“A far down Shanty Irish”:
Marshall Neilan and the constructions of Irishness in Early Hollywood”
In Hollywood,
Kevin Brownlow notes that in early Hollywood “…if the business side of the
industry was run by Jews, the creative side was the domain of the Irish” (Hollywood. 209). Apart from directors
and actors who were Irish born, many claimed Irish heritage and often worked
Irish/Irish-American themes into their films and publicity profiles. Beginning with a brief overview of the
Irish in early Hollywood, this paper will focus on Irish-American director, Marshall
‘Mickey’ Neilan, who made films from across a range of genres, but is best
known for his work in the comedy genre with major stars such as Mary Pickford
and Colleen Moore (both, of course, of Irish lineage). This paper analyses how Neilan’s Irish
themed films (Amarilly of Clothes Line
Alley; Dinty) engaged with
debates concerning immigrant identity and fed into (and off) popular notions of
Irishness propagated in the late 1910s/early 1920s (see Meagher; Negra).
Additionally, I will examine how Neilan emphasised his Irish heritage and
temperament in the public persona he cultivated and in his private life. While
Neilan’s “Irishness” was initially seen as a virtue- responsible for his light
touch in comedy and his rapport with performers (Pickford’s close relationship
with him was centred on nostalgia for their shared ‘shanty Irishness’)- by the
mid 1920s it was increasingly regarded as the source of his personal and
professional troubles. Indeed, the screenwriter Adela Rogers St John explicitly
linked Neilan’s decline in the Industry to his Irish heritage “I can say that
what happened to Mickey Neilan was that he was Irish. You have to watch the
Irish, you have to give them some discipline, you have to have them in control
of some kind. They can do the most brilliant things of anybody- which Mickey
could- but he couldn’t restrain his tongue”. (Hollywood. 204). While
Neilan’s problems in the Industry were more complex than a mere matter of
(Irish) temperament, Rogers-St John’s comments indicate the pervasive (and
accepted) stereotype of the Irish as verbose and naturally creative but also undisciplined
and unpredictable.