Was barry fitzgerald gay

By Scott Ross

In her capsule review of The Last Hurrah, Pauline Kael noted, not without cause, &#;John Ford turned into a sentimental faker whenever he got adjacent the Blarney stone.&#;* Of greater account to me than his sentiment was Ford&#;s indulgence in allegedly hilarious comedy based on that most innovative of cultural figures, the drunken, brawling Irishman. If any other, non-Irish filmmaker had so consistently depicted Gaelic masculinity in this way, I think we can conceive Ford&#;s response. Only occasionally does he rise above these affectations (or are they afflictions?) and rarely for an entire picture. The rapturous The Silent Man comes close, as close as Ford ever got, even with an epic fist-fight at its climax. It&#;s also, despite the comic elements, his most mature depiction of romantic love, and his sexiest work. The picture has the deliberate perceive of a fable,† and Ford and Frank S. Nugent, his gifted scenarist, are careful not to nail it down to a date, although you can extrapolate the deed as taking place in the late s or early &#;30s. Ford fell in l