Catherine McCormack was born in Hampshire in 1972. She won the role of leading lady to Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” in 1985. Her other films include “Dangerous Beauty” and “Dancing at Lughnasa”. She has an extensive body of work in the theatre.
Brittish Actors
Catherine McCormack was born in Hampshire in 1972. She won the role of leading lady to Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” in 1985. Her other films include “Dangerous Beauty” and “Dancing at Lughnasa”. She has an extensive body of work in the theatre.
Chris Fountain was born in 1987 in Bradford, Yorkshire. He came to national fame in the U.K. with his role in “Hollyoaks”. He went on to play P.C. Paul Tait in the BBC drama “Five Days”. He is currently on “Coronation Street” as Tommy Duckworth the cheeky lodger of Tyrone Dobbs.
Derek Riddell was born in Glasgow in 1967. He is the son of footballer Ian Riddell. He trained at LAMDA. His television debut came in 1992 in the series “Strathblair”. His other TV appearances include “Taggart”, “Casualty”, “Where the Heart Is”, “The Book Group” and “Ugly Betty” which he made in the U.S.
IMDB entry:
Derek Riddell is one of the UK’s underrated actors who graduated from LAMDA’s three year acting course in 1990. Derek worked very hard leading up to his television career in plays including Midsummer Night’s Dream and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. Also appeared in The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman he once Loved in the Former Soviet Union at the Tron theatre.
He made a few appearances on the small screen during the nineties but he is now getting some of the recognition he deserves with surreal black comedy The Book Group(2002) as the suppressed gay football fan Rab and is to star in the hit Brit drama Clocking Off (2000). An actor who truly has his best years ahead of him.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Matthew Jones matthewjones193@hotmail.com
Cliff Richard is primarily known as one of the most popular singers ever to come from the U.K. However he also had a film career in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. He was born in Lucknow, India in 1940.
His parents returned to England when he was eight years of age after Indian independance. In his teens he was lead singer with the group The Shadows. He had a huge hit in 1959 with “Livin Doll”. His movie debut was in a dramatic role in “Serious Charge” which also starred Anthony Quale.
His other films included “Expresso Bongo” with Laurence Harvey and Sylvia Syms, “The Young Ones” and “Summer Holiday”. His inema career tapered off in the mid 1960’s but he went from strength to strength as a popular singer and his popularity remains undiminished.
TCM Overview:
Pop singer Sir Cliff Richard, OBE, enjoyed one of the most storied musical careers in his native England and throughout much of the world, with an estimated 250 million records sold worldwide and over 100 Top 20 singles in the U.K. including more than a dozen No. 1 songs in five consecutive decades, a feat matched only by Elvis Presley.
Despite this, Richard remained only a modest success in the United States, where he enjoyed eight Top 40 singles, including the million-selling “We Don’t Talk Anymore” (1979).
His efforts in the States stood in sharp contrast to his standing in England, where he was credited for releasing the country’s first rock song, “Move It” (1958), backed by the celebrated instrumental group The Shadows.
In the 1960s, Richard segued successfully to mainstream pop while also enjoying a side career in movie musicals.
Though his star was dimmed by the British Invasion, he rebounded in the 1970s by returning to his rock roots, which generated hits on both sides of the Atlantic like 1976’s “Devil Woman.” Though his tenure on the American pop charts ended in the early ’80s, Richard remained astonishingly popular for the next three decades, scoring a slew of chart-topping singles and Top 10 albums as he approached his sixth and seventh decades. Despite a lack of support from British radio, Cliff Richard surpassed many of his rock peers by remaining not only relevant, but also wildly successful for over a half-century.
Catherine Cusack was born in 1968 and is the youngest daughter of the great Irish actor Cyril Cusack. One of her earliest acting roles was with the famed Druid Theatre in Galway. In 1992 she achieved national fame in the UK as Carmel Finnan the nurse stalking Martin Platt in “Coronation Street”. Her films include “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne”, “Conspiracy of Silence” and “Finding Neverland”.
“Independent.ie”:
CIARA DWYER – UPDATED 27 NOVEMBER 2012 03:47 PM
As she utters these lines, Catherine Cusack frowns. It is not in her nature to speak out. It obviously still troubles her slightly. But at 40, she has started to examine her life and see how she is the product of her upbringing.
