YOUNG CASSIDY (1965)

Taken from Sean O’Casey’s six-volume auto-bio, this fairly standard, fairly traditional Portrait of the Artist as a Young Working-Class Irish Playwright is also fairly good. Started by John Ford, he drank himself off the project in three weeks, happy to let Jack Cardiff take over.* Three sections appear to be Ford’s: a brief fling with a still barely known Julie Christie as a prostitute Rod Taylor’s Cassidy picks up at a street demonstration turned riot (the riot itself all Cardiff); some effective scenes surrounding the death of Cassidy’s mother (Flora Robson); and a very Fordian pub fight (check out a straight-ahead knock out punch from Taylor that’s pure John Wayne). But Cardiff also does fine work and certainly gets a lot of from his cast: Michael Redgrave’s W.B. Yeats and Edith Evans, even better as Abbey Theatre doyen Lady Gregory, each giving this rough young man encouragement when audiences initially reject him. Best of all is an unusually reticent Maggie Smith as the bookshop clerk who takes a liking to this violent-prone, self-taught man of letters whose spirit outruns her possibilities. (Ford approved script & cast, but I don’t think he worked with Smith.) A bit conventional, and the ending turns abrupt (would an encore meeting with a suddenly faded Julie Christie have done the trick?), but still involving stuff.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *With all but alcohol consumption in rapid decline, Ford no longer was being offered much other than Westerns, preferably with John Wayne attached as commercial insurance. Yet, Ford all but self-sabotaged this rare quality assignment drinking himself into oblivion most nights with Taylor around to carry him home to bed. Best guess is that Ford grew afraid of not being up to the possibilities of a dream project. And, rather than fail, bailed.

DOUBLE-BILL: One of the few things Alfred Hitchcock & John Ford had in common were uncharacteristically stiff Sean O’Casey play adaptations, JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK/’30 (Hitch) and Ford on THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS/’36.