Grafton Picture House | |
 | |
| Address | Dublin Ireland |
|---|---|
| Current use | HMV (music retailer) |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 11 April 1911 |
| Closed | 1 December 1973 |
| Reopened | 18 September 1959 |
| Architect | Richard Orpen |
The Grafton Cinema was a film theatre on Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland which operated for over sixty years.
Known originally as the Grafton Picture House, the cinema opened on Easter Monday, 11 April 1911, at 72 Grafton Street. [1] It was designed by architect, Richard Orpen. [2] Continuous performances ran from 12.00 to 10.30pm each day. Admission was one shilling for adults; children were charged half-price. [1] Among the films shown during its first year was The Crusaders, which depicted the medieval conquest of Jerusalem by European armies. [3] Dublin received its first presentation of "talking pictures" in April 1914 when Thomas Edison's Kinetophone technology was demonstrated at the Grafton. [4] In late 1913 or early 1914, nationalists disrupted the programme on several occasions due to the inclusion of a British Army recruitment film. [5]
Robert Flaherty's documentary film, Man of Aran , received its Irish première at the Grafton on 6 May 1934. Éamon de Valera, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State attended, as well as various dignitaries from politics and the arts. [6]
On 18 September 1959, the Grafton Cinema was relaunched as a news and cartoon cinema by its new owner, the British chain, Capital and Provincial News Theatres Ltd. [7] Instead of the full-length feature films which had previously been the staple of the cinema's listings, it now ran continuous programmes of newsreels, cartoons, and short films featuring comedy acts such as The Three Stooges and Joe McDoakes.
During the 1960s, the Grafton also became a popular late-night venue for folk and traditional Irish music concerts, featuring artists such as Sean Nós singer, Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, fiddler, Martin Fay, and tin whistle player, Seán Potts. [8] In August 1963, The Dubliners made one of their first appearances together when they performed in a midnight concert at the cinema. [9] Six months later, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger made their Dublin début at the Grafton. [10]
By the early 1970s, rental incomes and property values in Grafton Street had risen significantly due to intensifying competition within the retail sector in one of the city's prime shopping districts. Vendors of freehold properties on the street, such as the Grafton Cinema, could realise substantial capital gains. This was borne out in November 1973 when the cinema was sold for £400,000, regarded as a high price at the time. [11] On 1 December, its fifteen staff were made redundant and the Grafton Cinema closed its doors for the last time. [12] Shortly afterwards it was converted into a retail outlet. [13] The site is currently occupied by a branch of The White Company, a home decor and furniture retailer. [14]
Cinemas of Dublin | ||
|---|---|---|
| Current |  | |
| Former | ||
James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song, which is a variant of The Elfin Knight, lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough Fair" variant was most common in the Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine."
The Dubliners were an Irish folk band founded in Dublin in 1962 as The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, named after its founding member; they subsequently renamed themselves The Dubliners. The line-up saw many changes in personnel over their fifty-year career, but the group's success was centred on lead singers Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew. The band garnered international success with their lively Irish folk songs, traditional street ballads and instrumentals. The band were regulars on the folk scenes in both Dublin and London in the early 1960s, and were signed to the Major Minor label in 1965 after backing from Dominic Behan who was paid by Major-Minor to work with the Dubliners and help them to build a better act fit for larger concert hall venues. The Dubliners worked with Behan regularly between 1965 and 1966; Behan wrote numerous songs for this act including the song McAlpine's Fusiliers created specifically to showcase Ronnie Drew's gravel voice. They went on to receive extensive airplay on Radio Caroline which was part owned by Phil Solomon CEO of Major Minor, and eventually appeared on Top of the Pops in 1967 with hits "Seven Drunken Nights" and "The Black Velvet Band". Often performing political songs considered controversial at the time, they drew criticism from some folk purists and Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ had placed an unofficial ban on their music from 1967 to 1971. During this time the band's popularity began to spread across mainland Europe and they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States. The group's success remained steady right through the 1970s and a number of collaborations with The Pogues in 1987 saw them enter the UK Singles Chart on another two occasions.
Luke Kelly was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Becoming known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Post and other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers.
Seán Keating was an Irish romantic-realist painter who painted some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland. He spent two weeks or so each year during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depicted them as rugged heroic figures. However, he ceased to visit the Aran Islands in 1965.
