Hitchcock’s British Films

Juno and the Paycock (1930)

The lazy, strutting braggart, “Captain” Boyle (Edward Chapman ), would rather drink with his lying, thieving buddy, Joxer Daly (Sidney Morgan), than work or attend to the needs of his family, which responsibilities fall on his wife, Juno (Sara Allgood). Lawyer Charles Bentham (John Longden) brings news that the peacock Boyle stands to inherit 1,500 pounds from a distant relative. Bentham woos the Boyle girl, Mary (Kathleen O’Regan), away from her simple suitor, Jerry Devine (Dave Morris). Anticipating the legacy, the Boyles overextend themselves buying luxuries. But an error in Bentham’s wording of the will costs them the inheritance. Having made Mary pregnant, Bentham goes off to America. Devine is willing to take Mary back until he learns she is pregnant. Meanwhile, the Boyles’s son, Johnny (John Laurie), who lost an arm in his struggle for Ireland and who lives in fear for having informed on another young rebel, is taken off and executed. Juno bewails their dashed hopes, shamed daughter, lost son, and shattered life in the shadows of their repossessed flat. Hitchcock’s film of Sean O’Casey’s play was received with real enthusiasm . James Agate, in the Tatler of March 5, 1930, reports that “the audience audibly revelled in the film’s humours, and was audibly moved by its heart-rending close.” Agate himself calls the film “very Juno and the Paycock 1930 93 Juno and the Paycock nearly a masterpiece.” Though a “photographed play,” it “completely justifies the talkies. . . . A magnificent British picture.”1 For a film to justify the talkies was no small feat. Agate had called Elstree Calling “unmitigated footle, which would have bored an infants’ school.”2 Hitchcock dismisses the film as “just a photograph of a stage play”:3 “I must say that I didn’t feel like making the picture because, although I read the play over and over again, I could see no way of narrating it in cinematic form. . . . I photographed the play as imaginatively as possible, but from a creative viewpoint it was not a pleasant experience.”4 As to its rave reviews, “I was actually ashamed, because it had nothing to do with cinema. The critics praised the picture, and I had the feeling I was dishonest , that I had stolen something.”5 Still, Sean O’Casey was pleased with the film, for which he wrote the additional dialogue. O’Casey proposed he and Hitchcock do another film together, based on incidents in Hyde Park, but the story turned into the play Within the Gates.6 Hitchcock and Agate are correct. The film was one of Hitchcock’s most conservative treatments of a text. He may have been awed by the excellence of his cast, mainly Abbey Theatre players, including Sara Allgood, the original stage Juno, with the addition of two unknown actors who came up trumps. The Scot John Laurie played the haggard Johnny Boyle. The demanding role of the paycock went to an Englishman, Edward Chapman, as the original actor, Arthur Sinclair, was on tour. Hitchcock makes some small changes in the text, including the ending . O’Casey ends with the paycock returning home drunk and ignorant of his son’s death and his family’s dispossession. Hitchcock ends on Juno’s solitary grief, a simpler but more moving note than O’Casey’s dying strain. “Perhaps Mr. Hitchcock was right,” remarks Agate. “Irony is a kittle thing to submit to a film audience, and probably this admirable film producer has chosen wisely in ending on a safe note.”7 O’Casey opens with Mary and Juno and ends with Boyle and Joxer. Hitchcock opens with a new street scene then goes to Boyle, Joxer, and Mrs. Madigan in a pub. The street scene, as well as “opening the play out for the film,” approaches the Boyle family by way of the social background . Hitchcock moves from the public to the private. This counters both Juno and the paycock’s desire to stay uninvolved in public matters. The Boyles find the troubles reaching into their home. Hitchcock’s British Films 94 The opening addition also establishes community as an important theme in the film. The orator’s speech, delivered by Barry Fitzgerald, runs as follows, until it is interrupted by gunfire: Fellow countrymen, continuously and courageously we have fought and struggled for the national salvation of Ireland. When we have thought together and fought together we have always won. Remember that. When we have thought together and fought together we have...