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This Chapter is from Emeralds in Tinseltown: The Irish in Hollywood, written by Steve Brennan and Bernadette O'Neill, and published by Appletree Press
The Abbey Theatre - Lost and Found in HollywoodBarry Fitzgerald, perhaps the most unlikely Irish star that Hollywood ever was home to, went on to win an Academy Award for the role of wily old twinkle-eyed Father Fitzgibbon, who made life a conundrum of frustration for the parish curate played by Crosby. His comment on winning the coveted honour was typical of the reluctant Hollywood recruit. “Although it’s nice to know I’m getting along all right in my work… a man of my age likes as much peace and quiet as possible. If I have to go through another one of those things they’ll probably discover me in Forest Lawn Cemetery.” Fitzgerald, who was fifty-six years old then, simply could not fathom what was happening to him. He was besieged by fan mail he had no idea what to do with, and was so engulfed by well-wishers and admirers calling to his home off Hollywood Boulevard that he regularly took flight. One of his favourite ports of refuge was the Hollywood home of another Irish expatriate, May Flo Gogarty, sister of the renowned Irish poet, author,politician and surgeon Oliver St John Gogarty.‘Hollywood just baffled Barry,’ May Flo’s daughter, the late Hollywood agent Maureen Oliver recalled once. ‘He would come to our home and sit alone playing the piano for hours. But if anybody entered the room he would stop playing because he was too shy to continue.’ Oliver laughed as she remembered the displaced Abbey actor arriving at her mother’s home ‘in a terrible state and moaning, “I’ve lost all my clothes.” He had taken them to a laundry but for the life of him he could not remember which one. We searched Hollywood for hours looking for his clothes, his entire wardrobe, but we never did find them. We had to lend him a suit that we dug up somewhere for him to wear to the studio because he did not have a stitch left but the old things he was standing up in. And that was at the time when he was making $75,000 a picture (then a top Hollywood salary range).’ The laundry lapse was probably not too surprising considering that the new Hollywood star, described by Tinseltown columnist Hedda Hopper as ‘a gnome-like little man with shaggy eyebrows that defy gravity, training or barber shop cajolery’ was gaining a reputation as by far the worst-dressed celebrity in the movie industry, whose stars in the day were pictures of sartorial elegance. He appears to have favoured tweeds (unpressed) and cloth caps. But what may have been an amusing if eccentric dress sense to some was clearly an offence in some high society quarters as Fitzgerald would discover to his amusement. A great golfing enthusiast, Fitzgerald became a regular at a prestigious Santa Barbara club of which Avery Brundidge, former head of the Olympic Games Council, was president. Brundidge was sitting in the clubhouse one afternoon gazing out at the course when he spied an odd little figure in what he considered to be an appalling state of dress shuffling about. It was Fitzgerald. The offender was ordered off the course and out of the club by Brundidge, who didn’t realise the shabby intruder was one of the biggest Hollywood celebrities of the day. On another occasion the actor was invited to play tennis with Charles Chaplin. To be invited to Chaplin’s lavish mansion was considered an ‘A-list’ invite. Unaware or uncaring of the social importance of an invitation to Chaplin’s for tennis, Fitzgerald appeared, much to his host’s chagrin, in a shaggy old sweater, shoes stained with motor oil from his motorcycle, and faded, yellowy pants. Chaplin, decked out in gleaming whites, trounced Fitzgerald in straight sets. The two stars remained friends, but Fitzgerald was never invited to tennis at Chaplin’s again. For all of that, Hollywood loved the eccentric Irishman who in turn was fast assimilating into his new life. ‘In Hollywood these days everyone it seems is excited about Barry Fitzgerald… (he) is in greater demand by the studios than any character has ever been in the history of cinema,’ exclaimed the usually conservative New York Times.
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