Hugh Leonard
Encyclopedia
Hugh Leonard was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote more than 18 plays, two volumes of essays and two autobiographies, one novel and numerous screenplays and teleplays, as well as writing a regular newspaper column.
, a suburb of Dublin, by Nicholas and Margaret Keyes, he changed his name to John Keyes Byrne. For the rest of his life, despite the pen name of "Hugh Leonard" which he later adopted and became well known by, he invited close friends to call him "Jack".
Leonard was educated at the Harold Boys' National School, Dalkey, and Presentation College
, Glasthule, winning a scholarship to the latter. He worked as a civil servant, for 14 years. During that time he both acted in and wrote plays for community theatre groups. His first play to be professionally produced was The Big Birthday Suit, which was mounted by the Abbey Theatre
in Dublin in 1956. After that his plays were produced regularly by Dublin's theatres.
He moved to Manchester
for a while, working for Granada Television
before returning to Ireland in 1970. There he settled in Dalkey.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Leonard adapted a number of classic novels for British television. In 1969, he won a Jacob's Award for his TV scripts for Nicholas Nickleby and Wuthering Heights
. He wrote the script for the RTÉ adaptation of Strumpet City
by James Plunkett
.
Three of Leonard's plays have been presented on Broadway
: The Au Pair Man (1973), which starred Charles Durning
and Julie Harris
; Da
(1978); and A Life
(1980). Of these, Da, which originated off-off-Broadway at the Hudson Guild Theatre
before transferring to the Morosco Theatre
, was the most successful, running for 20 months and 697 performances, then touring the United States for ten months. It earned Leonard both a Tony Award
and a Drama Desk Award
for Best Play. It was made into a film
in 1988, starring Martin Sheen
and Barnard Hughes
, who reprised his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance.
In 1984 Leonard discovered his accountant Russell Murphy had embezzled IR₤
258,000 from him. Leonard was particularly upset that Murphy had used his money to take clients to the theatre and purchased expensive seats at some of Leonard's plays.
Leonard wrote two volumes of autobiography, Home Before Night (1979) and Out After Dark (1989). Some of his essays and journalism were collected in Leonard's Last Book (1978) and A Peculiar People and Other Foibles (1979). In 1992 the Selected Plays of Hugh Leonard was published. Until 2006 he wrote a humorous weekly column, "The Curmudgeon", for the Irish Sunday Independent
newspaper. He had a passion for cats and restaurants, and an abhorrence of broadcaster Gay Byrne
.
Even after retiring as a Sunday Independent columnist, Leonard displayed an acerbic humour. In an interview with Brendan O'Connor
, he was asked if it galled him that Gay Byrne was now writing his old column. His reply was, "It would gall me more if he was any good at it." Leonard was a patron of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
In 1994, Leonard appeared in a televised interview with Gerry Adams
, president of Sinn Féin
, an Irish political party associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army
. Leonard had long been an opponent of political violence and a critic of the IRA. However on the show and afterwards he was criticized for being "sanctimonious and theatrical" towards Adams; at one point he referred to Sinn Féin
as "dogs".
Hugh Leonard- Odd Man In, a film on his life and work was shown on RTÉ in March 2009
Leonard died in his hometown, Dalkey
, aged 82, after a long illness, leaving €1.5 million in his will.
Novel
Essays
Autobiography
Screenplays and teleplays
Episodic television
Life and career
Leonard was born in Dublin as John Joseph Byrne, but was put up for adoption. Raised in DalkeyDalkey
Dalkey is suburb of Dublin and seaside resort in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an important port during the Middle Ages. According to John Clyn, it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century...
, a suburb of Dublin, by Nicholas and Margaret Keyes, he changed his name to John Keyes Byrne. For the rest of his life, despite the pen name of "Hugh Leonard" which he later adopted and became well known by, he invited close friends to call him "Jack".
Leonard was educated at the Harold Boys' National School, Dalkey, and Presentation College
Presentation College
Presentation College is a selective, government-assisted Roman Catholic secondary school located in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. It claims to be the first Catholic secondary school in South Trinidad, having been established circa 1930 in the basement of San Fernando Presbytery. It relocated...
, Glasthule, winning a scholarship to the latter. He worked as a civil servant, for 14 years. During that time he both acted in and wrote plays for community theatre groups. His first play to be professionally produced was The Big Birthday Suit, which was mounted by the Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
in Dublin in 1956. After that his plays were produced regularly by Dublin's theatres.
He moved to Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
for a while, working for Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
before returning to Ireland in 1970. There he settled in Dalkey.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Leonard adapted a number of classic novels for British television. In 1969, he won a Jacob's Award for his TV scripts for Nicholas Nickleby and Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
. He wrote the script for the RTÉ adaptation of Strumpet City
Strumpet City
Strumpet City is a historical novel by James Plunkett set in Dublin, Ireland, at the time of the Dublin Lock-out. In 1980, it was adapted into a successful TV drama by Radio Telefís Éireann, Ireland's national broadcaster...
by James Plunkett
James Plunkett
James Plunkett Kelly, or James Plunkett , was an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS.Plunkett grew up among the Dublin working class and they, along with the petty bourgeoisie and lower intelligentsia, make up the bulk of the dramatis personae of his oeuvre...
