The Great McGinty to the rescue!

When a party gets rowdy, the Irish call it a “hooley!”

 

In 1941, Irish American screenwriter/director Preston Sturges won the Oscar for Best Screenplay of his film THE GREAT McGINTY. Fans of the 8th Annual Irish American Movie Hooley Film Festival, the only Irish American film festival in existence, will have the opportunity to see that Oscar as well as the classic comedy itself on Sunday, July 24th at 7PM at The Lake Theatre, 1022 Lake Street, in Oak Park, Illinois.

For the last eight years, the Houlihan family, founders and creators behind Hibernian Media, their public charity dedicated to Irish and Irish American culture, have been putting on this film festival telling folks, “We are out to discover the next John Ford, Ed Burns, Preston Sturges, John Huston, or John Patrick Shanley, i.e., Irish American filmmakers who epitomize Irish American pride, bravado, and legendary storytelling.”

This year they are moving the fest from the Gene Siskel Film Center, directly to their Irish American audiences in Oak Park and Wilmette.

Hooley founder Mike “Houli” Houlihan says, “We are moving our 8th Annual Irish American Movie Hooley film festival to Oak Park in September. That’s right, after seven great years at the Siskel Film Center honoring Irish and Irish American films to critical huzzahs, we’re taking our show on the road to the Lake Theatre Sept. 16-17-18, right in our backyard where we raised our kids and taught them about Irish culture. We want to share that with the Oak Park-River Forest community. In celebration of this big move, we’re screening probably the quintessential Irish American film, written and directed by Preston Sturges, 1941 Academy Award Winner THE GREAT MCGINTY at the Lake on Sunday July 24th at 7PM. Please help us by attending this leap of faith back into our community.”

In this classic Chicago comedy, McGinty joins a crooked political boss and rises from extortionist to alderman. Urged by the boss to marry his secretary to give respectability to his run for mayor, McGinty agrees — only to fall in love with his wife and decide to do an honest thing for once in his life.

Suggested donation for the event is $100 and is tax-deductible. First Responders are eligible for half off tix as well. All are invited to a reception at Victory/Italian immediately following the screening Curtain time is 7PM Sunday July 24th at the Lake Theatre 1022 Lake Street, Oak Park. Victory Italian is right around the corner at 101 S. Marion St. in Oak Park.

To purchase tix for this very special event, go to Hiberniamedia.org or call 312-431-8700. Or show up on the night and buy your tix at the door, if there are any left!

Tom Sturges, son of Preston Sturges, will introduce the film and show everybody his dad’s Oscar.

See you at the movies!

Irish American News column for June 2015

james-cagney-224x300-1Hooliganism

By

Mike Houlihan

I auditioned for the Clifford Odets play “Awake and Sing” back in the late 1970s when I was a young actor in New York. After I finished reading for the part, the director, Ken Frankel, asked me to sit down. Oh boy, I felt like I had just nailed it. He looked at me strangely and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

In retrospect of course it was a good question. I was a young Irish kid trying to play a Jewish guy named Ralph Berger. Hey, but I’m an actor, I can do anything, right?

“No,” he said. He went on to explain that it didn’t make a bit of difference how good an actor I was, there was no way I was going to be cast as a young Jewish fella, especially in New York city where there were millions of young Jewish actors. “Are you nuts?”

Of course, I’ve been hearing that question my whole life. But Frankel’s advice was to stick with who I was already, at that place and time. And for me that was a narrowback Irish kid, albeit a shockingly handsome Irish-American lad!

It wasn’t long after that I was cast as Captain Brennan in Sean O’Casey’s classic “The Plough and the Stars.” This was more like it. I did some research and discovered that my grandfather, Denis Cusack, was a member of the Irish Citizen Army back in the day.

Now I was awakened to my own Irish heritage and I went at it with a vengeance. But it was tough to “stick with your own”; there weren’t many films or plays that featured Irish-American stories in those days. It wasn’t like that golden age of Irish American cinema in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s that launched giants like Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien or Spencer Tracy, or directors like John Huston, John Ford, or Preston Sturges.

Now the gangsters were all Italian and audiences relished the anti-hero genius of De Niro, Pacino, and Joe Pesci.

But the Italian-American mafiosos I would never play, and the Jewish American scruffy idealists I should never be allowed to portray, shared their origins with those Irish-American giants in film history.

Children of immigrants all, their stories were forged in the ethnic tenements of New York, Chicago, or Boston. The pinching poverty and bare-knuckled brawling was salted heavily with religion and romance. That stew produced storytellers. I say the best storytellers in this world.

Does talent like that skip generations? No. The ancient myths and romantic tales created by Irish-Americans over just the last two centuries in America are passed on in our DNA. We need to encourage it, and nurture the future of Irish-American cinema. It’s time for a new generation of Irish storytellers to “awake and sing.”

I’ve played tons of Irish-American cops, bartenders and priests in my 40 years since that “Awake and Sing” audition. And I want to keep doing it. But we need to discover the next wave of Irish-American storytellers who can bring their ethnic swagger to the screen.

That’s why we’re now calling for entries for our first annual “Irish American Movie Hooley.” We’re looking to discover the next John Ford or Grace Kelly or maybe you, Eamonn McGillicuddy.

So if you’re an Irish-American indie filmmaker, or you’re related to one, call and tell them to submit to our festival before July 31.

We’ll be screening the best three Irish-American film premieres on Sept. 25-27 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. So tell us your story, show ‘em what you got, and join us in Chicago next September.

And if you need an older fat guy to play an Irish American cop or priest in your film, get in touch!

You can learn more about the first annual Irish American Movie Hooley by visiting hiberniantransmedia.org/movie-hooley.

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