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folk singer. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years, and was married to the singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Kate St John is a composer, arranger, producer and instrumentalist. Classically trained on oboe, she gained a music degree at City University London. Her first band was The Ravishing Beauties with Virginia Astley and Nicky Holland. The trio joined The Teardrop Explodes in Liverpool during the winter of 1981 for a series of dates at a small clubs and a UK tour in early 1982. During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a member of The Dream Academy with Nick Laird-Clowes and Gilbert Gabriel. In 1985 they had a worldwide hit with "Life In A Northern Town" and produced three albums: The Dream Academy (1985), Remembrance Days (1987) and A Different Kind Of Weather (1990). In the 1990s St. John was a member of Van Morrison's live band playing oboe and saxophone. She played on 5 Van Morrison albums. In 1994 she co-wrote and sang on 4 tracks with Roger Eno on the album The Familiar on the All Saints Label. This led to the formation of Channel Light Vessel, a band with Kate, Roger Eno, Bill Nelson, Laraaji and Mayumi Tachibana. St John has released two solo albums: Indescribable Night (1995) and Second Sight (1997).
"The Black Velvet Band" is a traditional folk song collected from singers in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada and the United States describing how a young man is tricked and then sentenced to transportation to Australia, a common punishment in the British Empire during the 19th century. Versions were also published on broadsides.
Bill Leader is an English recording engineer and record producer. He is particularly associated with the British folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s, producing records by Paddy Tunney, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Frank Harte and many others.
Dominic Behan was an Irish songwriter, singer, short story writer, novelist and playwright who wrote in Irish and English. He was also a socialist and an Irish republican. Born into the literary Behan family, he was one of the most influential Irish songwriters of the 20th century.
Isla Cameron was a Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. AllMusic noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival - and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". She was a respected and popular folk music performer through the 1950s and early 60s as well as appearing in several films; she focused almost exclusively on her acting career from 1966 onwards. Cameron provided the singing voice for actress Julie Christie's part in the hit 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but changed career direction and became a film researcher in the early 1970s before her early death in a domestic accident in 1980. One of the traditional songs in her repertoire, "Blackwaterside", recorded by Cameron in 1962, was subsequently popularised by notable "next generation" U.K. folk music performers Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny.
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is a 1957 folk song written by British political singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his wife. At the time, the couple were lovers, although MacColl was still married to his second wife, Jean Newlove. Seeger sang the song when the duo performed in folk clubs around Britain. During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972, winning Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Billboard ranked it as the number one Hot 100 single of the year for 1972.
The Critics Group, also known as The London Critics Group, was a group of people who met to explore 'how best to apply the techniques of folk-music and drama to the folk revival' under the direction of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, with some participation from Bert Lloyd and Charles Parker. Running for eight years from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, it was not a conventional musical group or band as it had no permanent line-up. Members would perform with each other on an ad-hoc basis as situations demanded.
Seeger is the surname of various people.
Philip Donnellan was an English documentary film-maker.
The Unfortunate Rake is an album released by Folkways Records in 1960, containing 20 different variations from what is sometimes called the 'Rake' cycle of ballads. The album repeats a claim made by Phillips Barry in 1911 that the song is Irish in origin, a claim made on the basis of a fragment called "My Jewel My Joy" collected in Ireland in 1848. The song is incorrectly said to have been heard in Dublin, when the cited source states it was collected and had been heard in Cork. However, the notes to the album make no mention of what is now thought to be the oldest written version of the song, one called "The Buck's Elegy".
The Shoals of Herring is a ballad, written by Ewan MacColl for the third of the original eight BBC Radio balladsSinging the Fishing, which was first broadcast on August 16, 1960. Ewan MacColl writes that the song was based on the life of Sam Larner, a fisherman and traditional singer from Winterton-on-Sea, Norfolk, England. Liam Clancy, who performed the song for decades, tells a more nuanced story, saying that MacColl "tape recorded all the old fisherman up along the east coast of England. And he never used one word of his own. ... He rhymed the lines that the fishermen had given him, and he made it into a song..."
Jack Warshaw is an American folksinger, songwriter and musician, best known for his 1976 protest song "If They Come in the Morning," aka "No Time for Love." He moved to England in 1965 to start a career as an architect but stayed because the folk music scene and the Vietnam War intervened.
Samuel James Larner was an English fisherman and traditional singer from Winterton, a fishing village in Norfolk,