Right now, the London-born actress has many reasons to be cheerful. She is relishing her role as Goneril in Second Age’s production of King Lear. “It’s great to play a villain.” For so long, because of her innocent face, she was frequently cast in nice, non-threatening roles. Many will remember her from Coronation Street, where she played Carmel, the babysitter who was not as sweet as she seemed. (The character, who was supposed to be from Offaly, had erotomania — a disorder where the subject holds a delusional belief that a person is in love with her.) Some Irish people complained in mock outrage that nobody from Offaly would have erotomania.
Nowadays, Catherine lives in London with her husband Alex Palmer, an English actor whom she met when she played his wife on stage. From the way she speaks of him, it is clear that she is very happy with him. Yet in the time that I spent with her, she talked most about her childhood, her parents and, in particular, her relationship with her late father, the actor Cyril Cusack.
What sort of man was he?
“He was 58 when I was born, so there was a big generation gap, but I think I also had a much more relaxed dad than possibly the others had. (Cyril had five children from his first marriage to the actress Maureen Kiely.) By that stage, he was probably easier to live with.”
This is the pleasing answer, but then Catherine goes on.
“He was a very difficult man. This is only my experience and I do think I had it a bit easier, but he kind of dominated a room. There’d be an atmosphere. I don’t know if he meant to, but he just did. It’s hard to describe how some people do that but he did. It’s something very subtle. As he had grown older and become more established, the world started to revolve around him. But also it was a generation thing. He was a man when men were the centre of everything, the centre of family. I think he was a fantastic actor, a ground-breaking actor. When he was quite famous and successful, he was given that status and respect.”
She was obviously not impressed by his behaviour when he wasn’t working, but I say that he was probably used to having people waiting on him hand and foot when he was in films, so he may have expected the same in real life. Also, many artists often have huge egos, where they are self-consumed. That is their norm.
“Yeah, I agree, but there is something in me which thinks those people should be kept down to earth, they need that.”
It sounds like everyone gave in to Cyril.
“He was moody. I’m not talking shouting or violence and it certainly wasn’t ‘my hell childhood’ but the thing about childhood is that whatever you have is what you’re used to. It’s your normality. He could be a champion sulker. There’d be an atmosphere that would close everything.”
Catherine and her mother, Mary Rose Cunningham, would try to appease him.
“With Dad, you tried to make everything all right and all good, and make it happy. I think some of the others would have had the same experience.”
Did it work?
“Mostly it did, but it took a lot of energy and then that’s how you develop, which isn’t that healthy. I found that a real problem. You can be a rebel, but I never was. I didn’t let myself have a temper. I was totally appeasing and it would have been a lot healthier if I had spoken back, but sometimes Mum would try that and it didn’t work, so that was very frustrating. All that stuff about my wanting to scream and shout probably comes out on stage instead.”
But it was not just a childhood blighted by Cyril’s artistic temperament. Catherine has many fond memories of her father. She remembers when he brought her to her first opera as a little girl — La Boheme — and he got a great laugh out of her reaction to The Mikado.
“A Japanese girl was singing a line, ‘Why am I so ugly?’ and I apparently shouted out — ‘No, you’re not. I think you’re beautiful’, which Dad liked a lot.”
Catherine used to go to mass with her father every Sunday in London, but when he died, she stopped going, as she realised that it meant nothing to her. She remembers when they were in Dublin, how she used to go into the oratory on Leeson Street with him; he would always bless himself when he passed there, or any church. They did Lent in their home.
When Catherine speaks of how her father met her mother, her voice becomes hesitant. Theirs was not an easy beginning and even as an adult, Catherine is only aware of certain details. The story was one which caused much pain. Cyril was married to Maureen when he met Mary Rose, while he was filming in Rome. They began an affair. In some ways, it was a double and somewhat secret life he led. He was publicly a strict Catholic and did not believe in divorce, so he didn’t marry Mary Rose until his first wife had died in 1977, when Catherine was nine.
“It’s pretty common knowledge and I suppose a lot of heart-rending years went by. I don’t actually know if he left his wife and I haven’t actually been told because there was a lot of pain. He couldn’t and wouldn’t marry my mother because he wouldn’t divorce. But all this wasn’t a secret. I think he was sort of between the two families, when he wasn’t away working. I grew up in London. I kind of felt like an only child and I was kind of an only child. By that stage, Sinead and Sorcha (Cusack) were up working, having careers. Later on, Dad introduced me to Niamh. I grew up in west London and I went to a convent school, which was probably Dad’s influence.”
