Barry Fitzgerald

This article is about the actor. For the Australian rules footballer, see Barry Fitzgerald (Australian rules footballer).

Barry Fitzgerald
Born	William Joseph Shields 10 March 1888 Dublin, Ireland
Died	14 January 1961(1961-01-14) (aged 72) Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1924–61

Barry Fitzgerald (10 March 1888 – 14 January 1961) was an Irish stage, film, and television actor.

Life

He was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry's College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service, while also working at the Abbey Theatre. By 1929, he turned to acting full-time. He was briefly a roommate of famed playwright Sean O'Casey and starred in such plays as O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock and the premiere of The Silver Tassie.

Birthplace of Barry Fitzgerald on Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin

Fitzgerald went to Hollywood to star in another O'Casey work, The Plough and the Stars (1936), directed by John Ford. He had a successful Hollywood career in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945), The Naked City (1948), and The Quiet Man (1952). Fitzgerald achieved a feat unmatched in the history of the Academy Awards: he was nominated for both the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same performance, as "Father Fitzgibbon" in Going My Way (1944). (Academy Award rules have since been changed to prevent this.) He won the Best Supporting Actor Award; an avid golfer, he later broke the head off his Oscar statue while practising his golf swing. (During World War II, Oscar statues were made of plaster instead of gold, owing to wartime metal shortages.)

He returned to live in Dublin in 1959.

Fitzgerald has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for movies at 6220 Hollywood Blvd. and for television at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography

• Juno and the Paycock (1930)
• The Plough and the Stars (1936)
• Ebb Tide (1937)
• Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• Four Men and a Prayer (1938)
• Marie Antoinette (1938) (uncredited)
• The Dawn Patrol (1938)
• Pacific Liner (1939)
• The Saint Strikes Back (1939)
• Full Confession (1939)
• The Long Voyage Home (1940)
• San Francisco Docks (1940)
• The Sea Wolf (1941)
• How Green Was My Valley (1941)
• Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941)
• The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1943)
• Corvette K-225 (1943)
• Going My Way (1944)
• I Love a Soldier (1944)
• None but the Lonely Heart (1944)
• Incendiary Blonde (1945)
• Duffy's Tavern (1945)
• And Then There Were None (1945)
• The Stork Club (1945)
• Two Years Before the Mast (1946)
• California (1947)
• Easy Come, Easy Go (1947)
• Welcome Stranger (1947)
• The Naked City (1948)
• The Sainted Sisters (1948)
• Miss Tatlock's Millions (1948)
• Top o' the Morning (1949)
• The Story of Seabiscuit (1949)
• Union Station (1950)
• Silver City (1951)
• Ha da venì... don Calogero! (1952)
• The Quiet Man (1952)
• Tonight's the Night (film) (1954)
• The Catered Affair (1956)
• Rooney (1958)
• Broth of a Boy (1959)
• Cradle of Genius (1961)

See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References and sources

• Boylan, Henry (1999). A Dictionary of Irish Biography. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4. 

External links

• Barry Fitzgerald at the Internet Movie Database
• Barry Fitzgerald at the Internet Broadway Database
• Barry Fitzgerald at Find a Grave