The MacGuffin: News and Comment (02/Aug/2000)
(c) Ken Mogg (2000)
August 2
A note on the admired stage and screen actress Sara Allgood (affectionately known by all as Sally Allgood), who appeared in two Hitchcock films, Blackmail (1929) and Juno and the Paycock (1930). She was born into a working-class Dublin family in 1893, and died in 1950. She had made only one film, Just Peggy (1918), during a theatrical tour of Australia with her actor-husband Gerald Henson, when Hitchcock a decade later asked her to play Mrs White in Blackmail. According to Tony Slide in the book 'The Real Stars' (1973; edited by Leonard Maltin), 'Sally remarked about her first talkie role, "I was scared stiff. I was so scared I didn't know what to do. My first line in Blackmail was 'Alice, wake up,' and do you think I could say it? I couldn't do it until Phil Monkman (Phyllis Monkman, who played the gossipy neighbour) suggested that I sing it. You know like this: 'A-a-a-a-lice, w-a-ake u-u-p.'" Tony Slide was evidently no Hitchcock fan. About Allgood's appearance in Juno and the Paycock, in the role of Juno, a part which she had created at the Abbey Theatre in 1924 and on the London stage in 1925, Slide writes: 'I have no great liking for Hitchock's work; I have always considered him a cheap, second-rate director. This "cheapness" is in evidence throughout Juno and the Paycock. The moving final soliloquy of Juno is ruined by Hitchcock's continual cutting away from Sally's face to one object or another - a window or a statue of the Virgin Mary - and by the introduction of sickly sweet music in the background. The only reason to be grateful to the film is that it does leave us with a lasting record of Sally's greatest stage success. Incidentally, Sean O'Casey disliked the film intensely, and up to the time of his death, as owner of the film's copyright, forbade the screening of the production (although some disregarded his wishes).' Sally Allgood's sister, Maire O'Neill, played Mrs Madigan in the film.
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