Edward L. Doheny died on this day in 1935. He was at one point the richest man in America and was known as the ‘Oil Baron of the South West’. The 2007 hit film, There Will be Blood is loosely based on his life. Edward L. Doheny was also the son of a penniless Tipperary migrant fleeing the famine.
Edward’s father Patrick seems to have come from Shangarry in the parish of Ballingarry but emigrated during or shortly after the famine. Patrick tried whaling after reaching Labrador in Canada. There he married Ellen Quigley from Newfoundland and shortly after the wedding, the pair moved to Wisconsin, where the Edward was born. In Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Pat Doheny became a construction labourer and gardener.
As a young man, Edward worked all over the US as a mule driver, gold miner, fruit packer, singing waiter and gunslinger. In 1893, using a sharpened tree trunk as a drill, Doheny and a friend struck oil near Los Angeles, which earned Doheny enough money to start drilling for more oil in California and Mexico. In Mexico, Doheny’s company leased a million acres and became the largest oil company there. During the Mexican Revolution, Doheny hired his own private army to protect his oil fields, which by 1922 had earned him over $30 million. By 1925, Doheny’s net worth passed $100 million and he was richer than John D. Rockefeller.
From 1916 onwards, Doheny was prominent in Irish-American affairs and he became president of the American Association for the recognition of the Irish Republic, and also took a prominent role in fund-raising activities.
It was to Shangarry that Edward L. Doheny went when he was looking to trace his roots on a visit to Ireland in the early 1920s, by which time he was in his 60s and was a very wealthy man. Doheny was a relation of Young Ireland and Fenian leader, Michael Doheny, who was born at Brook Hill in Fethard.
Edward L. Doheny died on 8 September 1935 and left behind an $85 million fortune.
Sources:
https://tipperarystudies.ie/.../11.-Michael-Doheny-the...
https://en.geneastar.org/gene.../dohenyedwar/edward-l-doheny
https://westadamsheritage.org/read/472
Kathleen Ryan, ‘the forgotten star of Hollywood’, was born in Dublin to Tipperary parents on this day in 1922.
Ryan was feted at film premieres, mixed with Hollywood’s leading men, was the subject of a celebrated Louis le Brocquy portrait and appeared set for the gilded life of a film superstar.
Kathleen Ryan was born above her mother’s shop in Dublin, the first child born to Seamus and Agnes Ryan (nee Harding). Kathleen’s mother Agnes, from Solohead, was the founder of the Monument Creamery chain of shops. She built a retail empire of 28 shops, cafes and a bakery in Dublin, making her probably one of the wealthiest women in the country and one of the few females to found and run a major enterprise in that era. Kathleen’s father Seamus was from Kilfeacle and was prominent within the Fianna Fail party and served as a senator.
Terry Clavin, writing in the Dictionary of Irish Biography states that Kathleen Ryan was ‘endowed with fine, alabaster features and a cascade of reddish auburn hair, she was a great beauty and the subject of a much-admired portrait by Louis Le Brocquy, ‘Girl in white’” - now held in the Ulster museum in Belfast. It was initially displayed at the Royal Irish Academy exhibition of 1941 and ‘was the sensation of the show’. Dressed in a beautiful white gown and painted in profile, she looks the picture of elegance and wealth.
Ryan first appeared on stage in 1940, performing at the Peacock theatre in the UCD players’ production of ‘the Shoemaker’s Holiday’. In 1946, despite limited experience, she was chosen to play opposite James Mason in Odd Man Out – a classic noir film set in an unnamed city in which an IRA raid goes wrong and during an exchange of gunfire, a policeman is killed. The cast was littered with high profile Irish actors, mainly from the Abbey Theatre. The film was released to sensational reviews in 1947.
'Odd Man Out Challenges Hollywood', read the Irish Independent headline. "Kathleen Ryan, the heroine, is a real person who plays her part with sincerity and never vulgarises it by self-conscious glamour," added the reviewer. The Irish Press reviewer wrote: "Kathleen Ryan has justified the English rave about her possibilities." An American reviewer described her as "beautiful as the girl, cool, statuesque and stoical, but it is difficult to fathom her thoughts".
Thereafter, the Rank Organisation, the biggest British film company, built her up as one of its leading starlets. After starring roles in Captain Boycott and Esther Waters she left her family for Hollywood in 1952, accompanied by her sister Cora. While she would go on to appear in films opposite some of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time – Rock Hudson, Dirk Bogarde and Stewart Granger – she would never garner such fame again as she had earned in the wake of Odd Man Out.
"The tragedy of her career was that she was forever given mournful 'Dark Rosaleen' parts that did not suit her," said Ide Ni Riain, about her high-spirited sister. Kathleen slipped down the billing in Hollywood and a seven-film contract signed in 1952 produced only two roles.
Her later films were of a poor standard and her movie career petered out in 1958. She didn't have the Abbey Theatre training of many of her contemporaries and gradually faded from the scene.
She married Dermod Devane from Limerick in 1944. They were considered one of the most attractive couples in the country and their wedding was a major society event. They had three children together but their marriage was annulled in 1958.
Kathleen Ryan lived her later years in Killiney, Co. Dublin and died of lung cancer in 1985. Her death notice of December 11, 1985, was simple and unadorned: "Kathleen Devane (nee Ryan) of No 10 Cluny Grove, Killiney, Dublin, mourned by her son, daughters, relatives and friends." There was no indication, except to those 'in the know' of her glamorous early life or her glittering film career.
Sources:
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/kathleen-ryan-the-irish-actress-who-became-forgotten-star-of-hollywood/38819032.html
https://www.dib.ie/biography/ryan-kathleen-a9593
https://www.themoviedb.org/person/98152-kathleen-ryan
