ABSTRACT
The connections between Irish theater and Irish film have long rested more on isolated instances than on a sustained tradition of cinematic adaptation. The absence of an established Irish film industry before the 1990s drove scores of actors from the Irish stage to find lucrative work and international acclaim in film. Despite all the Irish stage actors who found success in film and despite the many films made about Ireland, surprisingly few Irish stage plays have been adapted for film. Irish plays adapted for film in the sound era include Lennox Robinson's The Big House (George W. Hill, 1930); George Birmingham's General John Regan (Henry Edwards, 1933); Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (Alfred Hitchcock, 1930) and The Plough and the Stars (John Ford, 1936); St. John Ervine's The First Mrs. Fraser (Sinclair Hill, 1932); Louis Dalton's This Other Eden (Muriel Box, 1959); Lady Gregory's The Rising of the Moon (John Ford, 1957); J. M. Synge's Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1935 and 1962). 1 Treating the stage play as little more than a point of departure, many of these films exploited the “authentic” Irishness of the story, situation, and characters as a marketing device, infused with nostalgia and targeted at non-Irish, often emigrant, audiences.
