Sara Allgood
Dublin, 1883 - 1950
Sara was educated at Marlborough Street Training College, Dublin, and was later apprenticed to an upholstery firm. Known as Sally, she joined Maude Gonne's revolutionary women's society, Inghinidhe na hEirean (the Daughters of Erin) about 1902 and became a member of the dramatic class. William Fay recruited her into the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903. Her first appearance was in Lady Gregory's Twenty-Five (1904); her first speaking parts were as Princess Buan in The King's Threshold, by W. B. Yeats, and Cathleen in Riders to the Sea, by J. M. Synge. When the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, opened on 27 December 1904 she also revealed a talent for comedy, as Mrs Fallon in Lady Gregory's Spreading the News. She became the undisputed leading lady of the company. Her glorious voice, her sheer stage presence, and the approach to acting that came to typify the Abbey were a marriage between her talent and the training that she received from the Fay brothers, William and Frank. Early exponents of naturalism, the Fays were influenced by Constant Coquelin's acting theories and André Antoine's production methods.
Sara Allgood's performances for the Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey and on their annual London visits from 1904 to 1913 won acclaim; they included the title role in W. B. Yeats's Deirdre, Maurya in Riders to the Sea, Mrs Delane in Lady Gregory's Hyacinth Halvey, Widow Quin in Synge's Playboy of the Western World, and Kathleen in Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan. Lady Gregory became her ally and lifelong friend. She acted with Mrs Patrick Campbell in Deirdre (1908) and Electra (1909) in London. In 1908 she helped to open Miss Horniman's Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, and toured to Stratford in William Poel's production of Measure for Measure. ‘Miss Allgood's Isabella was magnificent—rich, vehement, passionate’, wrote Yeats (who earlier doubted her potential) to Synge (Saddlemyer, 277). She occasionally directed and she also taught acting. After a season at Liverpool Repertory Theatre in 1914 she made a hit as the unlikely comic lead in Peg o' my Heart, by J. Hartley Manners (1915). The play toured Australia in 1916, where she married Gerard Henson, her leading man. Her daughter, Mary, born 18 January 1918, lived for only an hour, and Henson himself died in the influenza epidemic in November 1918.
Back in London, Sara Allgood played Mrs Geoghegan in The Whiteheaded Boy by Lennox Robinson and Mrs O'Flaherty in O'Flaherty V.C. by G. B. Shaw (1920). Formerly a key player for Yeats and Lady Gregory, her personal and artistic maturity was now equally important to Sean O'Casey; her Juno, in his Juno and the Paycock on 3 March 1924, became part of Irish theatrical history. In two other O'Casey dramas, as Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars (1926) and Mrs Henderson in The Shadow of a Gunman (1927), she was unforgettable; she brought poetry to realism. Before and after the First World War she toured with the Abbey Theatre and the Irish Players in the USA—visits which affected the direction of American theatre. Other successes included Mrs Peachum in Sir Nigel Playfair's revival of John Gay's Beggar's Opera (London, 1925), Julia Hardy in Things that are Caesar's (London, 1933), Mme Raquin in Thérèse Raquin (Dublin, 1934), an adaptation of the novel by Émile Zola, and Honoria Flanaghan in Storm in a Teacup by James Bridie (London, 1936). However, she was never offered the great non-Irish classic roles. In 1940 she moved to Hollywood, and in 1945 became an American citizen. Among fifty films, she starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) and Juno and the Paycock (1930). Hollywood found her stage presence difficult, casting her in Irish character parts, but she was nominated for an Academy award as best supporting actress in John Ford's How Green was my Valley (1941). She died in Woodlands Hills, California, on 13 September 1950.
In Sara Allgood, seen as the Irish Eleonora Duse, critics praised the art that concealed art: simplicity, sincerity, depth of characterization, the haunting quality of her rich contralto voice, the ability to grip both audience and actors. Gabriel Fallon recalled that as she simply opened the door in act 3 of Juno, came in, and sat down, ‘tragedy sat at the elbow of every member of the audience’ (Coxhead, 212).
Maire O'Neill (1887–1952) was born Mary Agnes Allgood on 12 January 1887 in Dublin. The younger sister of Sara Allgood, she was known as Molly; she invented an Irish professional name in order to be distinct from Sally. In 1905 she joined the Irish National Theatre Society. A bewitching, rebellious, mischievous young woman, there was ‘a fascination about her that commands attention’ (Byrne, 91). She was engaged to John Millington Synge, whose obvious affection for her scandalized Miss Horniman, and met disapproval from her sister and from the other directors of the Abbey Theatre. An unequal partnership, with continuous quarrels, it stimulated some of Synge's best writing: ‘Playboy is radiant with the triumph of winning her, Deirdre poignant with the anguish of losing her’ (Coxhead, 194). Although Synge had already found elements of Pegeen Mike, Molly gave him the real impetus for the part that became her first major triumph when The Playboy of the Western World opened on 26 January 1907. Synge was writing Deirdre for Molly when he died in 1908; she collaborated with Yeats and Lady Gregory to finish the play. Critical responses to the production in 1910 suggest that it was too reverential, though Molly acted with pathos and beauty.
