end of the day, it didn't really matter". So it was with The Dubliners, they had some great bust-ups during the filming, due of course to 'artistic temperament', which fuelled the atmosphere on set, but when the cameras rolled, all were in top gear and over thirty years down the road the old firm is still going strong.

Seamus Byrne, now a distinguished film producer, cut his teeth as a film-maker in O'Donoghue's Opera. He turned up as an extra, completely over-dressed for the occasion, and was drafted in as an assistant on the production. Rock Brynner, Yul Brynner's son, was hired and fired in the course of one day. A bright film career beckoned for him in the morning and that evening as I tried to cope with a crisis, when a young wardrobe mistress had taken to the bed because of a tiff with her boyfriend and I arrived into her boudoir to try and dislodge her and get her on the set, there was the bold Rock being very P.C. dancing in attendance and encouraging her to continue with her bed-rest at a time when he himself should have been on the set. I told the lady in question that I would send for Maureen O'Donoghue. This put the frighteners on her and up she jumped and Larry was suitably costumed that night on the set of "O'Donoghue's Shebeen 1014". Needless to say, Rock, who wasn't even her beau at the time took a long walk that night.

The hanging of Larry was a gala affair and took place early morning outside Tailor's Hall, in Christchurch Place. Our extras had been recruited from the fall-out of Dublin's night-life, denizens of milk parlours in those days, night clubs, houseparties etc. A motley crew of Dublin drop-outs assisted Larry in his passing. To add to the general tristesse of the occasion it was flogging rain and there was a big shortage of umbrellas. This event was to be topped by a big thunderstorm at Larry's funeral in Kilmainham. Atmosphere was the name of the game.

After completing the filming we ran out of money for post-production and sadly, O'Donoghue's Opera never quite made it to the silver screen. However, I must now fast forward over thirty years to 1995. Down the years, Tony McMahon and myself often met in the RTE canteen and reminisced fondly about the making of O'Donoghue's Opera. Nobody seemed to know whatever happened to the film material or where the original negative had gone, rumours were legion and all enquiries drew a blank. But Tony is a persistent fellow and would not give up. He put me faoi geasa to run O'Donoghue's Opera to ground. But where could I find a clue. All trails ran cold. And then I recalled something that happened all of thirty years ago. I remembered working with Nick O'Neill who brilliantly edited together a rough cutting copy with music, in an effort to raise further finance to do the post-production. Stewart Barrett had taken off for America with this version of the film under his arm, to make a sales pitch and complete the dream. Alas and alack, MGM musicals with Astaire, Rogers and Gene Kelly had gone out of fashion and our good work came to naught. But Eureka, I was on to something, and I told Tony about this cutting copy version.

The question was, could it possibly still exist? Life had moved on for everybody in O'Donoghue's Opera and the question was where was Stewart Barrett and could he possibly have this precious cutting copy version. I went on the hunt for two weeks and continuously drew a blank. I felt like putting an ad in the Evening Herald which would read "Desperately Seeking Stewart". One day I rang a strictly business acquaintance about my own affairs and out of the blue, I asked him did he know Stewart Barrett. To my astonishment, he said "He's coming into this office tomorrow afternoon, and I'll get him to ring you".

Thirty years down the road and Stewart was on the phone to me, told me he had no idea where the original negative was but he had some cans of film from those days. We duly met up. He gave us the cans and to our amazement and great excitement, Tony McMahon and I found ourselves sitting in front of the missing film. Bless Stewart Barrett... He told me that down the years despite five house moves, with his mother and family urging him to throw those bloody cans on the dump, they were always loaded last thing on board the removal van and miraculously, they survived - destiny is all. This story will gladden the heart of all film archivists and my friend Liam O'Leary must be rejoicing on high. It was an astonishing achievement in 1965, a stab at Ireland's first film musical, shot on 35mm, and produced by independents on a shoestring.

Once the film was found, Tony McMahon, who inspired the chase in the first instance, ran with the ball, and supported by Tony O'Connor of RTE, brought the project to completion. We viewed the material with Sé Merry Doyle, who, as a producer of the restoration of O'Donoghue's Opera, took it that further mile in post-production we did not achieve in 1965. Sé, a collaborator with John T. Davis on some epic productions and a director in his own right, worked his magic on the recreation of the film. He lovingly, and with tremendous enthusiasm, worked on the pictures frame by frame and was at his most creative in enhancing sound and music effects. He also found among the cans some scenes that were not in the American cut and used them to great effect. In my view, the finished re-achieved version is true to the vision of the late Barry Kelly and the late Kevin Sheldon.

A memoir from Tom Hayes - The premiere screening of 'O'Donoghue's Opera' was at the Irish Film Centre, Dublin on Saturday 7 March 1998