PLAUDITS over for another year. Along with priceless global advertising for Achill Island and Inis Mór, the stunning backdrops to The Banshees of Inisherin, Irish wit sparkled during the awards season.

Colin Farrell was the undoubted star with his delight at seeing Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel lead ‘Jenny’s stand-in on stage. Of course the original donkey diva continues her best ‘Greta Garbo’ act. She’s somewhere in that midlands sanctuary that Banshees director Martin McDonagh arranged her retirement to after what Farrell described as Jenny’s #oneanddone role during his Best Actor acceptance speech at the Golden Globes awards.

Farrell isn’t the only Irish star to give a shoutout to his four-legged co-stars. Thurles-born Kerry Condon thanked her rescue horses and dogs, after her BAFTA win for her role in The Banshees of Inisherin.

The BBC and Apple won an Oscar in the best animated short film category for The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, based on writer and artist Charlie Mackesy’s popular book.

‘Horse films’ are not that plentiful in Hollywood anymore - Spielberg’s War Horse (2011) was the most recent box office hit but there have certainly been some horse lovers classics in the past. And sometimes life imitates the movies as seen by Rachel Blackmore’s Aintree Grand National win.

Not to mention the Irish four-legged stars of Irish and Hollywood blockbusters.

Casting call

Back in January at Holiday World, Anna Connor, who works with Mayo County Council’s Tourism, Recreation and Amenity Department, predicted the publicity windfall heading in Achill Island’s direction.

Quick off the mark, a map with The Banshees of Inisherin locations around Achill Island was produced as soon as the movie hit the big screens.

And then there’s the Mayo horsemen involved in supplying four-legged stars to film sets.

Charles Hanley worked on the set of Jim Sheridan’s 1992 hit Into The West.

“We supplied most of the horses and riders for the film. Trendy Bobby, our grey Connemara show jumper, was the double for the French stunt horse going out in the Atlantic Ocean.”

One of the stallions to have stood at the Hanley’s Claremorris Equestrian Centre was the aptly-named Into The West.

Foaled in 1990, the Dutch-bred was by Ramiro Z out of the Jasper-Almé dam Francaise.

“Into The West came to us from Holland around the same time so yes, it influenced the choice of name!”

“We continue to supply horses, donkeys and props for film and we just did a small film before Christmas at Cabinteely House,” Charles added.

One of the most iconic Irish films, which many Irish-American families continue to watch each St Patrick’s Day, is John Ford’s epic The Quiet Man.

Another Mayo-based stallion, whose name was inspired by the big screen, was Martha Du Pont’s Irish Draught champion stallion Its The Quiet Man that stood with Anthony Gordon.

Both this Clonfert son (2005) and the similarly-named The Quiet Man, on Italy’s victorious Aga Khan 50 years earlier, were Dublin winners.

Filming started on The Quiet Man in 1951 and like the later Ryan’s Daughter,shot further south around the Dingle Peninsula, was a godsend to the local economy.

Leading lady

The late John Daly of Lough Mask House and his father Paddy supplied horses for The Quiet Man, filmed around Connemara and Cong.

One of the most famous scenes was the horse race with the runners provided by John, who even rode one in the race along Lettergesh beach.

There’s another Lough Mask House link to Ryan’s Daughter. John Joyce from Garryduff, near Claremorris, relates the background story of the eye-catching dun mare that appeared in the film with lead actress Sarah Miles.

“It all started back in 1964 when I had a quality, light draught mare who I wanted to put in foal. I was very interested in the breeding of a thoroughbred stallion belonging to John Daly in Lough Mask.”

“In particular, I thought his fillies offspring made wonderful broodmares. This stallion was called Final Problem.”

Final Problem was a household name for many breeders then, producing three stallion sons - El Teide, Marians Problem and Western Problem - plus several international show jumpers including Trevor Coyle’s Bank Strike. And the Ryan’s Daughter dun.

“Eleven months later she foaled a beautiful dun filly foal called Problem Queen. I kept her and bred her in 1967 to a Draught stallion called Dickie, belonging to Tom Niland in Balla.”

