I recently accompanied this silent film at the Galway Film Fleadh. Made in Kerry by the New York Kalem Film Company in 1912, it tells the story of a violinist who is discovered by American tourists and brought to the States where he becomes highly successful. Then his mother shows up!
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The New York based Kalem Film Company first came to Ireland in 1910 to make the short film The Lad from Old Ireland. This was the first ever transatlantic film production and the first fiction film made in Ireland. Led by actor/director Sidney Olcott and actor/writer Gene Gauntier, they returned to Ireland several times to produce a series of Irish themed films and earned themselves the nickname the O’Kalems in the process.
Between 1910 and 1915 the O’Kalems made and released almost thirty films adapted from well-known songs, poems and dramas or original scenarios dealing with Irish history or the experience of emigration to the United States. They were extremely popular with American audiences and laid some of the templates and stereotypes that defined Hollywood perspectives on Ireland over the next half century.
Cast: Jack J Clark (Terence, the violinist), Anna Clark (Terence’s mother), J P McGowan (John Foster, an American banker). Gene Gauntier (Foster’s daughter), Alice Hollister, Arthur Donaldson.
Producer/Director: Sidney Olcott
