Arthur Shields


Arthur Shields stood out, playing clergymen, in "How Green Was My Valley" and "Drums Along the Mohawk". I am guessing that as an Irish Protestant, Shields had studied well the rhetorical eccentricities and physiognomic grotesqueries of the Celtic-Calvanist prototype. And, without apostasizing his own Protestant faith, sympathized with the right of Catholic Ireland to be free from the clutches of that prototype and became that rarity, an Irish Protestant nationalist. Irish-Catholic Ford used Shields to poke fun at the prototype.

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I prefer his portrayal of the Anglican Vicar in The Quiet Man.

Oh Jerry,don't lets ask for the moon,we have the stars.

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you're right, and to make matters more interesting, he was Barry Fitzgerald's brother! They were on opposite sides during the Easter Uprising in 1917.

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how so?

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