Originally to be a John Ford film (he produced it) but after filming a few scenes between Rod Taylor and Julie Christie he fell ill and returned to America; Cardiff shot almost all of it and was especially proud of the riot scene, which took three days. And I have to say that's a brilliantly edited sequence, by Anne Coates, also. He loved the script and the cast, at one point tricking Michael Redgrave in doing a long single take dialogue scene by saying they were just rehearsing it; he pulled it off perfectly and the take was done.
Ford had wanted the film to end after Maggie Smith leaves him in the rain with Christie coming back on and - as a prostitute - praising him for the authenticity of the play, but though the producers promised him the scene it was never shot. 'The Plough and the Stars' debuted at the Abbey Theatre in 1926 and did trigger rioting. Orson Welles appeared there in the early thirties.
One question - why not just make the film about Sean O'Casey rather than him hiding behind the fictional name of Jack Cassidy? John Whiting adapted O'Casey's autobiography 'Mirror in My House'.
With Flora Robson, Edith Evans, Jack MacGowran, Sian Phillips, T.P. McKenna and (briefly) Donal Donnelly.
Evocatively photographed by Ted Scaife (The Mercenaries, The Dirty Dozen, A Kid for Two Farthings. Outcast of the Islands, camera operator on The Third Man, second unit for The African Queen - thus the connection to Cardiff), music by Sean O'Riarda.
Anyway, it was rather good.
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