America on Film. Sean Griffin
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On Over (1922), Little Annie Rooney (1925), and Irene (1926, based on the stage musical) center on young Irish American women, who, under the direction of white masculinity, successfully blend into the country’s melting pot. Often these films dramatized assimilation as an issue of generational difference: in them, parents who embodied the old Mick and Bridget stereotypes were shown to be less capable of assimilation than were their more Americanized offspring.
A number of the actresses who played these Colleen roles (such as Colleen Moore, Mary Pickford, and Nancy Carroll) were themselves of Irish heritage. Just as the stage had been one of the arenas in which Irish Americans “became” white, so did the Hollywood film industry help Irish Americans assimilate into whiteness. Unlike many other ethnic groups during the first half of the twentieth century, most Irish Americans actors did not feel the need to Anglicize their names – George O’Brien, Sally O’Neil, and Maureen O’Sullivan, (to name just a few) became stars under their own names. Irish American men also found work behind the camera as directors: Mickey Neilan, Raoul Walsh, and John Ford were all well‐established directors by the end of the silent film era. Furthermore, one of the first Irish American millionaires, Joseph P. Kennedy, became himself a film executive, producing films for Gloria Swanson in the late 1920s and helping found the RKO Radio studio in 1928.
In the 1930s, a few gangster films would acknowledge Irish Americans in organized crime. Based on real‐life criminals “Machine Gun” Kelly and “Baby Face” Nelson, these thugs portrayed by actor James Cagney might have presaged an anti‐Irish backlash. Yet films centered on Irish American hoodlums were invariably balanced by those that portrayed Irish Americans as law‐abiding citizens. For example, Cagney’s gangster character in Public Enemy (1931) has a policeman brother, and his character in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) has a priest for a best friend. Cagney’s career itself dramatized Irish American assimilation into whiteness: his roles evolved from rebel outsiders to all‐American heroes. By 1940, he was starring in The Fighting 69th, a film about a famed Irish American regiment that fought in World War I. Two years later, Cagney won an Oscar for playing the flag‐waving Irish American showman George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
Irish Americans in film (and in real life) worked hard to assimilate through overt indications of patriotism and loyalty. Irish Americans came to dominate urban police forces and fire departments, and many joined the armed forces. Overt displays of Irish American patriotism were made in the movies as well. John Ford became known for directing films that glorified the United States – primarily his legendary Westerns, but also a number of overtly patriotic war films during World War II. In both types of films, Irish American characters consistently appeared as true‐blue Americans. Picturing Irish Americans as ultra‐nationalists often went hand in hand with seeing them as pious and moral, specifically by linking them to Catholicism. By the 1940s, the most common image of Irish Americans in Hollywood films was either as policeman or as priest. Films such as Boys Town (1938), Angels With Dirty Faces, the Oscar‐winning Going My Way (1944), its sequel The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), and Fighting Father Dunne (1948) showed Irish American priests kindly dispensing wisdom and morality to future generations. This image of Irish Americans as upholders of American moral rectitude extended to the industry itself. The Hollywood Production Code was written in 1930 by two Irish Americans, Martin Quigley and Jesuit Fr. Daniel Lord. When the Catholic Church organized the Legion of Decency to protest against violent and sexually licentious Hollywood films, Irish American priests led the way. And when the Production Code Administration responded in 1934 by instituting the Seal of Approval provision that enforced the Code, Irish American Joseph Breen helmed the organization (and did so for the next 20 years). Picturing Irish Americans as moral guardians possibly reached its apex with the short‐lived popularity of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a politician who exploited the Red Scare by pursuing potential communist agents in the United States.
When McCarthy’s popularity diminished in the mid‐1950s, the Production Code Administration’s power was also beginning to wane. While one might suppose this to signal a loss of Irish American influence on Hollywood film, the 1950s also seemed to signal the end of Irish American struggles for inclusion. By the end of World War II, the Irish American population had largely been assimilated. Evidence of this was plain on American movie screens: actors of Irish heritage regularly played a variety of roles instead of being typecast as only Irish characters. For example, in the 1940s, Gene Kelly had often played overtly Irish American characters, but by the 1950s, his characters were considered simply American. He was, after all, An American in Paris (1951), not an Irish American in Paris. A few years later, Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, both of Irish descent, starred as the epitome of upper‐class white culture in High Society (1956). Even in a film about Ireland and Irish immigration, one can find successful assimilation dramatized. For example, in John Ford’s Oscar‐winning The Quiet Man (1952), John Wayne plays an Irish American so thoroughly assimilated to American whiteness that he has difficulty coping with the culture and people of Ireland itself. The election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960 might be said to symbolize the pinnacle of Irish American assimilation, although there were still many Americans who were outspokenly prejudiced against his Irish heritage, as well as his Catholicism.
Going My Way (1944) told the story of two generations of Irish American priests – the older (Barry Fitzgerald) portrayed in broad fashion, and the younger (Bing Crosby) as almost thoroughly assimilated.
Going My Way, copyright © 1944, Paramount.
Many Irish Americans today still strongly hold onto their ethnic heritage and identity, as can be seen across the country every St Patrick’s Day. Being white and being Irish are no longer incompatible, though, as the common phrase “everyone’s Irish on St Patrick’s Day” attests. Irish Americans today can choose to proclaim their ethnicity or to blend into an undifferentiated whiteness. This status is evident in the way Irish Americans have been shown in Hollywood films since the 1960s. Explicitly ethnic Irish Americans surface only sporadically – often in nostalgic period films like The Sting (1973), Miller’s Crossing (1991), or The Road to Perdition (2002). A few other films examine Irish‐American immigration: they include Far and Away (1992), In America (2012), and Brooklyn (2015). Gangs of New York (2002) is one of the few films that acknowledges what Irish Americans endured in the struggle for acceptance into whiteness during the 1800s. The social and political problems faced by Ireland itself have been the subject of several Irish, British, and American films, including The Crying Game (1992), In the Name of the Father (1993), Michael Collins (1996), and Angela’s Ashes (1999). However, many more Irish American characters appear in Hollywood films in ways that are indistinguishable from any other white characters. When audiences watched Saving Private Ryan (1998), most probably did not even consciously think about the title character being Irish American. He was simply a white American soldier.
John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952) showed John Wayne’s Irish American attempting to assimilate when he moves to Ireland (and win the heart of Maureen O’Hara’s local lass).
The Quiet Man, copyright © 1952, Republic.
Looking for Respect: Italians in American Cinema
During the early 1800s, Italian people emigrated to America in relatively small numbers. However, many Italians (along with Poles, Slavs, Russians, Greeks, and other people from Southern and Eastern Europe) were part of a great surge in immigration that occurred in America during the final years of the nineteenth