Rat Patrol creator Tom Gries stated in a 1967 interview that
to choose his "real Englishman," he went through a book of photographs of
British actors and picked 15 he thought might fit the role of Moffitt. After all of them had been interviewed, Gary Raymond seemed the most promising.
It was after seeing Gary Raymond in Playboy of the Western World, however, that he knew he had
found the ideal man for the role. "That did it," he said. "I didn't even have to watch
the whole film. Even through the brogue I knew this was my man. There's a quality of cool in the
character of Moffitt that Gary possesses exactly."
It says a lot about Tom Gries that he detected Jack Moffitt in Christy Mahon, the earnest, eager-to-please,
and often flustered "hero" of Playboy....
The Playboy of the Western World
Comedy, Ireland, 1962, 100 minutes.Gary Raymond as Christy Mann ("The Playboy"); with Siobhan McKenna, Elspeth March, and Michael O'Brian. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst.
Synopsis | Summary | [review to come] |
Links
Synopsis: A young man endears himself to a small town with his tale of how he killed his
violent father in self defense; a young woman running an inn agrees to shelter him in
secret, but the story gets out and his mystique grows.
Since this film is out of print on video and difficult to find, we're working on scene-by-scene
plot summary and images.
Libby sends us the following:
Here is what Mick Martin and Marsha Porter (Video Movie Guide 1992)
say about Playboy: "Everything about this story is fresh and inspiring,
especially the dialogue and accents. A wonderful adaptation of the
classic Irish play about a young woman and her fellow villagers falling
in love with a handsome roguish stranger."
About the playwright and the play:
About the Location:
Review
[to come]
John Millington Synge
The text (and other Irish literature)
Dingle Peninsula
Inch Strand
