Rex Ingram was born this day in 1893. He became a hugely successful film director in America and has a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Rex saw his first moving picture, or movie, while living in Nenagh at the turn of the 20th century.
Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock was born in Dublin but the family moved to Nenagh in 1898 when Rex’s father Francis, a Church of Ireland clergyman, was appointed to the curacy of Nenagh.
In his memoirs called ‘A Long Way From Tipperary’, Rex recalled the day when Cleary’s circus came to Nenagh. Posters announced that in addition to the usual performing elephants, bears and horses, this circus would include a Cinematographe – the latest attraction with living, moving, life-sized pictures. ‘I saw a flickering “rainy” cinematograph, very black and white, with men running a hurdle race at twice normal speed, and a train coming into a station and then 2 scenes of Mr. Somebody in his record breaking though top-heavy motorcar, which moved without them, but would, I thought, have looked better with horses,’ Rex later remembered.
So impressed was the young Rex that he decided then and there to make a motion picture. The subject, Richard the Lionheart cutting off a Saracen’s head, was inspired by Michaud’s History of the Crusades once given to him by his father. The result was a little too jerky to be considered truly great, a consequence of a discrepancy in the size of the drawings and some uneven stitching of the finished result. Still, it is enough to claim that Rex Ingram made his first film in Nenagh.
In 1901 the Hitchcocks moved again, this time to Borrisokane, where Reverend Hitchcock was appointed rector. They remained in Borrisokane until 1903 when the family relocated to Kinnity, Co. Offaly.
At the age of 18, Rex emigrated to America, never to visit Ireland again. In 1916, he directed his first silent film, The Great Problem, for Universal studios. By 1917, he directed four films and earned a reputation as a brilliant director, but very hard to work with.
‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (1921), a film set during the Great War is considered to be Ingram’s masterpiece. Shooting lasted six months, unheard of at the time, and filming involved 12,000 people. Ingram insisted that a young unknown Rudolf Valentino be cast as the lead with Alice Terry playing the heroine. The film was an international success but was savaged by the Irish press after its opening in Dublin.
The Three Passions (1929) was his last silent film, and with the advent of sound he lost his interest in directing. He retired in 1931 and died in California in 1950. David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia, called Ingram his idol. Michael Powell, celebrated English filmmaker, said that Ingram was the ‘greatest stylist of our time’. Perhaps the most fitting epitaph was given by James Joyce in Finnegans wake: ‘Rex Ingram, pageant master.’
Sources:
https://www.nenaghguardian.ie/2022/11/14/mural-adds-zest-and-colour/
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/rex-ingram-the-forgotten-irish-director-who-helped-shape-hollywood-1.3424375
https://www.dib.ie/biography/hitchcock-reginald-ingram-montgomery-rex-ingram-a4030
https://www.offalyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Rex-Ingram-and-the-Midlands.pdf
