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1903-1985 [vars. Shelagh, Sheelah]; actress and film producer; b. [?]Dublin; ed. Alexandra College, and a convent school in Paris; joined Drama League, and later Abbey Theatre Company, 1924 [var. 1925]; created parts of Nora in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (to be replaced by Eileen Crowe in London), and Kate in Lennox Robinson’s The Big House; also Blanáid in Denis Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River; m. Johnston, 1928, with whom children Jennifer and Michael Johnston; played with Gladys Cooper in New York, 1938; |
established independent company for new plays at the Olympia Theatre, with Nigel Heseltine, during World War II [‘the Emergency’]; living at Greenfield Manor in 1937; divorced from Johnston, 1945; drama producer for RTÉ, 1962; numerous film productions incl. plays of Synge, O’Casey, Johnson, Hugh Leonard and Edna O’Brien; retired to Ballybrack, Co. Dublin; d. 19 Jan.; lived latterly at Greenfield Manor, Donnybrook, Dublin 4; memorial service held in St. Anne’s Church included moving rendering of song from O’Casey, “When I love only you, Nora ...”. DIB BREF |
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References
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTE 1987), cites RTE films directed by Shelah Richards [here given as Sheelah], between 1962-75, including versions of works by Eugene MacCabe (A Matter of Conscience, 1962), Sean O’Casey (Moon Shines on Kylenamoe, 1962), Denis Johnston (Moon in the Yellow River, 1964), Lennox Robinson (Whiteheaded Boy, 1965; Church Street, 1965; Far Off Hills, 1966), G. B. Shaw (Man of Destiny, 1964), James Douglas (All the Eels in the Ranny are Dead, 1968), J. M. Synge (Riders to the Sea 1971), Hugh Leonard (Fine Girl You Are, Chekov [The Darling], 1973), John Boyd (The Flats, 1975), and Edna O’Brien (Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers, 1975).
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Notes
Portrait of Sheila [err.] Richards, with Yeats et al., in Shirley Neuman, Some One Myth: Yeats’s Autobiographical Prose [New Yeats Papers XIX] (Dolmen Press 1982), p.43; also studio photo-portrait in de Breffni, Ireland, A Cultural Encyclopaedia (1983), p.203.
... by any other name: Shelah/Shelagh/Sheelah: ‘Shelagh’ is the spelling used by Denis Johnston in interview with Des Hickey & Gus Martin, A Paler Shade of Green, 1972, p.62f. ‘Shelah’ in Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life (2002), presumably vetted by Michael Johnston - but note that her name is once spelt Sheila in error (p.157.) Signs herself ‘Shelah Richards’ in a letter to The Irish Times ‘express[ing] love publicly for this great Irishwoman’, Sybil le Brocquy (IT, 11 Sept. 1973).
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