Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

BY HOWARD SHARPE GEORGE BRENT was born George Nolan in March, 1904, and eighteen years later almost won freedom for Ireland in the first revolution. The events leading up to that had to do with a childhood spent alternately working in peat fields, catching fish in the nearby River Shannon, and listening to his grandfather tell him stirring stories about civilization's long fight for Liberty. The boy and his sister were sent to America when their parents died, during the great war, and moody, belligerent young George kept his aunt in a perpetual stew; this was accomplished by fighting with his schoolmates, falling desperately in love with an adolescent Irish colleen, and running away to work in lumber mills and on farms during the summers. An expression for his maturing ideas and his vitality came through the offices of Father Dan, a priest from the Sod, who carried on the work of Old Mclnnis and ultimately took George to Ireland with him. For a time the lad worked with the Abbey Players, learning how to act; then Michael Collins, rebel leader, made him a dispatch carrier. An era of danger ensued, during which young Nolan rode through fog and the dark Irish nights on a motorbike, dodging hand grenades and British raiding parties. Until at last Michael Collins was killed in ambush— and in a hiding place beneath a roadbridge leading out of Dublin, Father Dan bade his nineteen-year-old disciple God-speed. George Nolan's world, and apparently his future, lay in ruins. FATHER DAN'S departing heels tapped a measured good-by on the road overhead, the sound fading into silence. George leaned against the base of the old stone arch, looking out of its shadow at fields chalk-white under Ireland's August moon, listening to the quiet that meant Michael Collins was dead, the rebellion over, the great plans shattered. . . . "One hundred pounds on your head before morning." George passed his hand over his hair and swallowed hard against a rising lump of nausea in his throat. Somewhere in the swirl of panic a sane small voice said: You will get out of this. You have plenty of money, you've got that motorbike. Keep your head, you damn fool. He climbed slowly up the bank; with deliberate movements got the motorbike out of its hiding place, primed it, started it. Kicked the tires. But his hand had the throttle lever wide open before the dust of the road had settled from his starting. In the morning gloom, in Belfast, an old friend named O'Rourke helped cover him with evil-smelling tarpaulins in an outbound truck. "We've heard from Father Dan," O'Rourke said. "The secret service is busy already. Make haste, me lad." At nine that evening George stood in a Glasgow alleyway, knocking on the kitchen door of a cheap cafe. He had bank notes ready in his hand — better than a gun. The man with the apron, and slits for eyes, gave him a slip of paper with an address on it. "Hide at this place until tomorrow. There'll be a trawler steaming down the Firth and through the Irish Sea to Liverpool. You can get a freighter there." "Bound. . . .?" The man shrugged. "You'll not be caring. America, probably." The address was a rickety little rooming house near the docks, owned by a dour Scotswoman with grey hair strained close to her scalp, thin lips, a sharp nose; her eyes said plainly, "Who are you?" But she asked nothing aloud until late in the