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    Teaching with Film
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    Here's an entertaining story (gift link) from the New York Times that ends with a wonderful connection to the Library of Congress! Down the Rabbit Hole in Search of a Few Frames of Irish American History offers a hint of what's to come in the subtitle, too: "The silent film 'The Callahans and the Murphys' was pulled after an uproar over stereotyping. What happened next tantalized one fan of old movies."

    Read it to find out answers to the following questions:

    • Who was Marie Dressler and why had everyone heard of her by the late 1920s?
    • What did cartoonist Thomas Nast have to do with perpetuating stereotypes of Irish immigrants?
    • Did the 1927 MGM film, The Callahans and the Murphys, depict Irish life as one long, intoxicated slugfest or was the film simply "good-natured fun?" 
    • What did the Ku Klux Klan have to do with Irish Catholics at this time?
    • After cutting several negative depictions from the film (slugfests, excessive drinking, fleas, domestic violence, mocking the Catholic sign of the cross), why did MGM finally pull the film from circulation?
    • How did The Callahans and the Murphys foreshadow the Hollywood Production Code?
    • How did the National Audio-Visual Preservation Center of the Library of Congress come to the rescue of the article's author?
    • What happened to any copies of The Callahans and the Murphys?

    Be sure to watch the two surviving film clips from the article! The Irish Film Institute also has a 5-minute Excerpt from 'The Callahans and the Murphys' on its website. The lost excerpt was discovered under the name, The Irish Picnic by another film buff. What fun! 

    A screenshot from the film at The Irish Film Institute:

     

      Art/Music    Social Studies/History    3 - 5    6 - 8    9 - 12    Irish Immigrants    Film History    Silent Films  

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