'Quiet Man' Remembered, 50 Years On

CONG, Ireland (Reuters) - Fifty years ago John Wayne spent a summer making a movie in the picture postcard Irish village of Cong, and its inhabitants have never forgotten.

At times, walking Cong's narrow streets, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in an oversized movie museum, such is the zeal with which the County Mayo village celebrates its connection with ``The Quiet Man.''

The movie, which won three academy awards including Best Director for Ford, features Wayne as an American prize-fighter returning to find peace in his birthplace, the fictitious ''Inisfree'' in the west of Ireland.

Wayne's character, Sean Thornton, wins the hand of local girl Mary Kate Danaher, played by Dublin-born actress Maureen O'Hara, but only after a battle with her bullying brother.

The movie tends to divide film fans between those who celebrate it as a classic old-fashioned romance and others who dismiss it as a hopelessly sentimental emigrants' image of Ireland.

``I think it's rather beginning to show its age and its classic status is slipping but it remains a sentimental favorite,'' said Tom Charity, film editor of the London entertainment weekly Time Out.

``I have a soft spot for John Ford movies but this is one of my least favorite.

``What I enjoy in this movie is the evident enjoyment Ford takes from the setting, from returning to his homeland and celebrating it, only he gets most of it wrong.''

Many critics say the performance of O'Hara -- a favorite female lead of both Ford and Wayne -- clinched the Best Director Oscar.

``Maureen O'Hara does wonders with this role,'' Charity said. ''John Ford called it one of the sexiest movies ever. Of course, in fact it's one of the most sexist, but she manages to subvert that.''

One of the most popular landmarks for the movie fans from around the world who flock to Cong each year is Pat Cohan's bar, used in the movie's epic fight scene.

The building, probably the only ``dry'' pub in Ireland, was actually a grocer's store when the film was made. Now it sells all manner of ``Quiet Man'' memorabilia, but the exterior remains pretty much as it was in the summer of 1951.

``My dad will love this,'' said tourist Mandy Sheehan, from Adelaide, Australia, as she took a photograph outside. ``His parents came from Ireland and he's always loved that movie.''

Many other buildings used in the movie have been preserved, and tours of ``Quiet Man'' locations in Cong and neighboring County Galway are popular with visitors.

Some are located in the grounds of the upmarket Ashford Castle hotel, where Wayne stayed during the making of the movie and recently the venue for the wedding reception of James Bond star Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith.

But 15 miles (24 km) west of the village, in the heart of the austere beauty of Connemara, the whitewashed thatched cottage ``White O'Mornin'' -- Sean Thornton's home in the movie -- lies in ruins, and has become the focus of a campaign to honor the film's Irish-American director.

``It's a beautiful image, in the final frame of the film, where you see Sean and Mary Kate running toward the cottage, but now there's almost nothing left of it,'' said Paddy McCormick. ``It's a very sad sight.''

McCormick, a designer from Belfast, first visited the site of the cottage six years ago, and since then has embarked on a ''labor of love'' to restore it, searching through land deeds until he eventually traced the owner of the land in the U.S. He wants to set up a charitable trust to restore the cottage and run it as a memorial to Ford and his work, and has been pledged funds by the Argonaut Foundation in the U.S., which is dedicated to preserving pieces of movie history.

``Everything's in place, including the budget, but the owner, who lives in California, refuses to sell,'' said McCormick. ``It's very frustrating.''

 

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