They met in Paddy Tyers’s office, crossing a cultural bridge from different sides. Louis Marcus was a brilliant young film-maker, the grandson of Lithuanian Jews who had landed in Cork fleeing religious persecution. Christy Ring was the greatest hurler of all time. Tyers put them together: whiskey and coke.
In his executive role with Gael Linn, Tyers’s proposal was an instructional film on hurling. They had a similar plan for Gaelic football, which would involve seven of the leading players of the day; for the hurling film, though, Ring was the only star they courted. They wanted the art and the artist in one expression.
Throughout his career Ring had shunned the media and any spotlight that sloshed out from the arena. Tyers, though, had been an intercounty player for Waterford and Cork and he enjoyed Ring’s confidence. Still, Ring wasn’t biddable. His approval wouldn’t come by persuasion.
“I’m not an easy man to please,” he told Marcus before they started. “It will have to be done well.”
At the introductory meeting, Ring was sanguine about first impressions. He had no desire to step out of character and play a role for the film-maker.
“He was sitting on a table, swinging his legs restlessly,” wrote Marcus in Hibernia magazine, of their first encounter in Tyers’s office. “He was always in motion, tapping his feet, swaying his shoulders, gesturing with his hands. The first thing that struck me was his extreme shyness, he barely looked up during the initial small talk. But as soon as the film was mentioned he came alight. He had the intensity of all committed people, and he spoke in quick spurts from a tight mouth.”
Marcus grew up in Mardyke Villas, near UCC. His brother David studied law with Jack Lynch and the future taoiseach would often eat supper in their kitchen. When Marcus was a boy, he used to be taken to the annual Eucharistic match between Glen Rovers and St Finbarr’s, which drew thousands to the Mardyke. The Marcus family were not hurling followers, but the match was on their doorstep. The only attractions for them were Lynch and Ring, the Glen’s biggest stars. For Marcus, it was a glancing contact.
“I knew shag-all about hurling,” Marcus says now, more than 60 years later. “I was a very keen soccer player and cricketer, because I was born and reared opposite the [Cork County] cricket ground. Christy would have known that I knew nothing about hurling. In fact, he said to me, ‘You will not be qualified to make this film until you can reproduce all of the skills. You won’t know where to put the camera.’ So, off we went, down to the UCC grounds and Christy taught me the skills.”
It smacked of Daniel Day Lewis’s immersive approach to acting, except Marcus was on the other side of the camera. Ring drilled him on all the skills until they reached a sticking point: overhead striking. Ring wouldn’t relent until Marcus nailed it.
“That was the hardest bloody thing of all to do. Paddy Tyers used to be sending the ball in, and Christy would be leaning up against the post and I’d go up and whip the hurley in the air. My co-ordination was terrible. But eventually, I raced out to a ball, and as I rose, I heard Christy say softly, ‘He has it this time’. And I caught the ball in the middle of the bós and it went over the bar, beautifully.
“The only skill he absolved me from trying was the sideline cut. ‘You wouldn’t be able to do this,’ he said.”
As soon as Cork and Tipperary were confirmed in the hurling league final a fortnight ago, an evocative clip from Marcus’s film was carried shoulder high on social media for a few days. The footage was from the 1960 league final at the Cork Athletic Grounds, the last time the teams met at that stage of the competition. Filming with Ring in the Mardyke didn’t start until late 1961, but Marcus targeted that game for an exhibition of the master at play.
They erected scaffolding in the Munster Showgrounds, next to the pitch, to capture some aerial shots, and Marcus positioned himself on the sideline alongside another cameraman. In those days, the cost of filming an entire match was prohibitive so the instructions were to film Ring whenever it looked like he might be in the action. A crowd of 28,000 crammed in.
“It was a ramshackle place,” says Marcus. “You can see the rusted corrugated iron of the ground and everything. There were no dressingrooms, so they used to tog out in a hotel and go in cars to the ground. That meant at half-time they used to collect in little groups on the field, chatting away. So, I went over to Christy at half-time. He had already scored two goals and two points. I thanked him for his display, and he looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, I could do no more’.”
Though Ring would turn 40 later that year, he was still Cork’s best player. In defeat against Tipperary, Ring’s personal haul was 3-4 from Cork’s total of 3-8. Widening the lens, Ring had been the top-scorer in the competition with a remarkable tally of 12-9. “He was a force of nature,” says Tony Wall.
Wall, one of the greatest center backs in the history of the game, was the Tipperary captain that year. Cork had dominated Tipp for much of the 1950s, but by 1960 the tide had turned. The teams met in the league final, the Munster final and the Oireachtas final, an autumn tournament that drew huge crowds to Croke Park; Tipp won all three.
