Micheál Mac Liammóir


Micheál Mac Liammóir was a British-Irish actor, dramatist, impresario, writer, poet and painter. Though born to a Protestant family living in the Kensal Green district of London, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, where he remained for the rest of his life. He co-founded the Gate Theatre with his partner Hilton Edwards. He is one of the most recognizable figures in the arts in twentieth-century Ireland.

Life and work

As Alfred Willmore, he was one of the leading child actors on the English stage, in the company of Noël Coward. He appeared for several seasons in Peter Pan. He studied painting at London's Slade School of Art, continuing to paint throughout his lifetime. In the 1920s he travelled all over Europe. Willmore was captivated by Irish culture: he learnt Irish which he spoke and wrote fluently and he changed his name to an Irish version, presenting himself in Ireland as a descendant of Irish Catholics from Cork. Later in his life, he wrote three autobiographies in Irish and translated them into English.
While acting in Ireland with the touring company of his brother-in-law Anew McMaster, Mac Liammóir met the man who would become his partner and lover, Hilton Edwards. Their first meeting took place in the Athenaeum, Enniscorthy, County Wexford. Deciding to remain in Dublin, where they lived at Harcourt Terrace, the pair assisted with the inaugural production of Galway's Irish language theatre, An Taibhdhearc; the play was Mac Liammóir's version of the mythical story Diarmuid agus Gráinne, in which Mac Liammóir played the lead role as Diarmuid.
Mac Liammóir and Edwards then threw themselves into their own venture, co-founding the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928. The Gate became a showcase for modern plays and design. Mac Liammóir's set and costume designs were key elements of the Gate's success. His many notable acting roles included Robert Emmet/The Speaker in Denis Johnston's The Old Lady Says "No!" and the title role in Hamlet.
In 1948, he appeared in the NBC television production of Great Catherine with Gertrude Lawrence. In 1951, during a break in the making of Othello, Mac Liammóir produced Orson Welles's ghost-story Return to Glennascaul which was directed by Hilton Edwards. He played Iago in Welles's film version of Othello. His Iago is unusual in that Mac Liammóir was about fifty when he played the role, while the play gives Iago's age as 28. This may have been because of Welles' intended interpretation – he wanted Iago played as an older "impotent" consumed by envy for the younger Othello. The following year, he went on to play 'Poor Tom' in another Welles project, the TV film of King Lear for CBS.
Mac Liammóir wrote and performed a one-man show, The Importance of Being Oscar, based on the life and work of Oscar Wilde. The Telefís Éireann production won him a Jacob's Award in December 1964. It was later filmed by the BBC with Mac Liammóir reprising the role.
He narrated the 1963 film Tom Jones and was the Irish storyteller in 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia which starred Dudley Moore.
In 1969 he had a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. In 1970 Mac Liammóir performed the role of narrator on the cult album Peace on Earth by the Northern Irish showband, the Freshmen and in 1971 he played an elocution teacher in Curtis Harrington's What's the Matter with Helen?.
Mac Liammóir's homosexual relationship with General Eoin O'Duffy, former Garda Síochána Commissioner and head of the paramilitary Blueshirts in Ireland, during the 1920s was obliquely referenced by Christopher Fitz-Simon in his biography The Boys and substantiated by Irish playwright Mary Manning, in a documentary, Dear Boy, directed by Donald Taylor Black and broadcast on Raidio Teilefis Eireann in 1999.
Mac Liammóir's early life and artistic development are the subject of a study by Tom Madden, The Making of an Artist. Edwards and Mac Liammóir were the subject of a biography, titled The Boys by Christopher Fitz-Simon. Edwards and MacLiammoir are buried alongside each other at St. Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin
In 1973, he and Edwards were granted the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
Frank McGuinness's play "Gates of Gold" is a nod to Edwards and Mac Liammóir
Mac Liammóir is the subject of the 1990 play The Importance of Being Micheál by John Keyes.

Relationship with Edwards and legacy

The academic Éibhear Walshe of University College Cork notes that Mac Liammóir and Edwards did not ever identify themselves as gay as "Irish cultural discourse simply didn’t accommodate any public sexual identity outside the heterosexual consensus", noting that Irish society at the time only recorded lesbian and gay communities and cultures "in police records, prosecutions of men for same sex activities or medical records of institutional committals of men and women for the mental illness of inversion"..
They were, however, prominent features on the Dublin social scene and as Walshe notes elsewhere "MacLiammóir and his partner Edwards survived, and even flourished, as Ireland's only visible gay couple". Walshe goes on to say that "when MacLiammóir died in 1978, the president of Ireland attended his funeral, as did the taoiseach and several government ministers, while Hilton Edwards was openly deferred to and sympathised as chief mourner"
The International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival presents an award for "Best Actor" in his name.

Books