RICHARD HARRIS, FRANK McCOURT AND ANGELA'S ASHES

RICHARD HARRIS, FRANK McCOURT AND ANGELA'S ASHES

[This is an extract from an interview with Limerick born actor Richard Harris about the McCourt family and in particular the relationship of Frank and Malachy McCourt with their mother Angela. It throws a fascinating light on "Angela's Ashes"]

Richard Harris Stands Up For His Native City in Local Radio Interview
by Eugene Phelan
Airdate January 20th 2000

International film star Richard Harris has publicly lambasted his fellow Limerickman and contemporary Frank McCourt for his depiction of Limerick in the Pulitzer Prize winning book "Angela's Ashes"..

He also launched an attack on film director Alan Parker whom he accuses of using Limerick as a "whipping boy" to generate publicity for a twenty million-dollar flop.

In a frank two-hour live interview on the Limerick airwaves with Ireland's most vocal McCourt critic Gerry Hannan, who presents a nighttime phone-in show on RLO, Harris spoke out for the first time on what he describes as a bitter attack on his native city.

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I knew Malachy for years and he wrote a book called "A Monk Swimming" and I am very heavily featured throughout the book. I found both Malachy and Frank to be absolute users. They would use me and my position in America for them to gain some kind of notoriety and I can best characterise them both as users.

ANGELA'S WILL TO DIE
I also knew Angela McCourt quite well and I visited her regularly and I spent a lot of time with her and they treated her really badly.

The way they spoke about their mother made me very angry.

They had an obvious disdain for their mother and I remember on one occasion in the pub where I grabbed her son Malachy by the neck and shouted that she is your mother and you cannot treat her like this.

Malachy's only answer to me was that they were bringing her lots of beer and cigarettes in the hope that she would die because she is costing us rent money. I believe in my heart that they were willing a death.

I found that very offensive to such an extent that I threatened to kill him.

When I met Angela she was in her old age and she was very quiet and once when I was alone with her she told me that she knew that they didn't like her and wanted her dead.

She said that they don't like me Dickie, they don't treat me well, they don't want me to be here, I am a nuisance to them and I am no more than a rock around their neck.

Angela told Richard that the boys treated her so badly that she wished she were dead and gone.

THE MYSTERY OF ANGELA'S ASHES
When Angela McCourt died she wanted to be buried in Limerick.
I happen to know that there is an Irish travel agency in New York where Malachy and Frank went to book tickets to take the coffin back to Limerick.

But the boys refused to pay the extra charge for the coffin. So they decided to cremate their mother who allowed them to put her ashes into their overnight bags and take her back for nothing.

Now I know that Angela was a very devout Catholic and she would not have wanted to be cremated. Being cremated was something that she couldn't countenance at all and she wanted to be buried.

But the boys were not willing to pay for that so they cremated her and put her into a tin.

When they got to the Airport in New York Frank turned to Malachy and asked "have you got her?" and Malachy replied "Got who?"

They argued for a while and realised that the ashes had to be in one of the bags but neither one known which bag exactly.

The boys had to take separate flights for one reason or another and Malachy's, who believed he had the ashes, plane got into trouble and had to go back to New York.

In all the coming and going the bags, containing the ashes, got lost.

It is a commonly held opinion amongst the Irish in New York that Angela's Ashes are, in fact, buried away in some far distant remote lost property corner of Kennedy Airport in New York.

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Angela's Movie
I saw Angela's Ashes this week and I think the only Oscar it deserves is for special rain effects. The movie is two and half-hours of rain.

Parker has taken the Limerick of that era and he has dated it back to the late 19th Century. It is more Dickensian in its squalor than it is accurately Limerick.

If so much rain fell in Limerick we would be famous for our water polo teams.
I felt that, for the people not from Limerick, the book is a thrashey "unputdownable" read but with the movie you can�t wait to get out.

It is a boring, dull and very repetitive movie and is totally unmoving.

I admit that McCourt had a wonderful sense of humor, an ironic sense of humor, which is characteristic of most Limerick people but I found that the picture does not have one bit of it.

The movie is nothing short of a two hour moan and the book was one long moan and "Tis" is even worse.

The movie is one long perpetual moan.

It like McCourt is screaming out for love.

Feel sorry for me, love me, an endless search for love. But I doubt very much that if he finds this elusive love that he can reciprocate.

I don't think he can give anything back, it's too late, not when you can treat your mother like that, what does his treatment of his mother in the book tell you about his emotional condition?

I don't think all the money he has made by tarnishing the good names of people who cannot defend themselves against him will give him a moment of happiness or will fill that hollow in his life.