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Lot 53
JOHN FORD'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE QUIET MAN, HEAVILY ANNOTATED THROUGHOUT BY MAUREEN O'HARA
29 November 2016, 12:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$50,000 inc. premium
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JOHN FORD'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE QUIET MAN, HEAVILY ANNOTATED THROUGHOUT BY MAUREEN O'HARA
Republic, 1952. Mimeographed manuscript, shooting script by Frank Nugent from a story by Maurice Walsh, 146 pp, legal folio, n.p., April 30, 1951, with blue revision pages dated May 2 bound in, heavily annotated throughout by O'Hara, housed in custom black cloth clamp binder by Boorum & Pease Co. with "John Ford" stamped in green to upper cover, signed ("O'Hara") to interior flyleaf, with two sheets of Ashford Castle stationery laid in, one annotated by O'Hara (notes regarding telephone calls).
For nearly 20 years, John Ford held onto the source material for The Quiet Man, a short story by Irish writer Maurice Walsh first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933. In Walsh's story are much of the major elements of the film: a prizefighter arrives from America to his hometown and falls in love with a local girl. Their courtship is hindered by her loutish brother, who eventually relents and allows her to marry, only to withhold her dowry. While the husband cares little for the money, the wife cannot feel herself truly married without it, and so the Quiet Man forces a showdown with his brother-in-law, demanding the dowry, burning it, and beating the larger man in a brutal fistfight.
Once Ford received the greenlight from Republic, he went to work on the screenplay, first hiring Richard Llewellyn, the author of How Green Was My Valley, and later bringing on Frank Nugent to produce the shooting script (it is Nugent who is credited in these pages). To Walsh's story, Ford added the backstory explaining why Sean refuses to fight for much of the film, and he also brought in colorful village characters such as the priest who narrates the story and the village matchmaker, Michaeleen Oge Flynn. He fleshed out the archaic courtship rituals that Sean and Mary Kate must go through, and he changed the final battle royal from a knockout by Sean to a draw between the two men.
This script is John Ford's copy, in his custom binder with his name on the cover, but clearly given to O'Hara for her to use for at least a portion of filming (a negative of O'Hara studying the present script was discovered among the images in lot 54). O'Hara has underscored Mary Kate Danaher's lines throughout in pencil and pen, and she has edited dialogue as well. In several places she has written out the lyrics to early 20th-century Irish melodies, including "Moonlight in Mayo" and "Noreen Bawn," both of which may have been alternatives to the song she does sing in the film ("Isle of Innisfree"). In several places where the screenplay indicates her dialogue (written out in English) is to be spoken in Gaelic, she has written out the translations in the margins and on the opposite pages, and she often edits her lines into a more authentically Irish patter: "You talk big" becomes "It's big talk you have," for example.
On the last page of the script, O'Hara seems to have phonetically written out a few Gaelic obscenities ("shee-a-pock—whore / goshthereen—big mistake (In Galway for bastard)," likely for Ford's edification and use.
The John Ford Papers are housed at Indiana University's Lilly Library, who first purchased the collection of 7000 archival items from the estate in 1982; the collection has since been augmented with gifts from the family over the decades. The Lilly Library, however, does not have a copy of The Quiet Man script among all its others.
For nearly 20 years, John Ford held onto the source material for The Quiet Man, a short story by Irish writer Maurice Walsh first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933. In Walsh's story are much of the major elements of the film: a prizefighter arrives from America to his hometown and falls in love with a local girl. Their courtship is hindered by her loutish brother, who eventually relents and allows her to marry, only to withhold her dowry. While the husband cares little for the money, the wife cannot feel herself truly married without it, and so the Quiet Man forces a showdown with his brother-in-law, demanding the dowry, burning it, and beating the larger man in a brutal fistfight.
Once Ford received the greenlight from Republic, he went to work on the screenplay, first hiring Richard Llewellyn, the author of How Green Was My Valley, and later bringing on Frank Nugent to produce the shooting script (it is Nugent who is credited in these pages). To Walsh's story, Ford added the backstory explaining why Sean refuses to fight for much of the film, and he also brought in colorful village characters such as the priest who narrates the story and the village matchmaker, Michaeleen Oge Flynn. He fleshed out the archaic courtship rituals that Sean and Mary Kate must go through, and he changed the final battle royal from a knockout by Sean to a draw between the two men.
This script is John Ford's copy, in his custom binder with his name on the cover, but clearly given to O'Hara for her to use for at least a portion of filming (a negative of O'Hara studying the present script was discovered among the images in lot 54). O'Hara has underscored Mary Kate Danaher's lines throughout in pencil and pen, and she has edited dialogue as well. In several places she has written out the lyrics to early 20th-century Irish melodies, including "Moonlight in Mayo" and "Noreen Bawn," both of which may have been alternatives to the song she does sing in the film ("Isle of Innisfree"). In several places where the screenplay indicates her dialogue (written out in English) is to be spoken in Gaelic, she has written out the translations in the margins and on the opposite pages, and she often edits her lines into a more authentically Irish patter: "You talk big" becomes "It's big talk you have," for example.
On the last page of the script, O'Hara seems to have phonetically written out a few Gaelic obscenities ("shee-a-pock—whore / goshthereen—big mistake (In Galway for bastard)," likely for Ford's edification and use.
The John Ford Papers are housed at Indiana University's Lilly Library, who first purchased the collection of 7000 archival items from the estate in 1982; the collection has since been augmented with gifts from the family over the decades. The Lilly Library, however, does not have a copy of The Quiet Man script among all its others.