John MacDonagh (1880-1961) Collection

Context

Creator(s): John MacDonagh

• Administrative History ↴

  John MacDonagh was born in 1880 in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary. During his life he had a prolific and varied career as a playwright, film director, writer, poet, singer and musical composer, as well as participating in the 1916 Easter Rising as a member of the Irish Volunteers. He trained as a singer in Italy and began his working life in the theatre touring with the Moody-Manners Opera Company, performing in various grand opera productions in England and the United States, before writing the script for D.W. Griffith’s 1910 film “The Fugitive” (Griffith, as a historical side-note, was the director of the notorious 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation”). He returned to Ireland and became actor-producer with the Irish Theatre Company, founded in 1914 by Edward Martyn, his brother Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett. Here, he produced plays by masters of theatre such as Tchekoff, Ibsen, Strindberg and Maeterlinck for the first time in Ireland. A member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, though not a member of its Military Council, John MacDonagh served as a Lieutenant with the Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising. Stationed at the Jacob’s Biscuit Factory (now the site of the National Archives of Ireland) on Bishop Street, Dublin, he served alongside his brother Thomas. Thomas MacDonagh served as Commandant of the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Volunteers during the Rising, with Major John MacBride as his second-in-command. Other notable figures also garrisoned at Jacob’s were Michael O’Hanrahan, who had served with MacBride’s Irish Transvaal Brigade, established to fight alongside the Boers against the British in the Boer War, and Peadar Kearney, author of the lyrics of Amhrán na bhFiann. Following the surrender of the rebels Thomas MacDonagh was court martialled and sentenced to death by firing squad. For his own part in the Rising, John was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, and was incarcerated firstly at Knutsford Jail, Cheshire, England, before being moved to the Frongoch internment camp in Merionethshire, Wales. Frongach housed approximately 1,800 Irishmen following the Rising, where they were accorded prisoner-of-war status. It played host to many notable future leaders of the Irish struggle for independence and earned the nickname “The University of Revolution.” MacDonagh was released in August 1916 and returned to Ireland. He joined the newly established Film Company of Ireland, working alongside its main director and Abbey actor Joseph Michael Kerrigan. He directed several motion pictures, including “Willie Reilly and his Colleen Bawn (1920),” filmed in the grounds of St. Enda's (the school founded by Padraig Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh to promote Irish education), in which he also acted, and a short propaganda film advertising Republican loan bonds, featuring Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and other members of the first Dáil. He went on to produce several of his own plays, and had particular success with “The Irish Jew (1921),” his play about a Jewish man who becomes Lord Mayor of Dublin, and which went on to be produced in the US. In 1924 he established his new revue called “Dublin Tonight” (revue being a very popular entertainment genre at the time), garnering much public acclaim. His short plays, sketches and songs were also contemporaneous favourites on Irish radio. In 1937 he was appointed to the newly created post of Productions Manager at Radio Éireann, which he held until 1947. Following this position he produced the sponsored radio programme for the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes. John MacDonagh died on 1 July 1961, at the Meath Hospital, and is buried at Dean’s Grange Cemetery, Dublin.

• Archival History ↴

  The collection was donated to the Dublin City Library and Archive by Joan Heneghan and Eileen Heneghan on 16 December 2015. Their great-aunt, Eileen, was married to the playwright John MacDonagh, brother of Thomas MacDonagh (1916 Proclamation signatory).

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Donation