User:DianaMirza/sandbox
Career[edit]
After moving briefly to London, McCormick returned to Dublin, where he worked in the Civil Service.[2][3] He also took acting roles in the Workmen's Club on York Street, and for the first time under the pseudonym by which he became known for roles with the Queen's Theatre, Dublin.[4][5][3] By May of 1919, he had a leading role in an independent production at the Abbey Theatre (The Curate of St. Chad's by Constance Powell Anderson).[6][3] An attack on Irish acting by Edward Martyn was answered by McCormick in the pages of the journal Banba in June, 1921.[7]
McCormick acted in over 500 plays at the Abbey, and was its stage manager from 1923–1925.[8] There he became particularly associated with the plays of Sean O'Casey.[2][3][9] Of his performance as Seumus Sheilds in The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), O'Casey said that the actor had created a character greater than that O'Casey had written.[10][11] His Oedipus (1926) and Lear (1928) were admired by Yeats and Lady Gregory.[12][10][13] He played Capt. Brennan in the filmed version of O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars[14] but it was his return to film in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) that saw him singled out for praise in contemporaneous reviews. The Irish Times wrote that "the acting of the Irish players was unremittingly professional, and, in the case of F. J. McCormick, as Shell, a weak-minded and elderly corner-boy, quite outstanding."[15] The Times of London found "... it is Mr. F. J. McCormick as a sly, bird-like creature, who stops just the right side of informing, who catches most surely at the imagination."[16]
In their review of the film Hungry Hill (also 1947), The New York Times wrote, "As the butler who served John Brodrick, his sons, and their sons in turn, the late F. J. McCormick is truly magnificent, giving an even more subtle portrayal of Irish character than he did as the wily tramp in Odd Man Out." [17]
References[edit]
- ^ Bowe, Nicola Gordon. Mulcahy, John. "Harry Clarke's Geneva Window", Irish Arts Review, vol. 30, no. 1, 2013.
- ^ a b Mikhail, E. H. The Abbey Theatre: Interviews and Recollections, Macmillan, Basingstoke: 1988, p. 183. ISBN 9781349085101
- ^ a b c d Clarke, Frances. "F. J. McCormick", McGuire, James. Quinn, James. (Eds.) Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2009 ISBN 9780521633314
- ^ Craig, May. "Looking Back on the Abbey", Evening Press, 12 March, 1960, p. 11. Reprinted in Mikhail, p. 80.
- ^ De Búrca, Séamus. "In Search of Shaw", Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Autumn, 1995), p. 162.
- ^ "'The Curate of St. Chad's' at the Abbey Theatre", Irish Times, May 21, 1919, p. 6.
- ^ McCormick, F. J. "Mr. Martyn and the Actor", Banba, June, 1921. Reprinted in Goode Hogan, Robert. Burnham, Richard. The Years of O'Casey, 1921-1926: A Documentary History, University of Delaware Press, Newark: 1992 pp. 328–331. ISBN 0874134218
- ^ "The Abbey Theatre Archive".
- ^ Burke, Patrick. "Biography of FJ McCormick", Irish Times, February 18, 2008. (Letter)
- ^ a b Fallon, Gabriel. "F. J. McCormick: An Appreciation", Studies, Vol. 36, No. 142 (June, 1947), pp. 181–186.
- ^ Crowe, Eileen. "F. J. McCormack", Mikhail, E. H. (Ed.), The Abbey Theatre: Interviews and Recollections, Macmillan, Basingstoke: 1988, p. 181. ISBN 9781349085101
- ^ O'Driscoll, Robert, and W. B. Yeats. “Letters and Lectures of W. B. Yeats.” University Review, vol. 3, no. 8, 1966, pp. 29–55. For a photo of McCormick as Lear, see Hanratty, Conor. "King Lear Resource Pack", Abbey Theatre, 2013, p. 9.
- ^ Gregory, Lady Augusta. Robinson, Lennox (Ed.) "Nov. 28" [1928], Lady Gregory's Journals 1916-1930, Macmillan, Basingstoke: 1947.
- ^ John Ford, RKO, 1937.
- ^ "The Heart of a City", Irish Times, March 10, 1947, p. 4.
- ^ "Odd Man Out", The Times, January 31, 1947, p. 6.
- ^ T. M. P. (1947-10-11). "Movie Review - Hungry Hill - Miss du Maurier's Novel Makes Film". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2014-04-17.