Fred O’Donovan (1884–1952) was an Irish actor, early film maker, theatre manager and pioneer of television drama production. For many years he gave the definitive portrayal of the title character in J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, as well as other prominent roles at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He was manager of the Abbey for a time, and appeared in and directed films, television, and on the stage in Britain and abroad before becoming a producer/director in the BBC’s fledgling television service both before and after World War II.

Early life and career

He was born in Dublin in 1884 as Frederick George Saunders.Irish Genealogy His father was a coachbuilder. He attended the protestant Diocesan Intermediate School, and worked for a time in a land office. He joined the company of the Abbey Theatre in 1908, and was promptly cast in the lead part in The Man Who Missed the Tide, taking the stage name Fred O’Donovan.Who Was Who p. 1832 The birthdate and some other details given here by O'Donovan are inaccurate.

The next year he took over the title role in The Playboy of the Western World from W.G. Fay as the Abbey company appeared at the Court Theatre in London. The same year the Abbey was premiering Bernard Shaw's one-act The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet because the censor had banned it from London theatres on the grounds of blasphemy, and O'Donovan took the leading part of an American cowboy. He often said it was his favorite role.Who Was Who p. 1833

In 1911 O'Donovan was again starring in The Playboy of the Western World when the company embarked on its first American tour. Some Irish-Americans objected to the play as disrespectful towards Ireland and there were protests in Boston and New York. Some rioters were arrested, and in Philadelphia not only were rioters arrested but the company were as well, charged with presenting plays likely to corrupt public morals. The charges were later dropped.Hunt 1979, p. 95

O'Donovan continued to appear with the Abbey company in Ireland and England in such plays as Deirdre of the Sorrows, The Countess Cathleen and The Workhouse Ward as well as revivals of the Playboy while taking leading parts in Maurice Harte, The Whiteheaded Boy, John Bull’s Other Island and Man and Superman.Abbey Theatre Archive He played the revolutionary Robert Emmet in The Dreamers by Lennox Robinson. An oil painting of him in this part hangs in the Abbey Theatre.

Cinema

In 1916 there were plenty of cinemas in Ireland but the (silent) films were nearly all either American or made by American companies visiting Ireland. The Film Company of Ireland was started to change that.Early Irish Cinema Mar. 1916 O'Donovan, J.M. Kerrigan, O'Donovan’s wife Nora Clancy,Abbey Theatre ArchiveNora Clancy IMDB and other actors were recruited from the Abbey with the proviso that the work would not interfere with their appearances on stage. The company’s first production was O'Neil of the Glen, a love story directed by Kerrigan with O'Donovan playing the villain. At its opening in Dublin in August, critics and audiences were delighted with the homegrown content. Bioscope commented,The film, which was expected to prove a good draw, actually surpassed all anticipations, a record being established for the week, and queues being the rule every evening.Early Irish Cinema August 1916Encouraged by the public reaction, Film Company of Ireland proceeded to make a series of comedies in which O'Donovan and the others appeared, followed by a drama, The Eleventh Hour.Irish Times 30 November 1916 p. 8 The next year Kerrigan moved to the United States and O'Donovan took on directing, first the comedy Rafferty’s Rise in which he also took the lead part of a constable.Early Irish Cinema Dec. 1917 Next he starred in and directed When Love Came to Gavin Burke. Irish Limelight published a detailed description of a day spent at the film shoot, including a cartoon by Frank Leah of O'Donovan directing.Early Irish Cinema July 1918

The company's next step was to take a major leap forward in ambition: a full-length adaptation of Knocknagow, Charles Kickham's epic novel set in the time of the Irish famine and land clearances in the 19th Century, that was published in 1873. O'Donovan directed and took a supporting role. Commented the critic in the Cavan Anglo-Celt:With a true appreciation of the artistic, the various degrees of tone have been lifted from the novel, and placed on the screen just as Kickham would have done it himself. The happy peasantry, the prowess of the youth at the hurling match, the hammer-throwing contest, the unexpected "hunt", the love scenes and the comedy – the life as it was before the agent of the absentee landlord came like a dark shadow on the scene, and with crowbar and torch, laid sweet Knocknagow in ruins – all were depicted by the very perfect actors who made up the cast.Early Irish Cinema April 1918

Irish Limelight described the film as a “triumphant” commercial success and pointed up its popularity in the United States. The Dublin Evening Telegraph reported that it was shown for three weeks in Boston and “took more money than the much ‘boosted’ Birth of a Nation”.Rockett 1988 p. 23

Nearly all FCOI's films have since been lost with the exception of Knocknagow, which can be seen on You Tube and at festivals. The Australian online journal Screening the Past has a special issue devoted to Knocknagow with a comprehensive selection of articles and links.Screening the Past Issue 33 O'Donovan made no more silent films and FCOI ceased operations in 1920.Wyver 2017 p. 9

Managing

The management of the Abbey Theatre has been in turmoil for much of its existence. W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory presided over the Abbey but found it a constant struggle to find the right person to handle the day-to-day workings of the theatre.Hunt 1979 p. 113 passim In March 1917 they decided to ask O'Donovan to take over as manager. He accepted, and also proceeded to assume the directing of the plays, including the first performances of The Lost Leader, Blight and The Parnellite.Abbey Theatre Archive Peter Kavanagh describes this period:

During his tenure as manager the public showed more active interest than ever before in the Abbey Theatre. There was even a profit to show, although a small one.Kavanagh 1950 p. 112

