Robin O'Sullivan and Dan Donovan with actor George Baker and others

Robin O'Sullivan and Dan Donovan with actor George Baker and others

Cork Film Festival, George Baker, Inspector Wexford, Dan Donovan, Robin O'Sullivan, Ida O'Sullivan, Everyman Theatre

This is a black and white photo of festival committee members Robin O’Sullivan and Dan Donovan with the English actor George Baker and unidentified colleagues. O’Sullivan, on the left of the photo stands in between a festival attendee identified as Ida and an unidentified guest holding a large bouquet of flowers. George Baker, in a striped shirt and tie, stands on the right next to Dan Donovan on the far right.

While this photo is dated 1970s we might suggest it is 1972 from the glimpse of the festival brochure in Dan Donovan’s pocket. Donovan (1926-2008) was a founding member of Cork’s Everyman Theatre and Cork’s cultural legacy owes much to his passion and love of the arts. He was a board director of the Cork Choral Festival as well as the Cork Film Festival. His colleague on the left of this photo, Robin O’Sullivan, was also a stalwart film festival committee member who went on to become its director in the late seventies following the unexpected death of festival founder Dermot Breen. He ran it during a difficult time for the festival before handing over the reins to Mick Hannigan and Theo Dorgan in 1985.

The English actor and writer George Baker (1931-2011) was a star of cinema, stage, and television. He famously had an affair with the French actor Brigitte Bardot whilst married to the first of his three wives. However he is remembered by most for his role as Inspector Wexford in the successful Ruth Rendall crime drama television series The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987-2000). Baker has extensive television and film credits including The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson, 1955), Goodbye, Mr Chips (Herbert Ross, 1969) starring Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark, and The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) with Roger Moore. Around the time of this photo he had completed The Executioner (Sam Wanamaker, 1970) starring Judy Geeson who also came to the Cork festival in the seventies. Baker briefly ran a successful regional theatre company during the late sixties and early seventies bringing his tour of Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince (1968) and Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning (1971) to the West End.

University College Cork, Cork Film Festival, Donal Sheehan

Cork Film Festival Collection

University College Cork

1972

Donal Sheehan

Photo
TIFF
JPEG

English, eng

1972
Cork, Ireland

Photo

255 x 202mm