.
Three of Leonard's plays have been presented on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
: The Au Pair Man (1973), which starred Charles Durning
Charles Durning
Charles Durning is an American actor. With appearances in over 100 films, Durning's memorable roles include police officers in the Oscar-winning The Sting and crime drama Dog Day Afternoon , along with the comedies Tootsie, To Be Or Not To Be and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the last two...
and Julie Harris
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
; Da
DA
DA, da, or dA may refer to:* Da , a Tony-winning play by Hugh Leonard* Da , a movie adaptation of the play by Hugh Leonard* Adi Da, a spiritual leader once known as Da Free John, and Da Love-Ananda...
(1978); and A Life
A Life
A Life is a bittersweet comedy by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. The primary character is Desmond Drumm, a highly intelligent but bitterly cynical civil servant who must try to make sense of his life after learning that he has a terminal illness....
(1980). Of these, Da, which originated off-off-Broadway at the Hudson Guild Theatre
Hudson Guild
The Hudson Guild is a community-based social services organization rooted in and primarily focused on the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1897 by Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott as a settlement house, with the intention of helping to alleviate the problems of the...
before transferring to the Morosco Theatre
Morosco Theatre
The Morosco Theatre was a legitimate theatre located at 217 West 45th Street in the heart of the theater district in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States....
, was the most successful, running for 20 months and 697 performances, then touring the United States for ten months. It earned Leonard both a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
and a Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
for Best Play. It was made into a film
Da (film)
Da is a 1988 film directed by Matt Clark, produced by Julie Corman, and starring Martin Sheen, Barnard Hughes, reprising his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance, and William Hickey...
in 1988, starring Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen
Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez , better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands and Apocalypse Now , and in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.He is considered one of the best actors never to be...
and Barnard Hughes
Barnard Hughes
Bernard Aloysius Kiernan “Barnard” Hughes was an American actor of theater and film. Hughes became famous for a variety of roles; his most notable roles came after middle age, and he was often cast as a dithering authority figure or grandfatherly elder.-Personal life:Hughes was born in Bedford...
, who reprised his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance.
In 1984 Leonard discovered his accountant Russell Murphy had embezzled IR₤
Irish pound
The Irish pound was the currency of Ireland until 2002. Its ISO 4217 code was IEP, and the usual notation was the prefix £...
258,000 from him. Leonard was particularly upset that Murphy had used his money to take clients to the theatre and purchased expensive seats at some of Leonard's plays.
Leonard wrote two volumes of autobiography, Home Before Night (1979) and Out After Dark (1989). Some of his essays and journalism were collected in Leonard's Last Book (1978) and A Peculiar People and Other Foibles (1979). In 1992 the Selected Plays of Hugh Leonard was published. Until 2006 he wrote a humorous weekly column, "The Curmudgeon", for the Irish Sunday Independent
Sunday Independent
The Sunday Independent is a broadsheet Sunday newspaper published in Ireland by Independent News and Media plc. The newspaper is edited by Aengus Fanning, and is the biggest selling Irish Sunday newspaper by a large margin ; average circulation of 291,323 between June 2004 and January 2005,...
newspaper. He had a passion for cats and restaurants, and an abhorrence of broadcaster Gay Byrne
Gay Byrne
Gabriel Mary "Gay" Byrne is a veteran Irish presenter of radio and television. His most notable role was first host of The Late Late Show over a 37-year period spanning 1962 until 1999...
.
Even after retiring as a Sunday Independent columnist, Leonard displayed an acerbic humour. In an interview with Brendan O'Connor
Brendan O'Connor (journalist)
Brendan O'Connor is an Irish journalist, comedian, media personality and retired pop star. Since 2010 he has presented The Saturday Night Show on RTÉ One. O'Connor is a columnist for the Sunday Independent, and is editor of the newspaper's Life Magazine.O'Connor's pop career has included a stint...
, he was asked if it galled him that Gay Byrne was now writing his old column. His reply was, "It would gall me more if he was any good at it." Leonard was a patron of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
In 1994, Leonard appeared in a televised interview with Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams is an Irish republican politician and Teachta Dála for the constituency of Louth. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the second largest political party in Northern...
, president of Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
, an Irish political party associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
. Leonard had long been an opponent of political violence and a critic of the IRA. However on the show and afterwards he was criticized for being "sanctimonious and theatrical" towards Adams; at one point he referred to Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
as "dogs".
Hugh Leonard- Odd Man In, a film on his life and work was shown on RTÉ in March 2009
Leonard died in his hometown, Dalkey
Dalkey
Dalkey is suburb of Dublin and seaside resort in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement and became an important port during the Middle Ages. According to John Clyn, it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century...
, aged 82, after a long illness, leaving €1.5 million in his will.
