The Importance of Being Oscar

Custardpi

Hi there, not sure whether this should go in here or in television as it's related to both areas but hopefully it will get a response here. I've recently finished reading "The Boys", a biography of Micheál Mac Liammóir & Hilton Edwards, absolutely fantastic book written in the 1990s that I picked up a while back, having heard lots from elderly relatives & friends who had seen both actors in their prime.

One of the details from the book that particularly interested me was the fact that Mac Liammóir's one man show "The Importance of Being Oscar", one of his most successful ventures which relates the life & times of the great author & playwright Oscar Wilde was televised by RTE in 1964. I'd absolutely love to see it as it sounds like a fantastic show (it's been revived in recent years by a few companies) & would be very interesting to see one of the great Irish actors of the 20th Century performing his own piece. Thought it might be available online since just about everything else is but no joy. Does anyone know if it was ever released on tape or is the footage just wasting away in the RTE archives?

chasmcb

If it was in their archives I guess it would be one of the shows they would have hauled out for the RTE Player 50-year archive celebration -and I don't see any sign of 'Mac' in there. I think a lot of stuff back then was erased altogether, not merely filed away and forgotten about. Have you tried emailing RTE to enquire?

I also recall hearing an LP of MacLiammoir's years ago, it was on Claddagh Records, and was from another of his shows, 'I Must Be Talking To My Friends' -maybe you could track down a copy of that.

And you could probably find a DVD of Orson Welles' film of Othello which features MacLiammoir as Iago.

Happy hunting!

Custardpi

Thanks for the reply, might get in contact with RTE at some stage as you suggest, was hoping that someone on here might point me to an easily accessible release of it, but that's probably too optimistic, you may well be right on the erasing thing, shame if so.

I've already tracked down a vinyl copy of "Oscar" on Fleabay, not sure if I'll get it or not though, I'd be less interested in "Talking About My Friends" to be honest, though from the account I've read of that show it does sound very entertaining.

Othello is definitely on my must-see list. In the book the tale of the film's making spans several chapters & portrays Orson Welles as an absolute nightmare to work with, constantly changing locations, scrapping tons of footage on a whim & being absolutely hopeless with money - apparently it took several years for MacLiammóir to get what he was owed from the film. By all accounts though the end result was a masterpiece so I'm looking forward to watching it.

etcetc

Did you make any progress with this?