Tom Lennon hopes Chicago’s Irish accept his apology.
The series producer of “The Irish in America: Long Journey Home” could have done 36 hours on the story of the Irish, he said, but the constraints of time and money limited him to six.
Covering a 100-year-plus journey starting with the potato famine and ending in present day — tracing the struggles and successes of millions of immigrants — the story of the Chicago Irish did not make the cut.
“You know from the minute you start, 98 percent of history you’re not going to do,” said Lennon, whose four-volume project was released by Buena Vista Home Video ($79.99) on Tuesday during a three-day airing on PBS. “Chicago and San Francisco are two of the most glaring omissions.”
Three years in the making, “The Irish in America” is the sweeping, haunting, uplifting and informative story that begins in 1845 with “The Great Hunger,” a famine that killed 1 million people and persuaded 1.5 million more to emigrate from the Emerald Isle.
Volume II, “All Across America,” looks at the arrival of the Irish in this country and the brutal start for the immigrants, who settled in cities like New Orleans and the mining town of Butte, Mont.
“We didn’t want to do an encyclopedic piece, a survey piece — we tried to find those narrow stories that have a larger resonance,” Lennon said. “Butte is what America would have looked like if the Irish were running the place.”
The Irish, he added, were this country’s first unwanted group of immigrants, and thus at the forefront of making America more tolerant and more diverse.
“Put away the Middle Passage, that’s its own story — the Irish were America’s first huddled masses and seen as a real threat to the stability.”
“Up From City Streets” is Volume III, chronicling a “golden age” as the Irish made their mark in labor, sports, music, Wall Street, theater and politics.
The final volume, “Success,” runs from World War II to the present and covers the triumphs and tragedies of the Kennedys and the O’Neills, two great Irish-American clans.
Powerful images — a black-and-white photo of an impoverished family of six looking at the camera, for instance, is not soon forgotten — combine with a great story and fascinating nuggets of information for a product Lennon wound up producing from the outside-in. Although he for some time had talked about doing a project on the Irish, Lennon said he wasn’t prepared to spend the required time raising the money.
“Out of the blue, coincidentally — they didn’t know I was interested in this — one day I got a call from the Disney corporation,” he said. “It took me weeks to return the call; it seemed so unlikely that that company would want to do the kind of work I wanted to do, but it was clear they wanted to do a really long-term, high-quality, relatively noncommercial public TV exploration of this.”
Lennon said the project has come to fruition now because of “the passion of Roy Disney, who is a major player in the Disney Co. (vice chairman), but also a lover of all things Irish and Irish-American.”
So from that call in February 1995, Lennon has worked on this project. For almost a year, a small group including Lennon talked with scholars and did research before filming dozens of interviews with writers, historians and everyday people. He traveled to Ireland seven times.
“We spent six months just working on the music,” he said. “That’s usually what it takes me to do a whole documentary. … It was by far the most ambitious music I’d ever attempted.”
The music, which provides a hum of continuity and an emotional gauge, is comprised of enough name artists that a companion CD, “Long Journey Home,” was released Jan. 13. The CD includes work by Van Morrison and The Chieftains with Paddy Moloney.
“We found the big-name artists not only were willing to do it, but would do whatever was helpful for the film,” Lennon said.
“In the first film, there’s a little burst of Sinead O’Connor. She sings in Gaelic; she only recorded two verses of it. She fully understood what she was recording would not even be on the CD. She didn’t care; she only wanted to support the movie.
“The music gave us a handle to that joy. It helped communicate the joy. (Theirs is a) tough, gritty, brutal story, but also a story filled with great joy. I hope that comes across.”
Capturing that joy, Lennon said, was the hardest part of the project. “The canal workers were disoriented, impoverished, lost in the middle of rural Virginia or New York State, often with wages not appealing, lost in a country they didn’t understand. … Yet these people, who were often victimized, were not mere victims. They were the shapers of their own stories. Inherently, that’s a hard thing to communicate in 19th Century history. There aren’t many photographs of people dancing or horse racing.”
BACK HOME – THE EASY WAY
Videos on the Old Sod come in almost as many shades as the green of Ireland:
HISTORY/CULTURE
“A Touch of Tranquility: The Ireland of Phil Coulter,” Shanachie Entertainment, 61 min. Listen to Coulter and his orchestra perform while watching places they recall.
“When Ireland Starved: The Great Famine,” Radharc Films, 120 min. This video “exposes this British-orchestrated disaster that has been, for too long, hidden from the public eye.”
“The American Experience: The Kennedys, 1900-1980” Shanachie, 1992, 240 min. Two-tape set.
“The Penal Days,” Radharc. Looks at tragic effect of penal laws on Irish Catholic life: “The penal laws of post-Cromwellian Ireland did not allow the legal existence of any such person as an Irish Catholic.”
“Ireland and Your Ancestry,” Irish Heritage Video, 60 min. Find out how to trace your family’s roots.
“A Day in the Life of Ireland,” Irish Visions USA, ’92, 57 min. Follows some of the 75 world-renowned photojournalists who spent a day shooting the country.
“Michael Collins: The Shadow of Bealnablath,” Rego Irish Records & Tapes Inc., 120 min. Based on forensic evidence and other information, “this documentary names the man who killed Michael Collins at Bealnablath, West Cork, in 1922.”
“Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Emigration to America,” Shanachie, ’95, 111 min. Personalizes flight of famine-swept villages by focusing on letters eight immigrants wrote home describing experiences.
MUSIC/DANCE
“The Chieftains: The Long Black Veil,” RCA Victor, ’95, 46 min. With Sting, others.
“A Song for Ireland,” Rego, ’87, 52 min. Traces the history of songs and gives reasons for their worldwide appeal.
“Riverdance: A Journey,” Columbia Tri-Star, ’96, 73 min. Story behind the music/dance phenomenon.
“Michael Flatley: Lord of the Dance,” PolyGram Video, 1997, 90 min. Ex-“Riverdancer” retells, updates Irish folk legend.
“Celtic Feet: Irish Dancing,” Acorn Media, ’95, 55 min. World dance champ Colin Dunne explains how to step dance.
“The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem: Reunion Concert at the Ulster Hall, Belfast,” Shanachie, ’91.
“Irish Dancing Made Easy,” Rego, 1993, 60 min. With Seamus Kerrigan.
“Tony Kenny’s Ireland: The Great Island,” Rego, 53 min. Entertainer presents songs that blend traditional, modern.
“Faith of Our Fathers: Classic Religious Anthems of Ireland,” Valley Entertainment, ’97, 78 min. Celebrates Ireland’s cultural and religious heritage.
“World Irish Dancing Championships,” Trend Studios, 90 min. 25th anniversary.
“Tommy Hayes: Bodhran Bones and Spoons,” C.W. Productions, ’95, 105 min. Teaches everything step-by-step.
