Ryan’s Daughter: Dingle’s Brush with Hollywood
The disintegrating remains of stone stand idle and mute. The fog that surrounds them hides the fact that they perch near the edge of a cliff overlooking the Blasket Sound. The building looks like it might have been constructed in the 1700s, inhabited by generations of families, each with a story to tell. In reality, however, it is only 51 years old and was built as a Hollywood movie set for a turgid romantic epic titled Ryan’s Daughter.
The director of the movie was David Lean, who is famous for creating such epics as the Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. The film’s stars included Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Trevor Howard and John Mills (who won an Oscar as best supporting actor for his role as “the village idiot”). Even though the film was made over 50 years ago, the locals still tell stories about the overweening egos, drinking sprees and female consultants flown in from New York for the weekends. Plus cash. Lots of cash.
Although Ryan’s Daughter eventually did turn a profit, critics panned it and it became a low-water mark in Lean’s career. However, the film had a monumental and long-lasting effect on the Dingle Peninsula.
Irish Life in the 1960s
In the 1960s, Ireland was isolated, poor, rural and conservative. The country was still struggling to recover from the effects of British colonialism, the long fight for independence, and the Great Irish Famine (1846-1852) when one million people died of starvation and 1.8 million emigrated to the United States. (According to Irish Emigration History, at least ten million people emigrated from the country between 1800 and 2012.)
The average industrial wage at the time was £19 pounds a week, the average unemployment benefit was less than £5 per week, and most houses could be bought for less than £5,000. Most people in West Kerry subsisted as either farmers or fishermen.
Ryan’s Daughter and Hollywood Arrive
And then the world suddenly changed.
In February 1969 hundreds of movie people descended upon the Dingle Peninsula and stayed for two years. They hired a crew of 200 local craftspeople to construct a new village in the town of Dingle with buildings made from stone. They also constructed a stone schoolhouse near the village of Dunquin overlooking Blasket Sound.
Skilled laborers–carpenters, electricians, plumbers–suddenly started earning up to £50 a week and major movie extras earned up to £100 a week. Local children were hired to act as students in the schoolhouse and received £2 a day and £3 on Sunday for their efforts. Many people also rented out their houses, and pubs, restaurants and shops overflowed with customers.
Altogether, the movie added £3 million to the local economy, helped to give birth to Irish tourism, and changed the lives of the locals forever. People finally had the money to put bathrooms in their homes (the renovation of buildings rose a thousand-fold), and the sale of luxury goods boomed.
The Situation Today
Today Ireland is a prosperous, stable and progressive country and an integral member of the European Union. Emigration is still an issue, however. According to an article in The Irish Times, between April 2018 and April 2019, approximately 29,000 Irish nationals emigrated abroad whereas approximately 26,900 returned.
County Kerry is still mainly rural, with numerous small farms and villages. Dingle is now a charming and prosperous town of approximately 2,000 people. And thanks to the region’s magnificent scenery, fascinating culture, and the warmth of its people, tourism is the major industry.
Most traces of the time when Hollywood came to town are gone. The new village that so many locals worked to build was dismantled stone by stone. The only physical evidence of the event is the slowly disintegrating schoolhouse overlooking the sea. Yet the memories–and the stories–remain.