Her mother, Mary Rose, had led a colourful life before she met Cyril. Catherine was her one and only child. She had her when she was 46. (Later, Catherine concedes that this is probably one reason why she is not too worried about her biological clock.)
“I could talk about my mother until the cows come home. We were very close.”
Mary Rose was from Cloncurry, a tiny village in Queensland. (After her mother died, Catherine went on an odyssey to see her mother’s birthplace.) During the Second World War, Mary Rose was a personal assistant to a colonel in the Australian Army. That brought her to Sydney, where she met a touring acting company, which included Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. (She got to know the actress very well and said that she had a filthy vocabulary.) Dan Cunningham, one of the actors, proposed to Mary Rose. She told him to go back to London and, if he felt the same way there, she would join him. She duly did, they married in London, but it ended in divorce. She was working as the head of a company selling cashmere when she fell in love with an Italian count. Off she went to live with him in Rome. Eventually he died of liver cancer, but she stayed on in Rome. By that stage, her ex-husband, Dan was doing a bit of work as an actors’ agent. When Cyril told him that he was going to Rome to do a film, Dan told him he had a friend there and to look her up. And so began the affair. Catherine says that her mother was great fun and very relaxed. She would often encourage her daughter to mitch from school so that the two of them could stay home and watch television. On leaving school, Catherine decided to study drama at university, to see if acting was for her. She had grown up watching her father on stage and observing him learning his lines at home.
“He was in his element when he was acting.” She has fond memories of the production of Shaw’s You Never Can Tell in which he starred. (Years later, she was to be in the play, too.) During her time at university, she got some work as an assistant stage manager at the Tricycle Theatre and some acting came out of that. Soon she was hooked, and, equity card in hand, she left college and pursued acting full time. Her father was extremely proud of her when she played a nun in Agnes of God at Andrew’s Lane Theatre. Another time he saw her in Bold Girls and said, “She’s an actress.”
When Cyril died in 1993, after a long and painful battle with motor neurone disease, the family were with him. “I loved him and when he died I realised how much I loved him. It really took me aback. I’d always felt close to my Mum, but I didn’t always feel that connection with him. There was a sense of relief when he died because the disease was over, but also life was much easier.”
Catherine enjoyed the time with her mother — “We were each other’s world.”
Three years after Cyril’s death, Mary Rose got ovarian cancer for which she was treated. When it came back, she decided to have no further treatment. Catherine was in Sebastian Barry’s play, Our Lady of Sligo, playing Joanie. In the play her character’s mother, who was played by her step-sister, Sinead, was dying of cancer. It was too close to the bone and one day, observing Catherine’s palpable suffering, Sinead told her — “The show doesn’t always have to go on”. They got another actress to take Catherine’s place, so she could be with her dying mother. Mary Rose died in 1998.
“When Mum died, then we all had no parents. At that moment I had to grow up because I don’t think I had. Being Mum’s only child I was very much cocooned. I wasn’t in a bad position financially but suddenly I was alone in the world. It dawns on you that you’re only here for a limited time.”
Catherine still lives in the family home. She and her husband Alex have de-cluttered the house and changed the kitchen so that it feels more like their own place. She and the rest of the Cusack children are very close. She sees Niamh the most, as she lives across the river from her but she is in touch with Padraig, Paul, Sinead and Sorcha, too. Niamh has written a piece for Vogue on her sisters and she has touched on the difference in her relationship with Catherine.
When she is not acting, Catherine often goes rock- climbing with her husband — full-on life threatening stuff with ice axes and crampons.
“We’ve done it mostly in Scotland and it’s amazing when you go up into the hills. It’s stunning, like being on another planet.”
“The first time I went rock- climbing I wanted to hold my own. I remember thinking — I will not be shown to be less. I went with him because I loved him. But then one day, while I was trying to put in an ice axe, terrified that I would fall, I lost it and told him that it was not for me.” And with that sentence, Catherine Cusack stopped being her appeasing self and grew up.
The above “Independent.ie” article can be accessed online here.
