Director’s chair from The Quiet Man donated to city museum

Date Published: 14-Apr-2011

BY CIARAN TIERNEY

The Director’s Chair which was used by John Ford during the making of The Quiet Man in 1951 was donated by Ford’s Irish Godson, John Morris, to the Galway City Museum yesterday.

Mr Morris, who lives in Spiddal, is the son of the late Lord Killanin who worked with Ford on a number of Irish projects including the filming of The Rising of the Moon in Galway city centre in 1957.

Mr Morris, the husband of former RTE presenter Thelma Mansfield, has loaned the chair to the museum for a period of two years as well as donating other pieces of memorabilia from Ford’s time as a film-maker in Ireland.

“I’ve had a lot of stuff belonging to John Ford in the house for a while and my children did not want me to hand over the Director’s Chair,” joked Mr Morris yesterday.

Mr Morris was born during the making of The Quiet Man, when John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara were among a host of Hollywood cast and crew who relocated to the West of Ireland for the filming.

It is among a number of exhibits donated by Mr Morris which are set to feature in a forthcoming exhibition on 100 years of cinema in Galway.

The exhibition is scheduled to open in the summer.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.