Brian Desmond Hurst is the film directing genius from Belfast who was described as “the human Blarney stone” in the 1950s when his Christmas film Scrooge, starring Alistair Sim, was known around the world.
The former Belfast linen worker was wickedly funny, flattering and persuasive. He forged important film alliances as he broke through as a director and set many stars off on their film careers, including Sir Roger Moore and Sir Richard Attenborough.
Nearly 75 years later Scrooge, which he both produced and directed, remains a classic of classics and ‘Belfast’s cinematic Christmas gift to the world’.
I’ve written and spoken on my great great uncle’s global cinematic achievements for nearly two decades and championed him as arguably Belfast’s greatest artist. Film is, after all, art and in Belfast we are embracing film as a key industry.
Richard Williams, chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, tells me: “Hurst was the pathfinder for all who follow him in film in Northern Ireland. His pioneering work on ‘talkies’ and then documentary making and film noir shows how he pushed artistic boundaries. He will always be remembered as one of our great artists on the vast canvas of film.”
Brian would love it all as blue plaques, film studio naming ceremonies and museum exhibitions have honoured his name in his home city over the last 15 years.
Today marks the start of one of the most exciting challenges I’ve undertaken for Brian as administrator of his film and literary estate. It is finding the Holy Grail of Irish films - our island’s ‘lost’ first feature length talkie, Irish Hearts (released in the USA as Norah O’Neale), which hit the big silver screen in November 1934. It was the first time people across Ireland, Britain and the United States heard Irish voices in an Irish feature length film.
Brian co-wrote the film with Coleraine-born Dr J[ames] Johnston Abraham who had published the storyline originally in the 1913 book The Night Nurse, based around his own medical experience in Ireland.
It was financed with the help of Brian’s business partner, the extravagant tycoon Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton, and produced through their company Clifton-Hurst Productions. Belfast born and bred Hurst directed the film. All the key criteria are met for an Irish film (director born and bred in Ireland; writers born and bred in Ireland; filmed in Ireland) and it is the first feature length talkie.
Today marks the start of one of the most exciting challenges I’ve undertaken for Brian as administrator of his film and literary estate. It is finding the Holy Grail of Irish films - our island’s ‘lost’ first feature length talkie, Irish Hearts, which hit the big silver screen in November 1934. It was the first time people across Ireland, Britain and the United States heard Irish voices in an Irish feature length film
Timing a search is everything and we have the 90th anniversary of this cinematic breakthrough for Ireland coming up in November this year. Wind the clock back 90 years and the Irish press was asking “Irish Films: What of the Future?” with Brian stating that “the time has arrived when Irish people should have their own film industry”.
Another article complained that the Irish were “seeing every countries’ films but their own” whilst another headlined “Long-awaited pioneer native talkie at the Grand Central”.
To be honest I almost missed the significance of Irish Hearts but on a recent review it just leapt out at me. I had published in 2021 Brian Desmond Hurst’s memoirs and all of his cinematic achievements for the first time in Hurst on Film 1928-1970 (available on Kindle for just £1.49 to ensure accessibility for all).
At just over 600 pages and flooded with over 1,000 images it was the culmination of 20 years of research and the hard work of co-editors Stephen Wyatt and Caitlin Smith.
The first talking picture made in Ireland
There were many stand out films in Hurst’s back catalogue but the one that stopped me in my tracks on a re-read was Irish Hearts (Norah O’Neale). Blink and you could have missed it but the reverse caption of a promotional still proclaimed: “A scene from Norah O’Neale, the first talking picture made in Ireland.”
Further detail added: “Scenes from the film were taken at Clogherhead, Baltray, Monasterboice, Trinity College and Meath Hospital, Dublin. Added detail explains the film includes the champion pipers of Ireland, Tom Collins, the famous Irish violinist and the best dancers in the country.”
Other press clippings in Brian’s archive that we maintain proclaim it as the first film platform for Dublin’s Abbey Players to appear together as a group. Some of their number include Sara Allgood, Arthur Sinclair, Joyce Chancellor, Kathleen Drago and Máire O’Neill (JM Synge’s bereaved fiancée).
Many Abbey players including Ria Mooney and Shelah Richards (later a pioneering TV producer at RTE) returned to feature in Hurst’s future films, notably Riders to the Sea (1935), filmed in Connemara.
“What a glorious challenge, to uncover Irish Hearts (Norah O’Neale) and by so doing, the voices of early Abbey Theatre acting stalwarts,” said Mairéad Delaney, Abbey Theatre archivist.
