Seduced by a screen star?
QUESTION Hollywood stars Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland are celebrating their 102nd birthdays this year. Have they met on or off screen?
DESPITE the similarity in age (Olivia de Havilland was born on July 16, 1916, and Kirk Douglas on December 9, 1916), and the many films they each made, these two stars never appeared together in a film.
Olivia de Havilland is a British-American actress and the sister of the late Joan Fontaine.
The double Oscar winner made her name opposite Errol Flynn in swashbucklers such as Captain Blood in 1935 and The Adventures Of Robin Hood in 1938.
Her beauty and refined acting style allowed her to cross genres, from romcoms (The Great Garrick in 1937 and Hard To Get in 1938) and westerns (Dodge City in 1939 and They Died With Their Boots On in 1941), to period drama (My Cousin Rachel in 1952) and straight drama (Light In The Piazza in 1962).
Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam to Russian-Jewish immigrants, with his famously dimpled chin, was a Hollywood action man.
Films such as Champion in 1949, Paths Of Glory in 1957, Gunfight At The O.K. Corral in 1957, The Vikings in 1958 and Spartacus in 1960 made him a superstar.
The two have certainly met, and there were even rumours of a romance between the pair. At the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, they were pictured in high spirits at a gala dinner and dancing together.
One journalist reported: ‘Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland are giving the international set plenty to gab about. Acquaintances say they act like they discovered each other in a big way.’
However, Douglas married the film PR Anne Buydens the following year and the pair, aged 102 and 99, are still together. One of his sons, Michael Douglas, is also a well-known movie star, featuring in a host of successful films including Romancing The Stone in 1984 and Wall Street in 1987.
Despite being married, Kirk Douglas was a well-known ladies’ man, as detailed in his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, published with his wife’s permission. In it, he details affairs with Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Patricia Neal, Marlene Dietrich, Faye Dunaway and Joan Crawford. He tried to seduce Lauren Bacall, but was unsuccessful. He conspicuously does not mention Olivia de Havilland as a conquest. Tom Brown, Nantwich, Cheshire.
QUESTION Has Ireland ever had any Victorian pleasure piers like the ones in Brighton and Blackpool in England?
DURING the 19th century, England had a spate of pier construction, and many of these piers survive today.
But only one pleasure pier was built in Ireland to emulate the tradition, close to the Martello Tower at Sandymount on Dublin’s southside.
The Merrion Promenade Pier and Baths company was set up to build open air seawater baths as well as a pier, on the strand at Sandymount.
The sea water baths, measuring about 40 metres in each direction, were opened on in July 1883.
The baths have long since been discontinued, but their concrete foundations, much covered in graffiti, can still be seen on Sandymount Strand. The year after the baths came into use, the pier at Sandymount opened.
It was said to have been the shortest pier ever built in these islands, with a length of just 75 metres, supported on a steel lattice work structure embedded in the sand.
But after it opened, the pier became popular with people from all over Dublin, who enjoyed promenading whilst wearing the latest fashions.
Women used to wear linen costumes, as well as yachting jackets, pretty shoes and the latest styles in hats. The men donned blue serge suits and canvas shoes.
The big attraction on the pier was the bandstand at the end of the pier. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, mostly military bands gave concerts, which were very popular and well attended. Stalls on the pier sold cockles and mussels that had been harvested on Sandymount Strand, while other stalls sold a great variety of Victorian knicknacks.
However, the popularity of the pier was short lived. By the early years of the 20th century, its popularity had gone into steep decline, as the novelty of the pier wore off.
Around 1920, the pier was dismantled and all the steelwork taken to the Hammond Lane foundry in Ringsend for recycling. In recent years, there have been suggestions that Dublin City Council should rebuild the pier as a tourist attraction, but nothing has ever come of the idea and at this stage, it seems highly unlikely that the pier will ever be rebuilt.
The pier position in England is completely different.
Currently, around 50 pleasure piers there still exist, and not just the fine examples at Brighton and Blackpool, but the pier at Southend, which extends into the Thames estuary for 2.1km, making it the longest such pier in the world. Scotland has three existing pleasure piers, while Wales has eight, and the Isle of Man one.
Conservation of the remaining piers in Britain is still a very popular issue. The National Piers Society was founded in 1970, with Sir John Betjeman, conservationist and poet, as its first honorary president.
But the one and only pleasure pier ever built in Ireland has long since vanished from Sandymount Strand and it’s highly unlikely we’ll see its likes again. Jonathan Mooney, Co. Waterford.
QUESTION Strawberries and raspberries are sold in punnets. What is the origin of the word? And before plastic, what were they made of?
THE word punnet surfaced in the early 19th century and appears to be a diminutive of ‘pun’, a dialectal variant of pound. Punnets, like other baskets, were a specific measure, in this case for fruit.
The original punnets were known as chip baskets and were made of thin laths of wood woven together. Emma Cross, Dumbarton.
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