THE DIRECTOR'S chair used by John Ford during the making of The Quiet Manin 1951 was loaned at the weekend by Ford's Irish godson, John Morris, to the Galway City Museum.
Morris, who lives in Spiddal, is the son of the late Lord Killanin, who had worked with Ford on a number of Irish projects including The Rising of the Moonin Galway city centre in 1957. Part of the filming took place by the banks of the river Corrib at the Spanish Arch, where the museum is now located.
Morris, husband of former RTÉ presenter Thelma Mansfield, lent the chair to the museum for two years, and permanently donated 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,” said Morris yesterday.
Morris was born during the making of The Quiet Man, when its stars, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, relocated to the west of Ireland.
The loaned chair and other donations will feature in an exhibition this summer on 100 years of cinema in Galway.
“John has previously generously donated a number of other objects related to John Ford, including a cinemascope viewer with Ford’s name engraved on it, and a pair of Richard Nixon’s cufflinks presented to Ford,” said the museum’s documentation officer, Helen Bermingham.