“By 1968, she was a three-year-old dun filly grown to 15.2hh with her foal at foot. My friend John Daly heard the film producers of Ryan’s Daughter were looking for a 15.2 dun mare to cast in the film in Dingle, Co. Kerry.”

“John thought of me and sent the producers my way. The producers asked me could I have the mare broken and riding, despite her being a three-year-old with a foal at foot, before she went on set. I agreed and sent the mare and foal down to the producers in Kerry that June.”

Problem Queen later returned to Mayo, however her foal found a customer.

“While on set filming, the stuntman fell in love with the mare’s foal and asked me if I would sell it to him. I did, so they weaned the foal down there in Kerry and I collected the mare again that December. When she came home I gave her some time off.”

Jar of Hearts

“She didn’t foal again until 1971 when I put her in foal to a stallion called Primarily. This stallion belonged to James O’Donnell in Cooneal, Ballina. She bred a lovely colt foal who I ended up selling in Ballinasloe for £300. That man, who I sold the foal to, sold him on again for £650 to Johnny McEvoy in Katesbridge, Co Down.”

“Johnny McEvoy kept this horse for years and got Leo Young to ride it. They won the Guinness Championship at Dublin Horse Show and the horse was then sold to Royne Zetterman for £26,000. He won numerous Grand Prix competitions around the country at just 16hh.”

“Years later, I met Royne and told him the story about my mare and the horse. Ryan told me he never had a fence down with him and that he hadn’t a lot of change out of £100,000 when he sold him to America.”

There’s a carefully-kept newspaper cutting about the story of Problem Queen that John’s son James obligingly emails a copy of. In the background of the photo of his father holding the cutting is a treasured photograph of another son, the late Michael, who passed away in a tragic road accident on St Stephen’s Day in 1998, “at the young age of 26.”

“The photograph in the background is Michael riding a horse called Master Nativeo, a six-year-old stallion in the Hickstead Derby. As far as I know, he is the youngest horse to have ever jumped in the Hickstead Derby,” said James, Michael’s brother.

James continues the family tradition by standing the Zandeur-Furisto stallion Garryduff Jar Of Hearts that has competed in the Connaught Grand Prix league and up to 1.45m with Sven Hadley at Lier and Sentower.

Coincidentally, the stallion’s dam line features Boleybawn Ace, the five-star event horse bred by Ronan Rothwell and a host of other international eventers from Ronan Tynan’s mare herd, including China Doll, Fernhill Revelation and Balham Houdini.

All subplots of an equine script that started with John Joyce breeding Problem Queen, the mare that starred in yet another Hollywood blockbuster.

Did you know?