Jack Ellis was born in 1955 in London. He is the younger brother of the actor Robin Ellis. Jack Ellis is perhaps best remembered for his rtelevision oles as Jim Fenner the prison guard in “Bad Girls” and as Harry Mason the bookie in “Coronation Street”. His films include “Outlaw” with Danny Dyer and “It’s Alive”.
Frieda Inescourt was a patrician lady who appeared mainly in supporting roles in Hollywood films during the Golden Age of cinema. She was born in Edinburgh in 1901. She made her film debut in Hollywood in 1935 in “Dark Angel”. Other notable films included “Mary of Scotland”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “A Place in the Sun”, “The Eddy Duchin Story” and “The Crowded Sky” . She died in 1976.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Tall, dark and regal Frieda Inescort’s placid loveliness and dignified patrician features bode her well in Hollywood during the late 30s and 40s. Born on June 29, 1901, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the stage-established actress didn’t arrive in Hollywood until age 34 (then considered too late for leading lady roles!) but managed to settle fairly comfortably on the supporting sidelines in chic melodrama and tearjerkers.
Her years growing up were unsettling. Born Frieda Wrightman, she was the daughter of Scots-born journalist John “Jock” Wrightman and actress Elaine Inescourt, who was of German and Polish descent. Her parents initially met when he came to review a play she was appearing in. They married in 1899 but eventually parted ways while Frieda was still young. Her impulsive mother, who had strong designs on a theater career and placed it high on her priority list, sent young Frieda off to live with other families and in boarding schools in England and Wales while she avidly pursued her dreams. Although her father divorced Elaine in 1911 charging his wife with abandonment and adultery, Frieda ended up moving to America with her mother. Again, when Elaine found occasional roles in touring shows, Frieda wound up being carted off to convents or boarding schools.
Mother and daughter eventually returned to London following World War I and the young girl, now solely on her own, managed to find employment as a personal secretary to British Member of Parliament Waldorf Astor (2nd Viscount Astor), who was then Parliamentary Secretary to British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George. She also assisted the American-born Lady (Nancy) Astor. While accompanying Lady Astor on a trip to the United States in July 1919, Frieda decided to stay in the States and terminated her position with the Astors. In New York she continued finding secretarial work that supported both her and her unemployed actress-mother. She worked at one point with the British consulate in New York.
Noticing a number of American actors cast in British parts on Broadway, Frieda was encouraged in the early 1920s to test the waters out as British actresses were in short supply. By chance, she was introduced to producer/director Winthrop Ames, who gave the unseasoned hopeful a small but showy role in his Broadway comedy “The Truth About Blayds” (1922). The play turned out to be a hit. Playwright Philip Barry caught her stage performance and offered her a starring role in his upcoming comedy production “You and I”. The show proved to be another winner and Frieda, a star on the horizon, finally saw the end of her days as part of a secretarial pool.
For the rest of the decade Frieda alternated between stage comedy and drama and became a vital force on Broadway with prominent roles in “The Woman on the Jury” (1923), “The Fake” (1924), “Hay Fever” (1925), “Mozart” (1926), “Trelawney of the Wells” (1926) and “Escape” (1927). Frieda’s happenstance into acting and her sudden surge of success triggered deep envy and jealousy within her mother, who was unemployed. This led to a bitter and long-term estrangement between the two that never managed to heal itself. Elaine died in 1964.
While working in the late 20s as an assistant for Putnam’s Publishing Company in New York, Frieda met assistant editor Ben Ray Redman. They married in 1926 and Redman later became a literary critic for the New York Herald Tribune. Frieda, in the meantime, continued to resonate on the New York and touring stage with such plays as “Springtime for Henry” and “When Ladies Meet”.
For over a decade, Frieda had resisted the cinema, having turned down several offers in silent and early talking films. When her husband was offered a job with Universal Studios as a literary adviser and author, however, and the couple had to relocate to Hollywood, she decided to take a difference stance. Discovered by a talent scout while performing in a Los Angeles play, Frieda was signed by The Samuel Goldwyn Company and made her debut supporting ‘Fredric March’ and Merle Oberon in the dewy-eyed drama The Dark Angel (1935) in which she received attractive notices and rare sympathy as blind author March’s secretary.
