How movie magic made Dingle a star in the eyes of tourists
Serious tourism conversations in Dingle will often reference “set-jetting” – tourists visiting scenes of favourite films or television series. The spirit of the wayward Rosy Ryan has commanded sustained applause in the town ever since she broke the mould in Ryan’s Daughter.
Visiting the famous Kerry town last week for its Féile na Bealtaine festival, we discovered that memories of the Oscar-winning film are alive and well.
The Hollywood location team arrived in town 55 years ago. It signalled the opening chapter in a tourism love affair.
“Ryan’s Daughter was a stylish film, a great love story like they really don’t make any more,” said the lady running our B&B. “It changed everything for Dingle.”
She did quickly add that while the more recent The Last Jedi – the Star Wars movie filmed on Skellig Michael – had generated a big tourism response, it wasn’t in the same league as the romantic drama starring Sarah Miles, Robert Mitchum and a host of luminaries of the period.
Luke Skywalker might be a megastar in a galaxy far, far away, but he is destined to for ever play second fiddle on this peninsula.
“Every year we still get scores of Americans looking for the filming locations, and wanting to see where Rosy Ryan had that first forbidden kiss with the army officer,” we were told.
Memories of the largesse spawned by the enormous production are embedded in the area’s cultural lore, as are the seismic detonations caused by bad weather, artistic temperament and ego clashes.
As Michael Tanner put it in his book, Troubled Epic: On Location with Ryan’s Daughter: “The story of Ryan’s Daughter is a reminder of an era when epics ran in excess of three hours and demanded an intermission. A bygone age when stars really were stars – and behaved like them.”
Credited with kick-starting Dingle tourism, Ryan’s Daughter also brought a profound social and economic change to a region ravaged by emigration and poverty.
While the demand for “location vacations” dates back to The Quiet Man in the 1950s – with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara cavorting around the hedgerows of Mayo – our emergence from isolation imposed by Covid-19 gave the business a significant push as TV bingeing resulted in a surge of travel bookings.
According to Expedia’s 2023 report on travel trends, two-thirds of global travellers have considered going to destinations after seeing them on streamed shows or movies.
To this day, Ryan’s Daughter still features in tourist demand. Sarah Miles admitted the film was the high watermark of her career.
“There is something quite mysterious about Ryan’s Daughter – that link with the landscape and the people,” she said. “It seems to be something planted in the psyche that goes on and on.”
For Dingle’s many thriving tourism businesses, it’s a mystery they hope will never lose its magical pulling power.