Joan O'Hara
1930 - 2007Home Is the Hero
Fielder Cook
Walter Macken, Eileen Crowe
This well-acted drama about an Irishman just released from jail is filled with rich characterization. The story is adapted from a stage play by Walter Macken who also plays the role of the ex-convict Paddo in this screen version. Direction is by J. Fielder Cook. Once Paddo returns home after being sentenced to five years for killing a man, his old friends try to put him back in their niche of local hero but Paddo will have none of it. He is disillusioned and changed. His son Willie (Arthur Kennedy) walks with a limp that keeps him too self-conscious to assert himself as he would like with the young woman of his dreams. While other people come in and out of Paddo's life, from his taciturn friend the trapper to the local tinker, it is Paddo's son Willie suffering from his own disability who makes the difference in his father's life.
Home Is the Hero
A Man of No Importance
Suri Krishnamma
Albert Finney, Brenda Fricker
Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1963. He would appear to live a life of quiet desperation: he's gay, but firmly closeted, and his sister is always trying to find him "the right girl". His passion is Oscar Wilde, his hobby is putting on amateur theatre productions in the local church hall. We follow him as he struggles with temptation, friendship, disapproval, and the conservative yet oddly lyrical world of Ireland in the early 1960s.
A Man of No Importance
Far and Away
Ron Howard
Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman
A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her father, and they dream of owning land at the big giveaway in Oklahoma ca. 1893. When they get to the new land, they find jobs and begin saving money. The man becomes a local barehands boxer, and rides in glory until he is beaten, then his employers steal all the couple's money and they must fight off starvation in the winter, and try to keep their dream of owning land alive. Meanwhile, the woman's parents find out where she has gone and have come to America to find her and take her back.
Far and Away
Footfalls
Walter Asmus
Susan Fitzgerald, Joan O'Hara
May, wrapped in tatters, paces back and forth engaging in conversation with the disembodied voice of her mother. In the second scene, May's voice becomes subsumed into her mother's. She paces ever more slowly as the play progresses, and the light dims so that by the fourth and final scene there is no trace of her
Footfalls
Her Own Rules
Bobby Roth
Melissa Gilbert, Jeremy Sheffield
Melissa Gilbert stars as Marygold/Meredith. A sad and lonely writer returning to her home town in England for the first time since she was about 6 or 7 years old,after being adopted and raised in America. While there she decides to look for her mother's grave,and finds out her memories are not exactly what she thought they were,her mother is alive. She then sets out to find her mother and some answers and finds both. She also falls in love, of course, but has a problem with long term commitments...
Her Own Rules
Fatal Inheritance
Gabrielle Beaumont
Kevin Davis, Darragh Kelly
Jack Carnegie (Kevin Davis) is an American ‘heir-hunter’, whose job it is to trace unknown family members who should rightly inherit unassigned fortunes. He arrives in Ireland to find the sole heir to a fortune — Timothy Murphy. Murphy cannot believe his good luck and he goes out that same night, to celebrate with his fiancee, Brigid O’Toole (Emma Samms). On his way home he is attacked and murdered by a mystery assailant. Brigid is grief stricken, as is Jack — Timothy had no known heir, so he won’t able to collect his commission for delivering the inheritance to the heir.
Fatal Inheritance
