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Barry Fitzgerald (10 March 1888 – 14 January 1961) was an Irish stage, film and television actor.

Life

He was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland.^[1] He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry's College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service^[2], while also working at the Abbey Theatre. By 1929, he turned to acting full-time. He was briefly a roommate of famed playwright Sean O'Casey^[3] and starred in such plays as O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock'.

Birthplace of Barry Fitzgerald on Walworth Road, Portobello

Fitzgerald went to Hollywood to star in another O'Casey work, The Plough and the Stars (1936), directed by John Ford.^[1] He had a successful Hollywood career in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945), The Naked City (1948), and The Quiet Man (1952). Fitzgerald achieved a feat unmatched in the history of the Academy Awards: he was nominated for both the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same performance, as "Father Fitzgibbon" in Going My Way (1944).^[1] (Academy Award rules have since been changed to prevent this.) He won the Best Supporting Actor Award; an avid golfer, he later broke the head off his Oscar statue while practicing his golf swing. (During World War II, Oscar statues were made of plaster instead of gold, owing to wartime metal shortages.)

He returned to live in Dublin in 1959.^[1]

Fitzgerald has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for movies at 6220 Hollywood Blvd. and for television at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

Partial filmography

• Juno and the Paycock (1930)
• The Plough and the Stars (1936)
• Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• Four Men and a Prayer (1938)
• The Dawn Patrol (1938)
• The Long Voyage Home (1940)
• The Sea Wolf (1941)
• How Green Was My Valley (1941)
• Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941)
• Corvette K-225 (1943)
• Going My Way (1944)
• None but the Lonely Heart (1944)
• Incendiary Blonde (1945)
• The Stork Club (1945)
• And Then There Were None (1945)
• Two Years Before the Mast (1946)
• The Naked City (1948)
• The Story of Seabiscuit (1949)
• Union Station (1950)
• The Quiet Man (1952)
• The Catered Affair (1956)
• Cradle of Genius (1961)

See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References and sources

• Boylan, Henry (1999). A Dictionary of Irish Biography. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.  

External links

• Barry Fitzgerald at the Internet Movie Database
• Barry Fitzgerald at the Internet Broadway Database
• Barry Fitzgerald at Find a Grave