Author Michael Tubridy will speak about “Hollywood’s Irish Mafia: The Films of James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Pat O’Brien, and Frank McHugh” at the River Edge Public Library on this Saturday, Mar. 7, at 3 p.m. And, next Monday, Mar. 9, at 7 p.m. Tubridy will speak on “Champion of the Misbegotten: The Irish Influence in the Life and Plays of Eugene O’Neill,” at the Oradell Public Library.
At the first talk, Tubridy will explain how this quartet of actors (they preferred to be known as “The Boys’ Club”) starred in many of Tinseltown’s legendary movies and influenced perceptions of Irish Americans as they sought greater acceptance.
He’s further discuss how classics like “The Public Enemy,” “Adam’s Rib,” “Knute Rockne, All American,” and “The Fighting 69th” were made, and how these beloved actors not only socialized often but appeared in each other’s movies multiple times from the 1930s to the 1980s.
The River Edge Public Library is located at 685 Elm Ave, River Edge, NJ 07661. For further information, please contact the library at (201) 261-1663.
In Monday’s talk, Tubridy’s focus is on O’Neill, the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the only one to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama four times. Beginning in the 1920s, in masterpieces such as “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” he dealt with subjects that hardly anybody dared to touch previously on Broadway, including race relations, Freudianism, labor strife, and drug and alcohol addiction, forging a path that subsequent playwrights would follow in pushing against the boundaries of commercial theater.
Tubridy will explain how Irish or Irish-American and Catholic influences figure in O’Neill’s family.
A lifelong resident of Englewood, Tubridy frequently writes about Irish and Irish American history in his blog “A Boat Against the Current.”
The Oradell Public Library is located at 375 Kinderkamack Rd., Oradell, NJ. For further information, please contact the library at (201) 262-2613.
Copies of Tubridy’s biography (co-written with Rob Polner) of the Irish-born New York attorney, politician, and activist Paul O’Dwyer, “An Irish Passion for Justice,” will be available for signing and purchase at both events.
