The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
The early days of the Rose of Tralee ~ the pre-tv years
THE first compére of the Rose of Tralee contest was Kevin Hilton, a salesman from Limerick. He hosted each of the first nine contests. The first selection was held in the Ballroom of the Ashe Memorial Hall and televised on a closed circuit to the Catholic Young Men’s Society (CYMS) hall in nearby Denny Street, where a dance was being held.
Kevin Hilton also hosted the first Rose Selection that was televised live on RTÉ in 1965. This was held during a national newspaper strike, so there was only local press coverage. It was held in the open air on a stage erected on the front steps of the Ashe Memorial Hall. Therése Gillespie of Belfast was chosen as the Rose of Tralee. She later married Tim Collins, a local hotel owner, and settled in Tralee.
Initially each rose contestant had to have a least one grandparent born in Kerry, but this was changed to any Irish ancestry in 1967. Terry Wogan, who was in the process of establishing himself a television personality with the BBC in Britain, replaced Kevin Hilton as compére of the Rose Selection in 1968.
Born in Limerick, Wogan had joined RTÉ in the early 1960s and began broadcasting on BBC in 1967. He hosted the Rose Selection three times, 1968 to 1970.
He liked to tell the story of wife Helen accompanying him to the Rose Selection in 1968. “She needed a laugh,” he wrote in his autobiography.
“The local committee saw to our every need, and took us to the festival club, where the elite would converse like decent people over a pint of stout.” There was some music there and this led to “some spirited dancing.”
“Would you care to dance?” a young lad asked Helen.
“No thank you,” she replied. “I am talking with my friends.”
“Ah, well,” young lad replied, much to Terry’s amusement, “You’re too old for me anyway.”
With the broadening of the eligibility, the contest began to have a much broader international impact. Six new roses were added in 1968. They included Georgina Girassi, 19, a university student from Paris, Carmel Shannon from Sydney, Deidre O’Reilly from Los Angeles and Ann O’Reilly from Philadelphia. The other new Roses were from Nottingham and two new Irish centres — Clare and Waterford. The winner was one of Roses who traveled the shortest distance — Clare Rose Eileen Slattery, who was a singer in Bunratty Castle.
The following year Countess Lily McCormack — the widow of tenor John McCormack, who did so much to popularise The Rose of Tralee song, was one of the judges. The twenty-three Roses that year included entrants from Argentina, Melbourne, and Holyoke, Massachusetts.
The twenty-three Roses were flown from Shannon to Farrenfore. “The Flight of the Roses,” as it was called, was timed to coincide with the official opening of the new airport by Transport Minister Brian Lenihan on August 30, 1969. He performed the ceremonial opening by cutting the tape to release the windsock.
Members of the cast of the movie Ryan’s Daughter, which was being filmed on location in Kerry at the time, were conspicuous at the festival that year. The Roses were invited onto the movie set.Brendan O’Reilly, who was more famous as a sports presenter on RTÉ, took over from Terry Wogan as the compére of the Rose Selection in 1971. He was supposed to host it again in 1972, but he was engaged in RTÉ’s coverage of the Olympic Games in Munich, so he was replaced by Michael Twomey, an actor who about to establish himself as a television personality — Cha in the double act Cha and Miah — on the popular RTE programme Hall’s Pictorial Weekly.
Brendan O’Reilly was back as the compére for a second time in 1973. “What are your ambitions?” he asked Melbourne Rose Annette Mulvihill. “To marry and have children,” she replied. “Isn’t that sweet,” he said, “and have you anyone in particular in mind?” “No.” Ironically, Annette was the Rose who came from furthest away but she did not return to Australia. Instead she went nursing at the Bon Secours Hospital in Tralee, where she met Garry Walsh of the The Spa. They married and settled in Tralee, where they raised their family.
The compére most responsible for establishing the Rose of Tralee in the television age was Gay Byrne, host of the highly successful Late Late Show. He took over the Rose Selections in 1974. He had some initial doubts, but he was taken by the charm of the event in which he felt the contestants could be anybody’s daughter, sister, or niece.
“It was not a beauty competition, or a talent contest, but it did combine elements of each in what might be called a personality show. The winner was selected by the judges for possessing a mysterious quality typified by the line in the song —’twas not her beauty alone that won me’.”
The programme that year was held in the new Festival Dome. It was a massive PVC tent, covering 18,000 square feet and holding 2,500 people.
“The Rose of Tralee is a celebration of young women born in Ireland and the foreign-born descendants of Irish people. In my twenty-five-year association with the festival, I found those young ladies wonderful,” Gay Byrne recalled. “They were full of personality and bounce, eager to display their singing, reciting, dancing – even coercing me into the act on a few memorable occasions! It was my job to help them to express their personalities.” After three years, Gay feared that his presentation might be getting a bit stale, so he insisted on standing down, and the Festival Committee selected his wife, Kathleen Watkins to host the selection in 1977, and Gay returned as compére the following year.
This time the proceedings were televised live, as he had persuaded RTÉ to run a three-hour programme, with just a break for the nine o’clock news.
He and his assistant, Maura Connolly, interviewed the contestants to see who could be invited to perform on stage. On the night, Enda Jackson from Waterford sang, Kate Quirk from Holyoke played the flute, and Cynthia O’Connor from Michigan sang “The Desert Song,” which she dedicated to her parents in the audience who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
“Those performances could pack the Dome with their own show” The Kerryman noted.
The television broadcast was considered a masterpiece in professional terms. Gay Byrne received a Jacob’s Award for the programme that year. He was chosen by the radio and television critics of the national newspapers, who were enthralled by his presentation, which was as reminder to Irish viewers of the importance of the Irish diaspora. The show really highlighted this as a national treasure.
Some thought the three-hour programme too long, but viewing ratings actually increased the longer it went on. This increase was apparent in both the single channel areas, where only RTÉ could be received, and the multi-channel regions, where British channels could also be picked up. This became a feature of the programme in the following years and was the ultimate tribute in professional terms.
“The last year that I hosted the Rose of Tralee, it got a tv audience of 1.5 million – at twenty minutes past midnight on an August Tuesday! And that count was of home sets alone,” Gay proudly recalled. “We had no idea how many viewers we had in hotels, hospitals, pubs, clubs or elsewhere.” This established the popularity of the show and it has never looked back.