With all things John Ford being celebrated, Carol Hunt recalls one of his finest actors

It was not long after he and his wife had returned home to Cork from working in the United States that Desmond Sharp-Bolster received a rather odd request from Hollywood — asking for information about his now deceased Aunt Anita’s “Communist affiliations”. He was nonplussed.

“I knew her very well,” he told me last week, “but I had heard nothing about any socialist leanings.” Nor had he realised that his aunt — a Cork-born actress far better known in Hollywood and New York than her native Ireland — had served as a nurse on the Aragon front in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Soon afterwards, though, while going through some papers, Desmond discovered this information on a playbill for a production of Pygmalion on Broadway, which Anita had starred in with Raymond Massey and Gertrude Lawrence, among others.

“We never really got into politics,” said Desmond, “but as I understand it, Hemingway and that Bohemian crowd, while assisting the Communists, were really there to combat Fascism.” (Co-incidentally, Desmond’s wife’s family published all of Hemingway’s books.)

Desmond is well aware, though, of the extraordinary life led by his aunt and how, as an Irish artist, Anita Sharp-Bolster had a comprehensive impact on arts and culture worldwide for many years — yet still she seems to have been somewhat overlooked in her home country.

Born in 1895 to an Anglo-Irish family in Glenlohane, Kanturk, Co Cork, Alice (Anita) Sharp-Bolster amassed an extraordinary portfolio of work during her 90 years.

“I know of no other Irish actor or actress of that era with such an extensive participation in both stage and film,” is the opinion of her nephew. Or any era, one would have to add.

Like many Irish actors who would go on to Hollywood and work extensively with John (Feeney) Ford, Anita’s acting career began with the Abbey Players, in a play called The Mineral Waters.

Her talent must have been quickly spotted as she then travelled on to London, got to New York in 1938 and finally made her screen debut in Hollywood in 1941. She went on to run the The Gate Theatre in California in association with Peter Godfrey. Some of her better known films were Going My Way, The Lost Weekend, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Kitty, The Perfect Woman, Botany Bay, The Thin Man Goes Home and The Two Mrs Carrolls. In her lifetime, she worked with such well-known names as Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, John Ford, of course, and later on, Angela Lansbury.

One Hollywood screen biography blurb says that: “Bolster became one of the busiest character actresses of the 1940s.”

It seems extraordinary that so many of us — especially those of us with interests in Irish film and theatre — have heard so little, if anything, about this Cork woman’s highly successful and very diverse career.

Considering if his aunt may have had what we call a ‘risque life’, Desmond laughs and says he wouldn’t have thought so: “She was always such a breath of fresh air when she came home, which she did regularly and she received total support from her family.”

Anita was also responsible for her nephew’s American schooling and connections. “She was at a cocktail party in Thirties New York when she overheard a couple saying that they were going to Ireland and were interested in fox-hunting.”

She immediately introduced herself and told them that her brother and sister-in-law took in paying guests in Cork and that they could organise riding to hounds with them.” So they came, they stayed, became great friends and then godparents to the young Desmond who was born in 1939.

Consequently in 1953, after the war, Desmond went to stay with them and was schooled where they lived, two hours north of New York.

She bought land here in Schull and was thinking of retiring here,” says Desmond. “But then she went off back to work in the States, kept on working and finally moved to Florida.”

She died there in 1985; an extraordinary Irish woman. As her nephew noted: “While there are certainly Irish actors and actresses that have made a name for themselves in one or two movies, it is people like John Ford and Anita that have enabled Ireland to ‘punch above its weight’ on the international scene