Works
Plays- The Big Birthday Suit (1956)
- A Leap in the Dark (1957)
- Stephen D (1962)
- The Poker Session (1964)
- Mick and Mick (1966)
- The Late Arrival of Incoming Aircraft (1968)
- The Patrick Pearse Motel (1971)
- The Au Pair Man (1974)
- DaDa (play)Da is a 1978 comedy play by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard.NOTE: Performed by the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane Australia in 1975....
(1975) - Time Was (1980)
- A LifeA LifeA Life is a bittersweet comedy by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. The primary character is Desmond Drumm, a highly intelligent but bitterly cynical civil servant who must try to make sense of his life after learning that he has a terminal illness....
(1981) - Summer
- Suburb of Babylon (three one-act plays) (1983)
- "A Time of Wolves and Tigers"
- "Nothing Personal"
- "The Last of the Last of the Mohicans"
- Pizazz: (three one-act plays) (1986)
- "A View from the Obelisk"
- "Roman Fever"
- "Pizazz"
- Moving (1994)
Novel
- Parnell and the Englishwoman (1992)
Essays
- Rover and Other Cats (1972)
- Leonard's Last Book (1978)
- A Peculiar People and Other Foibles (1979)
Autobiography
- Home Before Night (1979)
- Out After Dark (1989)
Screenplays and teleplays
- Armchair Theatre
- "The Irish Boys" (1962)
- "A Kind of Kingdom" (1963)
- "I Loved You Last Summer" (1965)
- "The Big Blonde" (1966)
- "Love Life" (1967)
- "The Virgins" (1974)
- Thirty-Minute Theatre
- "The Late Arrival of the Incoming Aircraft" (1965)
- "A Time of Wolves and Tigers" (1967)
- The Wednesday Play
- "Silent Song" (1966)
- "The Retreat" (1966)
- Half Hour Story
- "Do You Play Requests?" (1968)
- "A View from the Obelisk" (1968)
- Comedy Playhouse
- "Me Mammy" (1968)
- Love Story
- "The Egg on the Face of the Tiger" (1968)
- Play of the Month
- "Stephen D" (adaptation) (1972)
- Strumpet City (1980)
- Good Behaviour (1983)
- DaDa (film)Da is a 1988 film directed by Matt Clark, produced by Julie Corman, and starring Martin Sheen, Barnard Hughes, reprising his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance, and William Hickey...
(1988) - Parnell & the Englishwoman (1991) TV mini-series
- Widows' Peak (1994)
Episodic television
- SakiSakiHector Hugh Munro , better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy...
: 8 episodes (adaptations) (1962) - ITV Play of the Week: "Come Back, Little ShebaCome Back, Little Sheba (play)Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1950 play by the American dramatist William Inge. The play was Inge's first, written while he was a teacher at Washington University in St...
" (adaptation) (1965) - The Hidden Truth: 1 episode (1964)
- Thirteen Against Fate: 1 episode (1966)
- Public Eye: 2 episodes (1966)
- The Informer: 2 episodes (1966)
- Out of the Unknown: 2 episodes (1966)
- Great ExpectationsGreat ExpectationsGreat Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
: 10 episodes (adaptations) (1967) - Liebesgeschichten: 1 episode (1967)
- Nicholas Nickleby: 13 episodes (adaptations) (1968)
- Late Night Horror: 1 episode (1968)
- Sherlock HolmesSherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
: 3 episodes (1968) - The Jazz Age: 1 episode (adaptation) (1968)
- Detective: 2 episodes (1968–1969)
- Dombey and SonDombey and SonDombey and Son is a novel by the Victorian author Charles Dickens. It was first published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848 with the full title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation...
: 13 episodes (adaptations) (1969) - W. Somerset MaughamW. Somerset MaughamWilliam Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
: 2 episodes (adaptations) (1969–1970) - Sentimental EducationSentimental EducationSentimental Education was Gustave Flaubert's last novel published during his lifetime, and is considered one of the most influential novels of the 19th century, being praised by contemporaries George Sand, Emile Zola, and Henry James.-Plot introduction:The novel describes the life of a young man ...
: 3 episodes (adaptations) (1970) - Six Dates with Barker: 1 episode (1971)
- The Moonstone: 5 episodes (1972)
- Country Matters: 4 episodes (adaptations) (1972–1973)
- Seven of One: 1 episode (1973)
- Black and Blue: 1 episode (1973)
- Father BrownFather BrownFather Brown is a fictional character created by English novelist G. K. Chesterton, who stars in 52 short stories, later compiled in five books. Chesterton based the character on Father John O'Connor , a parish priest in Bradford who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922...
: 6 episodes (adaptations) (1974) - Nicholas Nickleby: 6 episodes (1977)
- London Belongs to Me: 7 episodes (1977)
- Wuthering Heights: 2 episodes (1978)
- The Little World of Don Camillo: 12 episodes (1981)
- Storyboard: 1 episode (1989)
- Alleyn Mysteries: 1 episode (1993)