She did not stay long at Goldwyn, however, and went on to freelance for various other studios. During the course of her movie career, Frieda could be quite charming on the screen playing a wronged woman (as she did in Give Me Your Heart (1936)), but she specialized in haughtier hearts and played them older and colder than she really was off-camera. She soon gained a classy reputation for both her benign and haughty sophisticates. After Warner Bros. signed her up, she showed promise in Another Dawn(1937), Call It a Day (1937) and The Great O’Malley (1937), all 1937 releases. After this, however, Warner Bros. lost interest in her career and loaned her out more and more to other studios. Some of these films were leads — including the “B”-level Woman Doctor(1939) opposite Henry Wilcoxon, A Woman Is the Judge (1939) with Otto Kruger,Shadows on the Stairs (1941) co-starring Paul Cavanagh, and, in particular, the title role in Portia on Trial (1937). For MGM she played the irrepressibly snobbish Caroline Bingley who sets her sights on Darcy (Laurence Olivier) in the classic Jane Austen film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1940). Besides competing with (and losing out) to Greer Garson in that film, she also played the “other woman” in Beauty for the Asking (1939) starringLucille Ball.
When her career starting to lose steam, Frieda returned to New York and the Broadway stage with matronly parts in Soldier’s Wife” (1944), “The Mermaids Singing” (1945) andGeorge Bernard Shaw‘s successful revival of “You Never Can Tell” (1948). After the tour of the Shaw play folded, she returned to Hollywood. Finding it difficult to pick up where she left off in films, Frieda focused on the relatively new medium of TV in the early 1950s. She appeared as Mrs. Archer on the Meet Corliss Archer (1951) series (based on the popular bobbysoxer’s radio program) but was replaced by Irene Tedrow in its second and final season. She also graced a number of dramatic TV showcases. The films she did do later that decade, including The She-Creature (1956), Senior Prom (1958), Juke Box Rhythm (1959), were generally dismissed by the critics.
While filming her last picture, The Crowded Sky (1960), for Warner Bros., Frieda began experiencing health problems. She was quickly diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis. By the next year, she was forced to retire and had to walk with the aid of a cane. Things got worse that year when her husband, who had grown despondent over personal and financial issues, committed suicide with pills at their California home on August 2, 1961. By the mid-60s the former actress was virtually incapacitated and confined to a wheelchair but valiantly worked for the multiple sclerosis association when she could muster the strength. In 1973 Frieda finally had no choice but to move permanently into the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, where she died at age 74 on February 21, 1976.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Carmel McSharry was born in Dublin in 1930. Her career has been spent mostly in the United Kingdom. She made her television acting debut in 1957 in episodes of “Emergency-Ward 10”. Her other television credits include “Gideon’s Way”, “No Hiding Place”,”Beryl’s Lot” and “The Liver Birds”. Her films include “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”, “The Leather Boys” and “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. Her stage appearances include a revival of “Oliver” with Jim Dale in the London Palladium in the mid 1990’s.
Profile from “Familiar Unknown”:
Of course, Carmel McSharry was born in Ireland, but she has graced a number of classic UK TV shows over the years. With her wary, alert eyes and anxiously disapproving expression, she’s made something of a speciality of the busybody business. She was Carol’s ‘mam’ in the later series of ‘The Liver Birds’ and played Mrs Hollingbery, the endearingly impervious foil to Alf Garnett’s rants in ‘In Sickness And In Health’ after Dandy Nichols passed away. She was in the ’60s Michael Medwin sitcom ‘For The Love Of Mike’, but her big break from playing servants and nosy parkers came in the early ’70s when she starred in ‘Beryl’s Lot’, the popular ITV comedy about a middle-aged housewife who decides to embark on an ambitious course of education and self-improvement. After that she went on to appear in wartime drama ‘Wish Me Luck’ and the usual ‘Ruth Rendell Mysteries’, ‘Casualty’,
Noel Purcell was a very popular and well-loved Irish actor who had a very prolific film career over many years. He was born in Dublin in 1900. He acted on the boards of Irish theatre and made his film debut in “Blarney” in 1926. His films included “The Blue Lagoon” in 1949, “Encore” in 1951, “The Seekers”, “Moby Dick”, “Lust for Life”, “Doctor at Large”, “Shake Hands with the Devil”, “Lord Jim” and “Flight of the Doves”. He died in Dublin in 1985.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Noel Purcell was the son of auctioneer Pierce Purcell and his second wife Catherine, née Hoban, of 4 Ashbrook Terrace, South Circular Road, Dublin. He was born on 23 December 1900 and baptised six days later at Harrington Street Church.[1] Within a few months, the Purcell family had moved to 12 Mercer St. Lower.[2] In 1911, the Purcells were living at the same address, but the household was headed by Noel’s maternal grandmother, Julia Hoban, a furniture dealer.
