From musical comedy to the silver screen
On Christmas Day, 1891, the star of New York’s Irish-set musical comedy, Mavourneen, took ill on stage in the Fourteenth Street Theatre during the matinee performance. Playing the role of an eighteenth-century Irishman, William J. Scanlan suffered some kind of violent fit. A seasoned pro, he seems to have struggled on to the final curtain and recovered quickly to return to the stage for the evening performance.
The sentimental flavour of the production in which Scanlan was performing when he succumbed to his breakdown may be gleaned from the names of some of the songs which featured. They included The Auld Country, Molly O! and Mrs Reilly’s Party. The title, Mavourneen, an anglicisation of the Irish mo mhurnín, most likely drew on the popularity of the song Kathleen Mavourneen.
Hayes was born into a musical family in Patrick Street in 1818; her father was a bandmaster with the local militia. Having studied with a voice teacher in Dublin, in her twenties, she earned renown touring the country, even performing at one Liszt’s concerts in the capital in 1841. The 1850s saw Hayes become a global superstar. In 1851, she performed in New York at a benefit concert for Fr Mathew, the founder of the Total Abstinence Society, before embarking on a gruelling tour of the United States, partly organised by the roguish PT Barnum. Stops in South America, Australia, India, Singapore and Java followed.
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