Rising stars of the screen
QUESTION How many Hollywood stars came out of the 1916 Easter Rising?
TWO young men who fought on opposing sides in the Easter Rising, Arthur Shields, an actor with the Abbey Theatre, and John Lowe, who was a temporary aidede-camp with the British forces in Dublin, both went on to stellar careers in Hollywood.
Shields may have been a promising actor, but in 1914, he joined the Irish Citizen Army.
During the Easter Rising, he fought in the GPO under James Connolly, then when the rebels withdrew from the GPO, he was among those who, alongside Pádraig Pearse, retreated to Moore Street.
In the end, the rebels had to abandon their planned breakout from Hanlon’s fish shop at Number 16 Moore Street and surrender. After he was captured, Shields was sent to the Frongoch prison camp in Wales, together with other rebels, such as Michael Collins.
Both men were released by the end of 1916 and Collins came back to Dublin with a mission to destroy British rule in Ireland, while the 20-year-old Shields returned to his acting job at the Abbey Theatre.
With the subsequent formation of the Irish Free State, Shields became less and less enamoured with the ultra-conservative state that emerged after independence. After the Abbey Theatre toured the US in 1935, he decided to settle there.
He spent the rest of his life there and died in California in 1970, aged 74. He worked with John Ford, the legendary Irish-American film director, and played the role of Pearse in Ford’s 1936 film of The Plough And The Stars. He also appeared in Ford’s famous 1952 film, The Quiet Man.
Arthur Shields had a brother called William, who changed his name to Barry Fitzgerald. William was eight years older, but didn’t play any part in the 1916 Rising.
However, Barry Fitzgerald had an even more dramatic Hollywood career than his brother, and even won an Oscar.
The two brothers played alongside each other in those aforementioned films.
On the other side of the fence was John Lowe. His father, General Lowe, was the commander of the British forces in Dublin during the Easter Rising.
John Lowe was 18 years old when he was made aide-de-camp to his father. After the Rising had been defeated, John Lowe wrote the unconditional surrender note that Pearse signed, then helped his father escort him to prison.
One of the most iconic photographs from the 1916 period shows General Lowe, his son and Pádraig Pearse.
John Lowe was very much in awe of Pearse and allowed him to finish writing letters to his loved ones before he was taken to jail. In response, Pearse presented the young Lowe with an Irish Volunteers cap badge.
However, over 20 years later, that badge was destroyed during a Luftwaffe raid on London, which demolished Lowe’s parents’ house.
After the First World War ended, John Lowe became a bit player in the German movie industry, moving on to Hollywood in 1929. For almost 50 years, he had a spectacular career as a movie actor, having changed his name at an early stage to John Loder. He also married five times; one of his wives was another Hollywood star, Hedy Lamarr.
Loder died in California in 1988, aged 90, having kept his secrets about Dublin 1916 to himself for more than 60 years.
The two men who had fought on opposite sides in Dublin in 1916 had both managed to have subsequent and spectacular Hollywood careers. David Kavanagh, Ennis, Co. Clare.
QUESTION Why is it that on certain Hawaiian islands albatross can land, but can’t take off again?
MIDWAY Atoll, a breeding ground for at least 17 seabird species, is at the north-western end of the Hawaiian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, 1,500 miles from Honolulu. It’s home to 70% of the world’s Laysan albatross and 40% of black-footed albatross.
Over several decades, the island has suffered ecological damage from introduced plants that have out-competed native species. Dense thickets of golden crownbeard (Verbesina encelioides) created such dense cover that birds had difficulty getting to their nesting sites, taking off and raising their young.
Their wings caught on the branches and the dense vegetation blocked the breeze, creating life-threateningly hot conditions for chicks.
Fortunately, over the past five years, the Friends of Midway Atoll, backed by the US National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, have eradicated most of these invasive plants.
The numbers of black-footed and Laysan albatross chicks have since almost doubled.
Paul Olley, Bangor, Caernarfonshire.
QUESTION Who first said ‘the light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train’?
THIS line comes from a 1977 poem called Since 1939 by the 20th-century American poet Robert Lowell.
Lowell had a tumultuous life: he was imprisoned during the Second World War as a conscientious objector, married and divorced three times and suffered a severe psychological illness – most likely bipolar disorder – which resulted in him being hospitalised quite frequently.
His personal anguish and a crisis of faith informed his 1959 work, the unflinching Life Studies, considered to be one of the most influential collections in modern poetry and the foundation of the Confessional Movement whose acolytes included Sylvia Plath.
Since 1939, a tribute to WH Auden’s poem September 1, 1939, includes:
‘We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It’s the light of the oncoming train.’
Lowell was a great epigrammatist and this passage is typical of the humour that punctuates the pathos.
His other famous witticisms include ‘If you keep cutting your losses,/You’ll have no loss to cut’ and ‘A man without a wife/Is like a turtle without a shell’.
Irene Williamson, Wilmslow, Cheshire.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.