Purcell began his show business career at the age of 12 in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. Later, he toured Ireland in a vaudeville act with Jimmy O’Dea.[4]
Stage-trained in the classics in Dublin, Purcell moved into films in 1934. He appeared in Captain Boycott (1947) and as the elderly sailor whose death marooned the lovers-to-be in the firstsound film version of The Blue Lagoon (1949). Purcell played a member of Captain Ahab‘s crew in Moby Dick (1956), Dan O’Flaherty in episode one, The Majesty of the Law, of The Rising Of The Moon (1957), a gameskeeper in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), and a barman in The Mackintosh Man (1973), these two films directed by John Huston.
In 1955, he was an off-and-on regular on the British filmed TV series The Buccaneers (released to American TV in 1956), and Purcell narrated a Hibernian documentary, Seven Wonders of Ireland (1959). In 1962, he portrayed the lusty William McCoy in Lewis Milestone’s Mutiny on the Bounty. He played a taciturn Irish in-law to Lebanese American entertainer Danny Thomas‘ character Danny Williams in a 1963 episode of The Danny Thomas Show. In 1971, he played the caring rabbi in the children’s musical drama Flight of the Doves.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1958 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.
Purcell also gained some recognition as a singer. Shortly after World War II, songwriter Leo Maguire composed “The Dublin Saunter” for him. He performed the song live for many years and later recorded it for the Glenside label. However, the recording was not a hit. As Purcell recalled many years later, “I don’t think one person in the world bought it.” In 1981, he recorded a spoken word version of Pete St. John‘s “Dublin in the Rare Old Times“.[5]
In June 1984, Purcell was given the Freedom of the City of Dublin.[6] Nine months later, he died in his native city at the age of 84.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
TCM Overview:
Noel Purcell was an actor who had a successful Hollywood career. In his early acting career, Purcell appeared in such films as the Stewart Granger historical drama “Captain Boycott” (1947), “Saints and Sinners” (1949) and the romance “The Blue Lagoon” (1949) with Jean Simmons. He also appeared in the adventure “The Crimson Pirate” (1952) with Burt Lancaster and “Grand National Night” (1953). His film career continued throughout the fifties in productions like “Svengali” (1955) with Donald Wolfit, the Gregory Peck dramatic adventure “Moby Dick” (1956) and “Lust For Life” (1956).
Film continued to be his passion as he played roles in the dramatic period piece “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962) with Marlon Brando, “The List of Adrian Messenger” (1963) with George C Scott and the Laurence Harvey crime drama “The Running Man” (1963). He also appeared in the Laurence Harvey dramatic adaptation “The Ceremony” (1963) and the Peter O’Toole dramatic adaptation “Lord Jim” (1965). Purcell last acted on “The Irish R.M. Part II” (PBS, 1985-86). Purcell was married to Eileen Marmion. Purcell passed away in March 1985 at the age of 85.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Contributed by
Purcell, Noel (1900–85), actor, was born Patrick Joseph Noel Purcell on 23 December 1900 at 11a Lower Mercer Street, Dublin, the elder of the two children of Pierce Purcell, auctioneer, and his second wife, Catherine Purcell (née Hoban), antique dealer. Educated at the Synge Street CBS, he worked after school backstage at the Gaiety Theatre and at Madame Rocke’s Theatre, O’Connell Street, where he became acquainted with John and Thomas MacDonagh and Countess Markievicz . He had periodic walk-on parts at the Gaiety and in 1915 he had a small role with the Irish Players, led by Edward Martyn (qv). He left school at sixteen, and was apprenticed as a joiner to A. H. Bex, shop fitters, but he continued to build a reputation among the city’s amateur dramatic companies, performing regularly at St Theresa’s Temperance Hall, Clarendon Street, Father Mathew Hall and the CYMS, Harrington Street.A seasoned pantomime performer, Purcell joined Tom Powell and Harry Byrne’s company in 1928. During one performance in 1929 he was noticed by Jimmy O’Dea (qv) and Harry O’Donovan (qv), who recruited him for their O’D production company. They toured Britain and Ireland throughout the 1930s, and he was a popular pantomime dame when the company made its annual return to the Olympia theatre. With the company he also made his first film appearances, in Jimmy Boy (1935) and Blarney (1938). Following a dispute over wages, he left the O’D Company in 1939. Inspired by a tour of Broadway, he returned to Ireland in late 1939 and after a spell as Max Wall’s stooge he brought the idea of a black and white minstrel show to Dublin and revolutionised the fortunes of the Theatre Royal. As the war curtailed the number of foreign acts, he was in constant demand throughout the early 1940s. With Eddie Byrne (d. 1981) he was popular in their ‘Nedser and Nuala’ sketches, and he also appeared as Joxer Daly in a 1941 production of Sean O’Casey‘s (qv) ‘Juno and the paycock’ at the Gaiety. He returned to O’Casey in the late 1940s, playing Brennan o’ the Moor in ‘Red roses for me’ and Sylvester Heegan in O’Casey’s ‘The silver tassie’, to great critical acclaim.