By 1910 Molly had equal billing with Sara on Abbey summer tours. On 15 July 1911 she married George Herbert Mair (1887–1926), political writer and reviewer of the Manchester Guardian; they had two children, Pegeen and John. Extending her range beyond Irish parts, she played Zerline in Turandot, adapted by Jethro Bethell (London, 1913). A season with Liverpool Repertory Company gave her the role of Mother in G. Hauptmann's Hannele, the title role in Shaw's Candida, and Nora Burke in Synge's The Shadow of the Glen. In June 1913 she played Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice in Tree's Shakespearian festival (London); she also played Mary Ellen in General John Regan, by G. A. Birmingham, in New York. 1914 saw her as Portia in The Merchant of Venice, in Paris and London. At the Abbey in 1916 she created Aunt Helen in The Whiteheaded Boy, but the need for money to keep open house for artists and writers in Chelsea meant that her leads in the Shaw season in 1917 were her last at the Abbey. Her range in the 1920s encompassed Mrs Beetle in The Insect Play, by the brothers Capek, in New York (1921), Widow Quin, and Mrs Gogan in O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars (1926). G. H. Mair died suddenly on 3 January 1926. On 22 June Molly married Arthur Sinclair (1883–1951), the Abbey's leading actor. They divorced after five years but remained friends and, with Sara, continued touring Irish plays to America. In later years O'Casey characters remained the staple of Molly's repertoire but she also played other roles, such as Aunt Judy in Shaw's John Bull's Other Island, in 1938. Her films included Love on the Dole (1941) and, posthumously, The Horse's Mouth (1953).
Molly's son died in a plane crash in 1942. She herself died in Basingstoke on 2 November 1952, following a fire at her home, 40 Redcliffe Square, Chelsea. Her obituary in The Stage (6 November 1952) praises her ‘matchless interpretations of the Irish character’ and ‘the powerful impact of her personality in all the pathetic, bitter and humorous facets of these vivid characters’. Nobody who saw or worked with the Allgood sisters ever forgot them. Geniuses in a new theatre movement—of idealism and art—their acting was one definition of the Abbey's greatness.
Susan C. Triesman
Sources
E. Coxhead, Daughters of Erin: five women of the Irish renascence, pbk edn (1979) · Who was who in the theatre, 1912–1976, 4 vols. (1978), vols. 1, 3 · E. M. Truitt, Who was who on screen, 3rd edn (1983) · A. Saddlemyer, ed., Theatre business: correspondence of the first Abbey Theatre directors: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge (1982) · J. P. Wearing, The London stage, 1900–1909: a calendar of plays and players, 2 vols. (1981) · R. Hogan and M. J. O'Neill, eds., Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre: a selection from his unpublished journal, Impressions of a Dublin playgoer (1967) · E. H. Mikhail, The Abbey Theatre: interviews and recollections (1988) · D. Byrne, The story of Ireland's national theatre: the Abbey Theatre, Dublin (1929) · S. McCann, ed., The story of the Abbey Theatre (1967) · Letters to Molly: John Millington Synge to Maire O'Neill, 1906–1909, ed. A. Saddlemyer (1971) · Irish Times (3 Nov 1952) · The Stage (6 Nov 1952) · The Stage (21 Sept 1950) · m. cert. [Mary Agnes Allgood] · d. cert. [Maire O'Neill]
Archives
NYPL, Berg collection, ‘Memories’ :: Dublin City Library, Irish theatre archive · Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts, London, Mander and Mitchenson theatre collection · NL Ire., Henderson scrapbook of the Abbey Theatre
FILM
BFINA · Los Angeles, California, Hollywood Film Archive
Likenesses
photograph, 1907 (Molly Allgood), priv. coll. · photograph, 1924, priv. coll. · photograph, still, 1949 (Molly Allgood), NL Ire., Bord Fáilte Éireann · R. Gregory, drawing (when young), repro. in Lady Gregory, Our Irish theatre (1914) · attrib. R. Gregory, pencil and ink drawing, NG Ire. [see illus.] · P. Tuohy, portrait, NL Ire.
Wealth at death
£18,000: The Stage (21 Sept 1950) · died in poverty; Mary Agnes Allgood: Coxhead, Daughters of Erin
© Oxford University Press 2004–13
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press
Susan C. Triesman, ‘Allgood, Sara (1883–1950)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2113/view/article/67794, accessed 8 Aug 2013]
Sara Allgood (1883–1950): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67794
Maire O'Neill (1887–1952): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74419
[Previous version of this biography available here: September 2004]
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