Murphy’s Town Hall Cinema Athenry 8 “The arrival in Dublin of the Catholic Centenary Celebrations in 1929 and the screening in Belfast and Dublin that year of Al Jolson’s The Singing Fool, established sound cinema in Ireland... The reverberations of sound cinema were felt throughout the world. For Ireland, it meant that foreign films lost their popularity... Sound also brought the demise of musicians. From 1916, the Picture House in Belfast had a forty member orchestra... even country cinemas had a trio and a piano....” The arrival of film with sound is corroborated by an interesting piece by Gavin Finlay, published in Volume 15, Issue 5 of History Ireland Magazine (September/October 2007): 15 “Ireland’s first sound film was a record of the Catholic Emancipation centenary celebrations on 1 July 1929 at Dublin’s Capitol Cinema. Sharing the bill that night were two Hollywood comedies and the twelve Capitol Tiller Girls...” 20th to 25th October 1932 – These October 1932 dates are the next film screenings in the Hall for which a physical record still exists but it seems highly likely that there had been other screenings for which no record has survived? Messrs Carron Brothers Travelling Picture Company showed what the Journal simply describes as ‘Talking Pictures’ in the Hall across these 6 consecutive nights (source: Hall Journal). However, it is regrettable, that the Hall Journal did not actually record the titles for any of the films screened at this time. 17th November 1932 – River’s End, a 1930 Warner Bros Western was screened in the Hall by Carron Brothers (source: Hall Journal). This film stars Charles Bickford, Evalyn Knapp and ZaSu Pitts. 16 NB: Charles Bickford, in dual leading roles, plays both John Keith, (a man on the run, wrongly suspected of murder) and also his lookalike doppelganger, Sergeant Derwent Conniston, the Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman in pursuit of him. The Danish title of the film is Død eller Levende which translates into English as Dead or Alive. This film is a remake of a Silent 1920 Film titled The River’s End, starring Lewis Stone and Marjorie Dawe. 17 NB: Michael Curtiz directed. 18th November 1932 – Three Faces East, a 1930 Warner Bros WW1 Spy Drama starring Constance Bennett, Erich von Stroheim and Anthony Bushell was screened in the Hall by Carron Brothers (source: Hall Journal). NB: Directed by Roy Del Ruth, the screenplay was based on Anthony Paul Kelly’s 1918 Broadway play of the same name. 19th November 1932 – The Aviator, a 1929 Warner Bros Comedy starring Edward Everett Horton, Patsy Ruth Miller and Lee Moran was screened in the Hall by Carron Brothers (source: Hall Journal). NB: NB: Directed by Roy Del Ruth, the screenplay was based on James H Montgomery’s 1910 Three Act Comedy play of the same name. 20th November 1932 – On the Border (aka Over the Border), a 1930 Warner Bros Adventure Film was screened in the Hall by Carron Brothers (source: Hall Journal). It stars RinTinTin, John B Litel, Armida, Philo McCullough and Walter Miller. NB: RinTinTin was a German Shepherd dog, listed in the credits here as Rin-Tin-Tin. Armida Vendrell (aka Armida or Mimi Vendrell) was a Mexican actress, singer, dancer and vaudevillian. Armida, playing the part of Pepita, sings 2 songs in this picture. Directed by William C McGann, the screenplay was written by Lillian Hayward. 15 NB: Gavin Finlay is a freelance film critic and a postgraduate history student at NUI, Galway. 16 Named ZaSu after her 2 maternal aunts, Eliza and Susan, her name being formed from the last two letters of Eliza and the first two of Susan 17 The mage above on the right is from a 1930 Warner Bros Pressbook stored by the Internet Archive https://archive.org/ Figure 4 – © Warner Bros
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