“Sara Allgood, her sister Máire O’Neill and Arthur Sinclair were prominent members of the Abbey Theatre Acting Company who embarked on the theatre’s first American tour in 1911. They brought with them an acting style and a canon of new work that set them apart, influencing many including Eugene O’Neill. They were some of Ireland’s first cultural ambassadors, and how fitting would it be that their contribution to early Irish film history could be uncovered.”
I’m told that a contender for Ireland’s first feature length talkie could be Man Of Aran (1934). But it has an American-born director, Robert Flaherty, which was shot, I understand, as a silent with intermittent voices and sound effects added and not integral to the production.
So, Brian appears to have made Ireland’s first feature length talkie and no-one seems to have picked this up. The film remains ‘lost’ and the hunt is now on to find this vital piece of our film heritage in time for the 90th anniversary of its release this November. I know it’s out there and we’ll find it with your help and my instincts (I trust them) is that it is in a private collection under its USA release title Norah O’Neale somewhere in the USA.
So let’s turn to the USA. Tutored by John Ford in Hollywood, Brian Desmond Hurst was there as Ford transitioned from the black and white silents (Hurst appearing shoulder to shoulder with John Wayne as extras in Hangman’s House in 1928). Moving behind the camera and as Ford’s assistant director, Hurst saw the art of film being transformed by the ‘talkies’ and learnt the trade with the greatest of teachers who remained his greatest friend.
Film – the world’s newest art form
Brian declared film as the world’s only new art form in Kinematograph Weekly (December 17 1936) after returning to the UK and being given a lucrative film director’s contract with British International Pictures. With more than 30 films, made across three continents over four decades he is, I’d say (with a respectful nod to Kenneth Branagh) Northern Ireland’s greatest film director.
He consistently championed film as an art form in his writings from the 1930s to 1970s (they are all set out in Hurst on Film 1928 to 1970) and his pioneering work in film. This includes the Irish talkies breakthrough, early film noir and his documenting of war and conflict with, as historian and film critic Mike Catto pointed out to me, the most human of eyes.
War and conflict needs an explanation because, of course, Hurst knew warfare at its most horrific, having participated in an uphill bayonet charge at Gallipoli. Philip Orr (author of Field of Bones: An Irish Division at Gallipoli) explained the 6th Royal Irish Rifles’ cruel slaughter to me: “Think Cave Hill with no cover and the top lined with Turkish machine guns.” I felt it in my bones and can’t even start to comprehend how a 20-year-old Hurst would have felt in 1915 as a humble rifleman - he once showed me a bayonet wound on his forearm.
So back to finding the Holy Grail of Irish film. Brian’s scrapbooks and the clippings from October 25 1934 to April 6 1935 provide the synopsis of Irish Hearts (Norah O’Neale). It tells the story of romantic complications between a doctor and two nurses set in a Dublin hospital and then a typhus-stricken village in Co Louth.
Brian appears to have made Ireland’s first feature length talkie and no-one seems to have picked this up. The film remains ‘lost’ and the hunt is now on to find this vital piece of our film heritage in time for the 90th anniversary of its release this November
There is a partial copy of the film in quite a poor condition at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin, who are backing my campaign. I spoke with Kasandra O’Connell, head of archive at the IFI, who told me: “Irish Hearts (Norah O’Neale) by Northern Irish director Brian Desmond Hurst in 1934 is most likely the first sound film made in Ireland, produced two full years before Tom Cooper’s The Dawn (1936). Irish Hearts marks a pivotal moment in both Irish and British film history, as the industry navigated the monumental technical and artistic transition to talking pictures. Although the IFI holds a partial copy of the film no complete print is known to exist. To find a complete version of this landmark film would insert a significant puzzle piece to the jigsaw of Irish film history.”
Film critic and documentary maker Brian Henry Martin neatly underlined the whole quest to me: “Irish cinema is enjoying an unprecedented period of global success with a golden generation of Irish actors, writers and directors, so therefore it is simply inexplicable that we do not know where it all began.
“Which Irish director made the first talking picture in Ireland? Why do we not immediately know the answer to this key question? Somehow, the great achievements of pioneering Belfast film-maker Brian Desmond Hurst have been lost in the midst of time. But no longer, just as his great mentor John Ford is celebrated in Hollywood as the definitive American film director, Hurst should be considered the same in Ireland.
“The 1934 film Irish Hearts must be brought back to our screens, revived in our imaginations and celebrated as the beginning of the Irish film industry, a key piece of the puzzle to unlock the richness of Irish film heritage.”
Let’s find Irish Hearts (Norah O’Neale) and this vital piece of Irish film legacy - and if you do happen to find it or know where it is, I want to be the first to hear.
