January

Julius Benedict’s music for John Oxenford and Dion Boucicault’s opera The Lily of Killarney, based on Boucicault’s play The Colleen Bawn, was first heard at Covent Garden in 1862. Its success was immediate and recommended to film-makers in several silent versions beginning in 1922, when Eily O’Connor was its heroine. Eliot Stannard wrote the screenplay for the 1924 version directed by W. P. Kellino and starring Colette Brettel. BIP cast Pamela Parr in its 1929 adaptation directed by George Ridgwell. Five years on, the opera burst into sound in H. Fowler Mear’s edition for producer Julius Hagen, now presented by Frederick White and Gilbert Church as Lily of Killarney, ‘A Musical and Dramatic Romance of the Emerald Isle’. Here was a challenge for the cramped Twickenham studios; how could it effectively evoke the air, and airs, of Ireland? Before the opening credits rolled, the audience had a picturesque glimpse of Killarney’s scenery, but it was then back to the studio, where a baronial hall filled with bulky furniture would have seemed familiar to those who had seen other of ‘Uncle’ Julius Hagen’s productions.

There is much tally-ho-ing at the Hunt Supper enlivened by the dashing Sir Patrick Creegan (John Garrick), honest as the Irish day is long, in debt but in love with the unsophisticated lily of Killarney Eileen O’Connor (Gina Malo). She wins our hearts when she arrives on screen chewing sugar lumps.