As film began to threaten the popularity of the variety revue, he adapted to the trend, and a small part in Carol Reed’s Odd man out in 1946 began a long film career. A character actor, he became, with his famed white beard, film’s archetypal sailor, in The blue lagoon (1949), The crimson pirate (1952), Moby Dick (1956), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). After his performance in Merry Andrew in 1958 he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. He turned it down, refusing to leave Ireland for such a lengthy period. Cast to play Balthazar in Ben Hur, he arranged a screen test for Tony O’Reilly, but O’Reilly preferred rugby to the prospect of acting, and Purcell lost the role of Balthazar owing to delays in production. In constant demand for his comic cameo performances, his part in Captain Boycott in 1947 made him a natural choice for many films with an Irish theme, including John Ford’s The rising of the moon (1957), Rooney (1958) and Shake hands with the devil (1959).
In 1957 he narrated Bord Fáilte’s promotional film Seven wonders of Ireland. Throughout his film career he supplemented his periodic stage appearances with television and radio work in Ireland, Britain and America. His most popular radio performance was in ‘The great Gilhooly’, made for the BBC Home Service in 1950. He claimed that he refused the role of Fagin in the 1960 musical Oliver, and was later disappointed that he was not offered a role in RTÉ’s 1980 production of Strumpet city. Retiring from film in 1973 after making The mackintosh man, his fifth film for John Huston, he became the quintessential Dublin raconteur and was soon identified with ‘The Dublin saunter’, a song composed for him by Leo Maguire (d. 1985). He still made occasional stage appearances: in 1976 in Noel Pearson’s production of ‘You ain’t heard nuttin’ yet’ and more unexpectedly after his recovery from throat cancer and pneumonia as the Cardinal in a 1982 production of ‘Tosca’.
He was honoured on many occasions throughout his career: he was made an honorary member of the American Loyal League of Yiddish Sons of Erin in 1963 and an honorary life member of the Order of the Knights of Columbanus in 1971. He had been received into the order in 1933. In 1971 he was also made a life member of the Irish Actors’ Equity, an organisation that he had been instrumental in founding in 1947. He had also contributed to the foundation of the Catholic Stage Guild in the late 1940s. The British Actors’ Equity awarded him life membership in 1984, the same year as he was made a freeman of Dublin city. In 1958 he was the subject of an episode of television’s This is your life, and in 1973 an RTÉ Late late show special marked his birthday. The Variety Club of Ireland honoured him in 1968 and 1984 and he received the Variety Artists’ Trust Society award in 1974. He married on 7 July 1941 Eileen Marmion, a one-time child actress with the O’D Company. They had four sons. He died 3 March 1985 after a short illness and was buried in Deansgrange cemetery.
Sources
William J. Feeney, Drama in Hardwicke Street – a history of the Irish theatre company (1984), 74–5; Irish Independent, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Irish Press, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Ir. Times, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Philip Bryan, Noel Purcell: a biography (1992); Kevin Rockett, The Irish filmography (1996); Boylan, 371
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.