Back then, the terms of engagement were different. No holds were barred. Forwards were downed like clay pigeons. Ring, though, took a guerrilla approach to self-defence.
“In the middle of that match he came in behind Kieran Carey [Tipperary corner back] and opened his head in the most ferocious way,” says Wall. “He nearly took a scalp off him. I ran over and I brought my hurley down on Christy. I changed from his head to his shoulder on the way down. It was completely uncalled for, the way he hit Carey.
“We had another battle royal in the Munster final. Jesus, there was murder in Thurles. Then later in the year we played Cork in the Oireachtas final, and Carey got his own back. He pulled on Christy and broke his jaw.”
Everything has a context. In the 1950s the Tipperary full-back line was known as Hell’s Kitchen. Without Ring’s fierce combativeness he would have been eaten.
“The thing was,” says Marcus, “he incorporated self-protection into the art of hurling. Paddy Tyers could say anything he liked to Christy. If the weather was too bad for filming, we used go to Thompson’s Café and in one of these coffee sessions Paddy said, ‘Come here to me Christy, is it true that you did Mickey Burke [of Galway in the 1953 All-Ireland final]?’
“I thought, ‘Christ, that’s the end of the film’. But Christy said, ‘I have never played against a hurler who did not finish the game’. Then Paddy said it to him about Hell’s Kitchen. ‘Were you ever frightened Christy?‘. ‘No,’ he said, ‘because [good] hurlers know where to hit’.”
[ Dave Hannigan: How Christy Ring aroused the curiosity of American mediaOpens in new window ]
Meeting bad hurlers with murder on their minds didn’t dull his courage. Tony Connolly was still in his teens when he came on as a sub for Cork in the 1960 league final and he befriended Ring in later life.
“I remember standing behind him on Good Friday at the stations of the cross in St Augustine’s,” says Connolly, “and I could have played noughts and crosses on his [bald] head with all the scars and marks. He’d put his head where you wouldn’t put a hurley.”
His work with Marcus, though, didn’t dwell on that side of the game. The instructional part of the film distilled hurling to its purest movements. Ring identified 12 of them, which he deconstructed for the script and demonstrated for the camera. In a series of articles published in The Irish Times in 1964 Marcus described in fascinating detail how the project was realised and how committed Ring had been to the process.
“In session after session of work on the script he stripped the game of its mystique and revealed the clear, solid foundation of hurling skill,” wrote Marcus. “All this he did in language that was vivid and fresh: for the sideline cut – “bring the emphasis of the hurley down on the ball;” for the grip – “you should enjoy the hurley in your hand;” for scoring a goal from a free – “always hit the ball on the up.”
“Once, when arguing that a free should be pointed gently and not crashed over the bar, he snatched a piece of paper, crumpled it in a ball and palmed it softly across the room and straight into an empty basket.”
The script was written by Breandán Ó hEithir, the esteemed writer and broadcaster and a friend of Marcus. In Ó hEithir’s memoir, Over The Bar, he recalled the pressure he felt. As his copy editor, he could feel Ring’s hot breath on his neck.
[ What do today’s GAA stars and Christy Ring have in common?Opens in new window ]
“I told him that he would have to explain all his actions in the various sequences,” wrote Ó hEithir, “emphasise what was important at each stage, and that I would find the exact words to convey this to the audience.
“He thought about it for a little time, and then sliding down off the table on which he had been sitting in the Gael Linn office in the Grand Parade, began to talk at a great rate, walking around the room, changing direction frequently when emphasising a point by swivelling on the balls of his very small and shapely feet.
“Christy went over the script with me again and again until we were completely satisfied that the instructions and explanations were as accurate, clear and concise as we could make them.”
The film had its premiere in the Savoy cinema in Cork in October 1964, 16 months after he played his last game for Cork. Lynch, a government minister at the time, was the guest of honour. Thousands packed the theatre.
“When the film was over Christy was called up on to the stage to take the adulation of the people,” says Marcus. “But an interesting thing. When we were filming, he drove a petrol lorry for Shell. Shell was under English management, and they hadn’t a clue who this man was, but they were invited to the premiere in Cork. There they saw an audience of thousands and a government minister and roars of applause. They suddenly realised they had a national figure driving a lorry. So, they took Christy off the lorry, gave him a car and made him a rep.”
For Marcus, it was the beginning of a glorious career. Ten years later he received his first Oscar nomination and two years after that his second. By the time he retired Marcus had made more than 80 documentaries and won 20 international awards.
The Ring film, though, never left his heart. You remark on the stainless clarity of his memory from that time, so long ago.
“That’s because,” he says, “it was such a vivid experience.”
