The Moore Brothers - 'Born in Meath, Made in Hollywood'

LMFM Documentary on St Stephen's Day

'Born in Meath, Made in Hollywood', a new radio documentary by Little Road Productions Ltd., will broadcast at 12 noon on Monday 26th December on LMFM Radio.

Only 13 actors of Irish descent boast stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and very few realise that three of those were brothers Owen, Matt and Tom Moore who hailed from Fordstown and who were stalwarts of the early Hollywood film industry, between them boasting over 600 film credits. This one-hour radio documentary retells the story of the journey of the Moore Brothers from a small boreen in Co Meath to Hollywood film stars, along with their contribution to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

When the Moore family, father Tom, mother Rosanna (nee Carry) and their then four children Tom (13), Owen (10), Matt (8) and Mary emigrated to the US as steerage passengers on the SS Anchoria in May 1986, little did they know that their journey would take all of their children to the silver screens of Hollywood while three of them would make such a mark on the film industry that they would have their own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Tom and Rosanna’s journey to find a better life in the USA took them through the inspection channels of Ellis Island and initially on to Toledo, Ohio, where their fifth child Joe was born. Not long after, teenagers Tom and Owen, sensing that their future lay on the stage and not in the country fields of Ohio, ran away to join a travelling theatre company. They were both seasoned stage performers by the time the Hollywood motion picture industry kicked off in 1908 and both made their movie debuts that year - Owen in ‘The Guerrilla’ and Tom in ‘The Christmas Burglars’, filmed at the Biograph Studios run by the now infamous DW Griffith.

While at Biograph, Owen met a Canadian actress who had lately changed her name from Gladys Smith to Mary Pickford, adopting the name from her Irish grandfather, John Pickford Hennessy of Tralee, Co Kerry. Owen Moore and Mary Pickford subsequently acted together in various films, including the 1909 film ‘The Dream’. The couple married in January 1911, just as Mary’s meteoritic rise to stardom commenced. By the close of 1915, Mary, now known as the ‘Girl with the Curls’ was not only ‘America’s Sweetheart’ but arguably the most famous woman in the world. She commanded a salary of $10,000 a week, with a $300,000 bonus, and owned her own production company. Their marriage did not survive however, with rumours of abuse and alcoholism. A few years later, Mary filed for divorce and married the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks in 1920. Owen married the New York actress Katherine Perry in 1921 and moved to Selznick Studios where he proved a star performer throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. His biggest hit was ‘She Done Him Wrong’, a 1933 rom-com in which he played the boyfriend of Mae West’s hip-swishing Lady Lou. Again, rumours of alcoholism were rife, and at the young age of 52, the Meath man had a fatal heart attack in Beverley Hills in June 1939.

Tom was married in 1914 to the Missouri-born silent star Alice Joyce, best known for ‘The Green Goddess’. They had a daughter Alice Moore (1916-1960) with whom Tom acted six times in the 1930s. In 1920, newly divorced Tom Moore met Renée Adorée, the daughter of French circus artists, and they were shortly after married. After their marriage ended, Tom was married a third time to Eleanor Merry and their son, Tom Moore Jr, was born in 1933. With the economic recession of the 1930s, Tom quit the silver screen although he was later to return in minor roles. He died in Santa Monica, California, in 1955, aged 71.

Matt Moore followed his brothers to Hollywood and made his film debut in 1912 starring alongside his brother Owen and Canadian actress Florence Lawrence in the silent short, ‘Tangled Relations’. In 1929, he played opposite Mary Pickford, his brother’s ex-wife, in the drama ‘Coquette’. It was Mary’s first talkie and, having shorn off her famous curls for the role, she was rewarded with her second Oscar. Matt continued to act through until 1958, racking up 221 motion picture appearances and concluding with a B-movie horror film called ‘I Bury the Living’. He died aged 72 in 1960.

The Moore's sister Mary also became a silent movie star, appearing in 13 films between 1914 and 1917, including ‘The Adventure at Briarcliff’, directed by her brother Tom. She was serving with the Red Cross in France in 1919 when she was fatally stricken with the Spanish Flu.

The youngest brother Joe Moore also took to the screen, starring in 13 films between 1914 and August 1926 when he tragically had a heart attack and drowned in Santa Monica, California, aged 31.

Owen, Tom and Matt Moore only appeared together in one movie, as the O’Farrell brothers in a 1929 crime caper called ‘Side Street’. However, all three are re-united closer to each other with their stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

Using interviews with Turtle Bunbury, broadcaster, historian and author, who featured the brothers in his recent book ‘The Irish Diaspora’, and Dr Ruth Barton, Professor of Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin, along with on location commentary from local historians Stephen Ball and Kenny Timmons, the documentary uncovers the story of these siblings who were household names across the US by the mid 1920s, known as the Roaring Twenties, and became as well known as the other Hollywood elite of the Golden Age, starring alongside names like Mae West and Cary Grant.