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| Arthur Shields (T/13/B/6) |
This wonderful exhibition of photographs, documents, and publications
circulates around the also wonderful figure of Arthur Shields (1896-1970).
Shields was the son of Adolphus Shields, labor organizer, writer for The
Freeman’s Journal, and friend of James Connolly and William O’Brien. His
mother was of German ancestry, and the parents were by upbringing Protestant—in
practice, the family were secular and socialist.
Arthur Shields's oldest brother was Will Shields, best known by his
stage-name, ‘Barry Fitzgerald’ (1888-1961).
Shields had three wives, two of whom acted for the Abbey Theatre: Basie
McGee, who acted under the name 'Joan Sullavan,' and Una 'Aideen' O'Connor. His
third wife Laurie Bailey Shields, an American journalist, was instrumental in
collecting additional material for the archive after Arthur's death
His daughter by Aideen O’Connor was Christine Shields. Sara Allgood was her
godmother. It was Christine who kept this archive, and ultimately, with other
members of the Shields family, gave it—free of charge—to the National University
of Ireland in Galway.
When one looks at the spectacular pamphlet of photographs of Sackville
(O’Connell) Street before and after Easter 1916, it is helpful to know that
Arthur Shields, then just 19 years old, fought with the Citizen Army in the
General Post Office, and, having taken refuge in Henry Street, was one of the
last rebels to surrender. He was interned thereafter at Frongoch camp, Wales.
His military service—by other accounts, marked by bravery under fire—was
something about which he never bragged, or hardly, spoke.
The brothers Shields were close friends of Sean O’Casey, and took
instrumental roles in the first productions of his ‘Dublin trilogy.’ Arthur
Shields was through the 1920s and 30s, the Abbey’s chief ‘handsome lead’; his
brother Barry Fitzgerald was the company’s most popular comic actor. Arthur
Shields frequently directed plays for the Abbey, and more particularly for
George Yeats's 'Dublin Drama Leagure'. In the 1930s, when the Abbey undertook a
succession of half-year tours of North America, it was Arthur Shields who
handled their management on the road.
These tours won the Abbey a fond welcome in towns and cities across the
continent. Broadway producers and Hollywood directors also expressed their
interest. John Ford, the great Irish American film director, met with the
company in Hollywood, and decided to use some members in The
Informer(1935) and all the main players in The Plough and the Stars
(1936). Thereafter, Barry Fitzgerald remained in the USA as a film star. Arthur
Shields was cast in subsequent movies by Ford. He also was invited to direct
plays by Paul Vincent Carroll on Broadway in the late 1930s. By the end of the
decade, he and his partner Aideen Shields had left the Abbey for the USA.
The Shields brothers played in well over 100 movies before they returned
together to make The Quiet Man, directed by Ford, in County Galway in
1951.
After the death in Dublin of Barry Fitzgerald in 1961, Arthur
Shields—suffering from emphysema—spent more and more of his last decade with his
stamp collection and his library of Irish and world literature. Joyce and
Tolstoy were favorites, but his lodestar was Yeats. Precious volumes from that
library are also part of the Shields Family Papers.
You can view the online exhibition of 150 images from the Shields Archives here:
http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie:8080/digi/exbos/T13
The full catalogue of the Shields archive is available here:
http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/cgi-bin/FramedList.cgi?T13
Prof. Adrian Frazier, Director of the MA in Drama and Theatre
Studies, National University of Ireland Galway
Further Reading:
Frazier, A."Hollywood and the Abbey," Dublin Review (Summer 2004):
68-86.
Frazier, A. "Barry Fitzgerald: From Abbey Tours to Hollywood Films," in
Irish Theatre on Tour, ed. Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash (Carysfort
Press: Dublin, 2005), pp. 89-100.
Frazier, A. Hollywood Irish: John Ford, Abbey Actors and the Irish Revival
in Hollywood, Lilliput Press, Dublin 2011.
