Jer O’Leary as Jim Larkin (Image by Donal Higgins)
Playing Larkin is a pleasure and an honour. Some parts are just performance tasks, but Larkin was one of the finest specimens of humanity; a wonderful mind, great courage with the heart of a lion, unusual vision, and a voice like rolling thunder.
-Jer O’Leary on playing the role of Larkin, Evening Press, January 1980.
There are many difficult audiences in this town, but if you haven’t, you should try explaining the ins and outs of the 1913 Lockout to a room full of school children. Against the backdrop of the centenary of the great dispute, I had the pleasure of trying this. They listened, though how much of it registered has puzzled me since. Following a brief historic overview, the next speaker was Jer O’Leary. The veteran and much-loved Dublin actor shook the walls of the Ringsend school, bringing the words of Jim Larkin to life. I think the children by the end had some sense of the power of the story.
Dubliner Jer O’Leary, the Bard of Drumcondra, lived many lives in one. As an actor, activist, artist and raconteur he was a frequent face on the streets of Dublin. His booming and distinctive voice could be heard across the street over any volume of Dublin traffic. He was, firmly and completely, a man of the Left. In 1967, a 22 year old Jer O’Leary joined the Republican movement, the beginning of a life-long involvement in republican and socialist politics that shaped everything he did.
O’Leary in the Project in 1986 at an exhibition of his labour movement banners. More on that below.
Football was a great love too. As the book The Lost Revolution rightly notes, “he delighted in reminding GAA devotees that the Dublin IRA’s commander in 1921, Oscar Traynor, had been a soccer player.” O’Leary may well have attended more FAI Cup Finals than Traynor himself, and was present in 1961 when Saint Patrick’s Athletic won the cup in Dalymount Park against his own beloved Drumcondra. Willie Peyton’s heroic goal that day is something I’ve heard of from many Pats fans that were in attendance, but nobody told the tale as well as Jer. Each time I heard the story from him it was as if Peyton was deeper and deeper into his own half. Eventually in the telling, he may as well have been in deepest suburban Cabra kicking a ball in the general direction of the stadium. Whatever the debate about where Peyton kicked from, he was certainly far from goal. When Drumcondra went to the wall, one of the great losses of Irish footballing history, O’Leary retained a grá for association football in Dublin. A great Celtic fan, like his late son Diarmuid who died in tragic circumstances on a trip to see the Hoops, he remained familiar with Dalymount Park as a supporter of Bohs. Still, like all true Drumcondra fans, he answered ‘Drums’ to the question of which Dublin team he supported. Those who kept faith with the sport are now spread across the football grounds of Dublin.
A Bohemian FC flag produced by Jer O’Leary, bringing together two of his great passions.
As a stage actor, O’Leary came to public prominence thanks to a legendary production of James Plunkett’s The Risen People, directed by Peter and Jim Sheridan. The production did tremendously well in Dublin, but was also taken to London as part of the Sense of Ireland Festival. A 1986 profile piece on O’Leary noted that “his most notorious moment on stage – which is also a legend in Irish circles – was his dramatic playing in Peter Weiss’s work, The Marat Sade.”
The play, a Marxist view of the French Revolution, coincided perfectly with O’Leary’s vision for modern day Ireland. But one fine night at the end of the performance, the actor decided that modern Ireland and revolutionary France should bridge the gap of time. He told the packed house in a completely unrehearsed speech that the alleged Sallins train robbers, who were then on trial, were completely innocent. For his ‘unprofessional conduct’ he had to be rescued from the wrath of the cast, whose efforts to hang him fro the highest point of the dressing room were guillotined by the back stage staff.
There was something about Jer as Larkin that registered deeply with Dubliners, even if the Toxteth-born Scouser developed an accent more akin to Dublin’s north inner-city, the energy was a perfect replica. In 1993 he was centrally involved in the historical commemorations of the Lockout organised by the North Inner City Folkore Project, addressing a huge crowd from the window of Clery’s, and he would revive the role for further historic anniversaries. Countess Markievicz recalled hearing Larkin speak and feeling that she was in the presence of “some great primeval force rather than a man”. To try and be Larkin took a certain confidence, which Jer had in abundance.
In addition to Plunkett’s tribute to Larkin, Jer was also familiar with the work of another great left-wing playwright, in the form of Bertolt Brecht. In 1977, Donald Taylor-Black’s ambitious production of Brecht’s classic The Mother was a highlight of Dublin’s annual theatre festival. Jer brought the same passion to the role that he did to the story of Dublin in dispute.
Irish Press, August 1993.
The Risen People was the beginning of a brilliant creative relationship with Jim Sheridan that led to many on-screen appearances for Jer. Their personal friendship stretched back to footballing days at Whitworth Celtic. There is hardly a Sheridan film you won’t find O’Leary in, one being particularly surprising. Jer recounted that when Sheridan was filming the 50 Cent biopic film Get Rich or Die Tryin‘:
Jim rang me the night before and told me the scenes were being shot in Balgriffen Cemetery in north Dublin. He picked me up in a stretch Merc and gave me a few beeps when he came up the road. He said to me that we’ve been together so long it would be bad luck to leave me out.
His on-screen work included projects as diverse as Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (in which he played Thomas J. Clarke), Sheridan’s powerful In America, and the music video for Lankum’s Cold Old Fire:
Jer didn’t only bring Larkin to life on stage, but on the streets. His gallery was the mass protest, every May Day and during every dispute, when the banners of the union movement paraded proudly. As an artist, Jer developed a particular knack for producing high quality and beautifully stitched labour movement banners with the help of wife Eithne, the kind that would be displayed abroad in museums like the Peoples History Museum in Manchester.
In praising his work, Fintan O’Toole wrote in the pages of The Irish Times that “O’Leary’s banners strike a blow. They shake Trade Union imagery away from Victorian paternalism…on the streets they billow like sails set for a voyage.” These banners depicted our dead, including James Connolly, Tadhg Barry and Alice Brady, and showed key moments in the long struggle of the Irish working class. His banners were rightly honoured with an exhibition in the Project Theatre in 1986, the first such exhibition of union banners ever held in Ireland, and have also been displayed in Liberty Hall. Jer described the pieces beautifully as “moving murals”, which in their own way they were. An exhibition of Jer’s work was even opened in the Cuban capital of Havana in 1988, with newspapers noting that “an address was made at the opening by world renowned Dr. Angel Garcia and the attendance included 300 students from a variety of Latin American countries.”
Cover of Jer O’Leary’s Banners of Unity (Image Credit: Ulysses Rare Books)
Siptu banner produced by Jer O’Leary (Image Credit: Rabble)
In the later years of his life, O’Leary continued doing what he did best, with roles in diverse productions including Game of Thrones and the excellent RTE short production Flow, also featuring Paul Alwright & Temper-Mental MissElayneous. I remember being not in the least surprised to see a poster advertising the recent book Humans of Dublin (a collection of Dublin street photographs) glaring back at me from Hodges Figgis using his face. He had one of those Dublin faces and styles more accustom to the day of Arthur Fields standing on the O’Connell Bridge.
He was never far from radicalism, remaining a frequent sight on trade union and protest demonstrations, and reviving the Larkin role at all opportunities. He will be missed by many in the theatres, football grounds, public houses, meeting halls and galleries of a city he truly loved with all his being.
We at Come Here To Me express our sincere condolences to his family, friends and comrades.
Maria Fallon, Tom Stokes, Jer O’Leary and Frank Allen in 2014 at the launch of The Pillar.