A notable event was O'Donovan's bringing on to the company F.J. McCormick, who was to become one of the Abbey’s all-time great stars.Hunt 1979 p. 116

By late 1918 O'Donovan was thinking of moving on. He wanted more money, and was irritated by interference, specifically from Yeats’s newly-married wife Georgie who with no theatre experience would look on at rehearsals and go to Yeats with criticisms.Gregory, Augusta Lady Lady Gregory’s Journals 1916-1930 ed. Lennox Robinson, Macmillan, New York, 1947 pp. 34-5 In March 1919 O'Donovan resigned, and several of the longer-serving members of the company left with him. They toured together for a time, and then O'Donovan decided to move to England.Saddlemyer, Ann Becoming George Oxford, 2002 p. 202

Moving On

Through the 1920s and 1930s O'Donovan appeared in, directed or produced over 80 plays in London.Wearing, J.P. The London Stage 1920-39, Scarecrow Press, 1990 He also toured the British Isles and Southern Africa. In addition to the well-known Irish plays he took the opportunity of increasing his scope. O'Donovan played Aguecheek in Twelfth Night in 1922The Times 16 December 1922 and Lopahin in The Cherry Orchard in 1925,Who Was Who p. 1832 both in London. He was also Sir Lucius O’Trigger in The Rivals on BBC radio in 1935.Radio Times 5 April 1935 p. 18 He directed Donald Wolfit and appeared himself in The Moon in the Yellow River.Theatricalia The Times pointed to his portrayal of Father Keegan in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island as especially memorable. This was at the Court Theatre in 1921.The Times 22 July 1952 p. 8 St John Ervine's Mixed Marriage deals with sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. The Manchester Guardian described O'Donovan’s performance as the labour leader John Rainey: “[He] has a commanding presence. There is about him a dreadful sincerity. Greatly played, as he is here, he is intolerance incarnate.”Manchester Guardian 9 May 1933, p. 13

Of O'Donovan as Joxer Daly in Juno and the Paycock in 1929, the same critic said: “His portrayal of the furtive sycophant is quintessential."Manchester Guardian 3 Sept. 1929, p. 13

Of his performance in And So To Bed, The Times commented, “His richness of voice and gesture and his sly fun as Samuel Pepys remain in the memory as something perfect of their kind.”The Times 22 July 1952 p. 8 In 1927 the New York impresario Lee Shubert engaged O'Donovan and an entire company, including O'Donovan’s (third) wife Joyce Chancellor,Joyce Chancellor IMDBWho Was Who p. 423. to take the boat to New York and stage the play there.New York Times 20 Sept. 1927 p. 32 However, after one week’s tryout in Connecticut Shubert decided to replace O'Donovan with an American actor and O'Donovan and Chancellor headed home.New York Times 25 October 1927 p. 33

He also worked in film. In Ourselves Alone, about the Irish independence struggle, he played a barman at a pub where the IRA kept its weapons. He had a brief part as a detective in Alfred Hitchcock’s Young and Innocent.Barr 2016 Other films included The Vicar of Bray, The House of the Spaniard and General John Regan.

Critical acclaim

Cyril Cusack cited O'Donovan as one of “the greats”.Cusack, Cyril (1980) "O'Casey and the Actor" in The O'Casey Enigma ed. Micheal O hAodha, Mercier Press, Dublin, p. 36 Of a revival of the Playboy in 1925, the Manchester Guardian commented:

O’Donovan still reveals the exquisite marriage of realism and romance which the Abbey Theatre created. He can tell you of the hog in the ditch and the Lady Helen in Paradise with an equally persuasive tone. The audience is lifted, as it were, from the middens of County Mayo to the loftier slopes of Parnassus and hardly knows that it has been translated.Manchester Guardian 13 Oct. 1925, p. 7

From Ireland’s Abbey Theatre by Lennox Robinson: Fred O’Donovan from the moment of his first appearance on the stage was an actor par excellence. I don't mean to say that he didn't improve and enrich himself, that he didn’t go from strength to strength, but he didn’t have to grope and stumble for a couple of years as so many players have to do. Barry [Fitzgerald] had to grope and stumble and then suddenly shine out.Robinson 1951 p. 194

During the Abbey’s 1911 US tour O'Donovan was interviewed in his dressing room at Maxine Elliott's Theatre by a journalist from the New York World. This was published under the headline "Aim of Irish Players".Mikhail 1988 p. 101-3 "Aim of Irish Players" New York World 26 November 1911 p. 6 In this O'Donovan said,

We seek first of all to act truthfully. Simplicity and naturalness of acting are but a means to obtain that end. There must of course be selection of and emphasis in acting to make the essentials stand out with sufficient boldness to carry the dramatist’s thought into the mind of the audience, but we seek to use as little exaggeration as possible. There is a great danger to the actor in exaggerating, [in that] he will unintentionally heighten his exaggeration, for effect or for applause, until the essential truthfulness of his portrayal becomes lost.

Television

In 1936 the BBC launched the first high-definition television service in the world. It transmitted two hours of TV a day from Alexandra Palace, a Victorian exhibition hall in north London, to a range of about 25 miles around the capital.Cain 1992 p. 33 Drama was to be a major constituent of the programming.Wyver 2017 p. 10 O'Donovan was cast in one of the first plays, The Workhouse Ward by Lady Gregory. The Times commented: