Meany has a point. Throughout the history of American film, Irish characters are often played by American accents, and they wouldn’t always do their dialect homework. In the American acting community, a broad, all-in-one Irish accent began to emerge, and it was an accent that no one actually had. Meany pointed out:
“What we’re talking about here is: there’s a history in American films of Irish characters having these dreadful, dreadful, non-existent kind of accents. ‘Oh, top o’ the marnin’, top o’ the marnin’! Oh, sir Jesus Christ, oh dear Lard!’ And it’s all sing-song like that, you know. But the one I hold responsible for a lot of that is — and he was a great actor — but Barry Fitzgerald did it. And also Barry Fitzgerald had a chin like that and he’d be chewing the pipe and he talked like that, and so everybody in America thought Irish people talk like that.”
Fitzgerald had been working in film since 1920, but his fame exploded in 1944 for his Oscar-winning turn in Leo McCarey’s musical religious drama “Going My Way.” He also appeared in the 1952 John Wayne vehicle “The Quiet Man,” although he starred in 20 films in between the two, including “Duffy’s Tavern,” “The Naked City,” and “Silver City.” It seems the ghost of Fitzgerald hung over all Irish actors in America, and Meany hated that. He said:
“I remember going in and auditioning for things, and people would say I didn’t sound Irish. And I’d say [Barry Fitzgerald impression] ‘Oh, does that sound Irish? Does that sound Irish? Is that better?'”
Meany could sound stereotypically Irish if he wanted to, but he wanted more than that for his career.
