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Memorial Day

Some died so that friends, relatives and complete strangers could live in freedom. It takes little effort to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It takes a little more thought to appreciate the good they left behind.

Frank Warner

‘Connemara Days’ and ‘The Dead Republic’: Fiction revives John Ford’s summer of ‘The Quiet Man’

I’ve often imagined the fun John Ford, John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and their families must have had making the movie “The Quiet Man” that summer of 1951 in the green, rocky hills of County Mayo and County Galway.

A few others must have wondered the same thing. “Connemara Days,” a film to be shot this summer [Update: It's delayed to 2011.] on the same locations, will tell the story of making “The Quiet Man.” And “Connemara” will have its own fictional love story, between Ford’s assistant director and a local Irish woman.

Stacy Keach will play John Ford. The rest of the cast is yet to be named (but former James Bond actor Roger Moore is producing the film and may have a small screen role). Cast and crew will be going to Cong, Ireland -- Ford’s big screen Inisfree.

Parallel story. Meanwhile, a new novel, “The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle, tells a parallel story about filming “The Quiet Man.” In this story, Henry Smart, a character in two earlier Doyle books, goes to Ireland with Ford to advise him on the IRA aspects of the movie. (Ford actually had such a consultant, Ernie O'Malley.)

It’s a remarkable coincidence that a new motion picture and a new unrelated novel are examining Ford’s “Quiet Man” summer in Ireland. I hope at least one of them handles the subject well.

Except for the romance between John Ford’s aide and the Irish woman, I know nothing of the plot of “Connemara Days.” The first reviews of “The Dead Republic” suggest its story line might make an even better movie than the “Connemara” concept.

In “The Dead Republic,” according to the reviews, Ford initially leads Henry Smart to believe “The Quiet Man” will be a film about Smart’s violent role in the Irish Republican Army. Once production begins in Ireland, this story goes, Ford transforms the movie into a romantic comedy.

‘Quiet Man’ dark side. “The Dead Republic” looks at the dark side of “The Quiet Man” script -- the references to IRA violence, the hit lists, the Australian penal colony where Sean Thornton’s grandfather was sent, and the Irish pride that inspires Mary Kate to call husband Sean a coward for failing to collect her dowry from her brother.

These are cruel things, and it’s a marvel that they found their way into one of the most heartwarming motion pictures of all time. As a big fan of “The Quiet Man” (and its music), I’ve wanted to know exactly how that happened.

“The Dead Republic” attempts to answer my curious questions. The novel explains that Irish-American Ford did indeed intend “The Quiet Man” to be a political statement, but he rewrote it in Ireland because it was his one chance to depict the peaceful, pastoral Isle of his imagination.

Ultimately, in the Ireland of “The Quiet Man,” the IRA becomes an anachronism, the Protestant-Catholic Troubles long gone, Will Danaher’s “book” of hit lists an empty joke, the penal colonies a dim memory. The Irish pride remains, but it repeatedly is swallowed with good humor – even after Sean’s big fight with Will.

Political to personal. It is well documented that “The Quiet Man” did begin as a somber tale. It was a fictional story of a former IRA member, Paddy Brown Enright (the name was Shawn Kelvin in author Maurice Walsh’s first version), who was tormented by horrible things the Black and Tans, the British security forces, did to his Irish Catholic family.

Ford considered hiring actor Robert Ryan, who had a rather cheerless presence, to play Enright.

The story changed after John Ford signed Wayne and O’Hara for the leading roles. Paddy Brown Enright became Sean Thornton, named for Ford’s cousins, the Thorntons of Spiddal, County Galway, who were real-life victims of the Troubles, having had their home burned to the ground in 1921.

The final script by Frank S. Nugent played up the love angle, probably because Wayne and O’Hara looked so good together in Ford’s 1950 Western “Rio Grande.” The politics nearly disappeared. Sean Thornton wasn’t haunted by the Black and Tans; he was haunted by his own killing of a fellow American in an American boxing ring.

The censored toast. Last-minute editing of “The Quiet Man” also removed the script’s last hint of a political statement. As Maureen O’Hara recently revealed, censors insisted that the movie’s wedding toast, “May they live in peace and national freedom” be trimmed to say “May they live in peace and … freedom.” (The sound gap remains on the film.)

So yes, “The Quiet Man” script evolved significantly from the time Ford bought the story in 1936 to the actual filming in 1951. “The Dead Republic” offers an alternate explanation, a scenario worthy of its own fiction movie.

But let’s hope “Connemara Days” is so good that filming “The Dead Republic” won’t be necessary. Then again, if this movie is good, some of us might demand to see yet another angle.