  • The five greatest box office hits amongst ‘horse films’ are Seabiscuit ($120 million), War Horse ($79 million), The Horse Whisperer ($75 million), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron ($73 million) and Hildalgo ($67 million).
  • A 30-second TV advertisement during the Oscars will cost between $1.6 million to $2.2 million.
  • Barry Keoghan, who plays Dominic Kearney in The Banshees of Inisherin, also appears in the gritty drama Calm With Horses. This Irish-made film was shot at several locations around Co Galway including Woodford, Gort, Killimor and Galway City.
  • Kerry Condon is a cousin of National Hunt jockey Richard Condon who won the Coral Cup at Cheltenham two years ago with Heaven Help Us.
  • Another of Kerry Condon’s roles, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, was of jockey Rosie Shanahan in the short-lived HBO series Luck. The series was pulled after the death of three horses on set during filming.
  • Condon owns a horse farm near Seattle in Washington state where she currently keeps nine horses. The horse-mad actress even bought two of Luck’s four-legged cast members and has taken in stray dogs off the LA streets.
  • The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse was Waterstones’ book of the year in 2019. Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, who did the voiceover for The Horse character in this animated short film, played “Papa” Reilly in the 1992 hit Into The West. This was the story of his two young sons Tito and Ossie who took off into the west with their mysterious grey horse Tir na nÓg.
  • Tir na nÓg was played by a range of lookalike greys, sourced in Ireland and France. One was the purebred Connemara gelding Boden Park Colonel, by The Admiral.
  • Idris Elba, (the voice of The Fox in the Oscar-winning short film The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse) is the lead actor in Concrete Cowboy. Based on Greg Neri’s novel Ghetto Cowboy, both works were inspired by the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club project in North Philadelphia.
  • Dances With Wolves, nominated for seven Oscars, bridged a 60-year gap since another western - Cimarron - had also won the Best Picture category at the fourth Academy Awards back in 1931.
  • Two buckskin American Quarter Horses - Buck and Plain Justin Bar - were used for the role of Cisco, the horse that appeared with Kevin Costner’s character, Lt. John J. Dunbar.
  • Costner picked up the Oscar for Best Director that year of a large cast - 200 extras, 100 horses, 3,500 buffalo (plus 25 animatronic buffalo) were needed for the buffalo hunting scene.
  • Jane Holderness-Roddam, who won Badminton twice (Our Nobby in 1968 and Warrior 10 years later) and who co-judged the Dublin broodmare and foal classes last year, was Tatum O’Neill’s stunt double during the filming of International Velvet.
  • American eventers Bruce Davidson and Michael Plumb, plus Richard Meade, Julian Seaman and Ginny Elliot all appeared in the film. Some of the competition scenes were filmed at the now-defunct Ledyard International in North America and Arena North Showgrounds in Lancashire. Burghley, still going strong on the five-star eventing circuit, was another International Velvet setting.
  • Arizona Pie, the four-legged star of International Velvet, was in real life the dual Olympian team gold horse Cornishman V.
  • International Velvet was a sequel to...no Oscars for guessing this one…National Velvet, a two-time Oscar winner at the 1945 Academy Awards.
  • Thanks to some artistic licence, Arizona Pie was a son of The Pie, the horse that won the Aintree Grand National with his young rider Velvet Brown in National Velvet.
  • The role of Velvet Brown was played by a 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. She had spotted her future co-star - a chesnut thoroughbred named King Charles - at a country club. The topically-named King Charles was renamed The Pie after MGM Studios bought the horse for $800. He was later gifted to Taylor who kept the horse for life.
  • Taylor’s co-star Mickey Rooney was called up for WWII service in the US Army and had to complete his National Velvet scenes within four weeks before reporting for duty. He later appeared in The Black Stallion, the story of a friendship formed between a shipwrecked horse and boy, stranded, Castaway-style, on a desert island. Once rescued and with ex-jockey Rooney’s guidance, the pair went on to win a drama-filled horse race.
  • Although set in England, National Velvet was mostly filmed in California.
  • Kerry Condon and Elizabeth Taylor are not the only two actors to have fallen for their four-legged co-stars. Viggo Mortensen, who played cowboy Frank Hopkins in Hidalgo bought T.J - his favourite out of five horses to play the lead role title. Based on a true story, Hopkins and Hidalgo travelled from America to compete in an endurance race in the Middle East.
  • Six thoroughbreds were hired to play Seabiscuit, hero of the uplifting move about the 15-hand high racehorse that raised American morale during the Great Depression.
  • Urban legend has it that Ryan’s Son, John Whitaker’s characterful show jumper, was so named because he appeared in the film Ryan’s Daughter. Alas for his Equity card chances, not so.
  • Trevor Howard, cast as Fr. Hugh Collins, had an eventful time during the filming of Ryans Daughter. The actor nearly drowned during the currach rowing scene in the choppy Atlantic Ocean and also fell off a horse.
  • The sidecar used in The Quiet Man was later donated by Maureen O’Hara’s family to the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in his hometown of Winterset, Iowa, together with the shawl worn by the actress in the movie. The Quiet Man museum in Cong, Co Mayo also features several props from the film, including the harness used for Michaeleen Og’s horse, Napoleon.
  • One of the horses used in the horse race along Lettergesh beach near Renvyle, was later sold to Italian owners. Renamed The Quiet Man, the Mayo export and Capt. Salvatore Oppes were on the 1955 winning Aga Khan Nations Cup team at Dublin, alongside Lt. Raimondo D’Inzeo (Merano), Lt. Col. A Gutierrez (Pagora) and Lt. Col. L. Cargasegne (Brando).