How the Irish took Hollywood

In Depression-era America, Irish actors came to dominate the silver screen. Just how did a group once so despised in the US come to be so loved – and influential – in Hollywood

ETHNICITY, charming in small doses, too often becomes a cultural straitjacket. If we are French, we are expected to like cheese, wine and Moliere, even if we prefer curry, scotch and Turgenev. If we are Jewish, we are expected to revere Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen and the Coen brothers; otherwise, we are accused of letting the side down.

These musings are prompted by the publication of a thought-provoking book entitled Bowery to Broadway: The American Irish in Classic American Cinema , by Christopher Shannon, who teaches history at a college in Virginia. Its central premise is that these Depression-era movies helped persuade Americans to stop despising Irish immigrants.

According to Shannon, this shift came about not because of the elfin charm or winning smiles of the Irish, but because the films provided Americans with an alternative vision of society, where a sense of belonging to an urban village triumphed over the harsh, Darwinian, every-man-for-himself ethos that had dominated the US since its inception. In all likelihood, the moviegoing public did not realise this at the time. They probably thought they were going to see movies starring people with winning smiles and elfin charm.

There can be no denying that the overnight Irish-American takeover of the film industry softened American attitudes towards immigrants, ultimately putting an end to the ferocious anti-Irish, anti-Catholic animus that was a staple of American life well into the 1950s. “Americans who rejected Irish Catholics in politics,” observes Shannon, “embraced them in culture.” In general, this took the form of the gangster movie.

There are a lot of Irish-American actors I like ( Sean Penn , Robert De Niro [ father's mother was an Irish immigrant ] , Mickey Rourke , Alec Baldwin , Casey Affleck , Bill Murray ) and a lot I don’t ( Ryan O’Neal , Mel Gibson [ his Mother is an Irish immigrant ] Rosie O’Donnell , Ed Burns , Ben Affleck , all the other Baldwins ). And there are even more I never even think of in ethnic terms (John C Reilly, Mia Farrow, Tina Fey, Dakota Fanning, Chris O’Donnell, Courtney Cox, Brendan Fraser).

There is one other thing about ethnicity that is worth pointing out. Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Steve Buscemi and Robert Downey Jr are all regularly included in lists of Irish-American actors. In fact, they are only Irish on one side of their families. They are perfect examples of America as a melting pot, where each person can pick from any one of several ethnic identities. But in the end, none of it matters very much: you could not possibly look more Irish-American than Charlie Sheen, but his grandmother (on his mother's side) was Mexican , although his grandmother ( on his father's side ) was an Irish immigrant. And Jimmy Cagney – the most pusillanimously, quintessentially Irish-American actor of them all – was one-quarter Norwegian.

Today's contingent of Irish actors who work in Hollywood include Colin Farrell , Cillian Murphy , Pierce Brosnan , Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Liam Neeson , Aidan Quinn , Stephen Rea , Gabriel Byrne and Brendan Gleason.

All this leads to a story I once heard about the making of Michael Collins . Legend has it that the only time in the 20th century all the Irish – North, South, Catholic, Protestant – came to a consensus on anything was when word got out that Kevin Costner, who is part-Irish, might play Collins. Everyone agreed: few actors would be less convincing.