Frank Warner

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Roy Halladay pitches a perfect game

Pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, Roy Halladay faced the minimum 27 batters last night, and not one of the Florida Marlins got on base. To make the game even more exceptional, the only Phillies run to score was on an error.

Perfect!

Frank Warner

Dennis Hopper, actor, dead at 74

I've long marveled over how many big, pivotal motion pictures Dennis Hopper has played in. And yet he never seemed to be the lead actor.

Among his credits are "Rebel Without a Cause," "Giant," "Gunfight at the OK Corral," "Cool Hand Luke," "Easy Rider," "True Grit," "Apocalypse Now," "Blue Velvet," "Speed" and "Waterworld," not to mention just about every major TV show of the 1950s and 1960s.

And who knew he was told his father died in the Pacific during World War II, only to find out later his father was a living spy whose faked death was a ruse?

Dennis Hopper entertained us well.

Frank Warner

‘Idiotic cerebral meritocracy’s has ended Chris Matthews’ tingle

During MSNBC’s coverage two days ago of the BP oil spill, former Obama booster Chris Matthews seemed to have given up on the current administration:

“When you screw up, you should be able to fix the problem…. This president is not acting like commander in chief…. This idiotic cerebral meritocracy has got to step aside and let the people who do things take over.”

President Obama still can get good things done, but Matthews has a point. Obama has to get rid of his pseudo-intellectual advisers and find some reality-based consultants to turn things around.

Frank Warner

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Update 2010: Michele Bachman asks Matthews, How's that leg tingle thing doing?

So James O'Keefe wasn't trying to wiretap after all

We all wondered at the time if James O'Keefe, who helped expose ACORN's willingnessly to work with criminals, had himself crossed to the other side when he showed up at a senator's office asking for access to the phone system.

Did he intend to wiretap? No, according to the U.S. attorney who investigated the incident.

Frank Warner

Obama needs a GOP victory in November

President Obama has to hope the Republicans take control of at least one house of Congress in the November election. Otherwise, he won't have anyone to blame in 2012 for a persistently poor economy and an increasingly dangerous world.

For the sake of all of us, let's hope things improve quickly, but the trend indicates the president will need someone to point fingers at in his re-election campaign. If Democrats maintain complete control of Congress, all fingers will point to him.

Frank Warner

Harvard study on bad bacon: Powerful congressmen mean fewer jobs

You think your high-seniority congressman is bringing home the bacon, but it turns out it's not the kind you can eat.

Recent research at Harvard Business School began with the premise that as a state's congressional delegation grew in stature and power in Washington, D.C., local businesses would benefit from the increased federal spending sure to come their way.

It turned out quite the opposite.

In fact, professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

Leave your Congress member in office too long, and expect fewer jobs in your district. This study is another good argument for term limits.

Frank Warner

‘Pushing the string.’ Despite wild borrowing, U.S. money supply shrinks

The U.S. money supply dropped $300 billion in the three months ending in April. If the trend continues, that would be a money contraction of 9.6 percent a year.

Meanwhile, The London Telegraph reports, U.S. institutional money market funds were shrinking 37 percent a year, at the sharpest rate in American history.

“It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly.”

Recklessness checked. The phenomenon suggests that, in spite of the federal government’s desperate measures to toss $1 trillion here and $1 trillion there to “bail out” and “stimulate” the economy, the U.S. no longer has full control over its monetary policy.

It reminds me of economist John Kenneth Galbraith discussing how policymakers’ actions against immutable economic laws are like a man trying to “push a piece of string.” If you have a piece of string on a table and you push one end of it, you feel you have done something, but the far end hasn’t moved at all.

Now, if we “push the string” with more borrowing, more spending or lower interest rates (Can they get lower than zero percent?), nothing moves down the line because the rest of the world counters our recklessness with higher and stricter bank reserve requirements.

Power in pulling strings. Our borrowing power seems to have reached its limit. The United States soon will rediscover the power of saving real money for its rainy days. Real money pulls strings. That’s what restarts a stalled economy.

Frank Warner

Embassy of Mexico: 1,200 U.S. troops should do anything except stop illegals

Statement yesterday by the Embassy of Mexico in Washington:

Regarding the Administration’s decision to send 1,200 National Guard servicemen to the US Southern border, the Government of Mexico trusts that this decision will help to channel additional US resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.

Additionally, the Government of Mexico expects that National Guard personnel will strengthen US operations in the fight against transnational organized crime that operates on both sides of our common border and that it will not, in accordance to its legal obligations, conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws.

In other words, the Mexican government insists that those 1,200 U.S. troops do nothing to stop the illegal flow of foreigners into the United States.

And now we're hearing that the troops won't actually be standing at the Mexican border. According to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, most of the soldiers will be given "desk jobs."

Frank Warner