BETWEEN the Spanish American War and World War I, America’s favorite political pundit was Mr. Dooley, an Irish bartender who ran a little tavern in a poor, working class neighborhood of Chicago. Dooley was the creation of newspaper editor Finley Peter Dunne, one of the great humorists of his time, whose incisive, often hilarious observations on American politics, social attitudes, and the news industry still resonate today.

Playwright/actor Alexander Kulcsar brings Dooley and Dunne to life in this one man stage performance of biting commentary that is funny, at times poetic and profound, and as current today as it was a hundred years ago. A tonic for hard political times.

Directed by Michael Stanley

Run Time: 79 minutes

DVD-NTSC

$18.99

In 1893, newspaper editor Finley Peter Dunne created Mr. Dooley, a fictitious bartender in a working class Irish neighborhood of Chicago, who commented on local politics.

Through his bartender persona, Dunne displayed uncanny political acumen, spiked with a reporter’s cynicism but tempered with humor. His empathy for the common working man, along with his penchant for skewering robber barons, made Mr. Dooley a local hero. When the Spanish American War broke out, Dunne broadened Dooley’s aim to include the war and national issues. The columns were syndicated, and the Chicago bartender became world-famous.

Songs were written about him; his observations on national politics were read aloud at White House cabinet meetings because they were considered a barometer of popular opinion. Everywhere across the country, Mr. Dooley’s saloon sermons were read aloud, in his broad Irish brogue, for edificiation and entertainment.

DOOLEYISMS:

“A vote on th’ tallysheet is worth two in

the box.”

“The modern idee of government is ‘Snub th’ people, buy th’ people, jaw th’ people.’”

“The paramount issue for our side is whatever the other side doesn’t like to have mentioned.”

“Never kick a man unless he’s down.”

“Tis as hard for a rich man to get into Heaven as it is for a poor man to get out of Purgatory.”

“Trust ivrybody--but cut th’ cards.”

“If you said some things in plain English, you could be shot or sued,” the managing editor advises young Peter Dunne, “but now a funny little Irishman can say whatever he likes.” More precisely, by assuming the mask (and voice) of an aging, philosophical bartender in the lower reaches of Chicago society, Dunne could say more about his city and his country and its politics than he could safely enunciate in a pious editorial, whiile making his audience laugh at the truth. An acerbic sense of humor made all things possible, and unexpectedly Mr. Dooley was elevated to the status of an American hero by a populace browbeaten by the brutal economics of robber barons, a culture of corruption in government, wars of conquest abroad, and a national moral compass out of kilter. Larzer Ziff, in his book The American 1890s, posits that it was the bartender’s gentle brogue and manner that made his message palatable to a 19th Century audience. Perhaps. But it was the anger underneath, eloquent and sarcastic, that drove the message home. And that is why Dooley’s tavern is still a refuge for the angry, disaffected, and bewildered today, dispensing humor and wisdom as a tonic for hard political times.

Alexander Kulcsar is a Connecticut-based actor, playwright and filmmaker with a strong interest in American historical subjects. He has appeared on stage frequently at Square One Theatre in Stratford, and at Bare Bones Readers Theatre in Southport. His most recent one man play, The Stone-Throwing Devil of Portsmouth, based on a New Hampshire legend, has been performed several times as a work in progress.

Michael Stanley is an actor and director of stage and screen, and a frequent collaborator with Alexander Kulcsar, having directed him in A Pirate’s Life (a one man play on the life of Stede Bonnet, written by Steve Otfinoski),The Brother (based on the humor of Flann O’Brien) and Doing Agatha, a feature-length comedy. Michael’s first film, Attack of the Beast Creatures, is a low-budget horror classic with a loyal cult following.

Dunne disliked dialect humor as a genre but being of Irish descent himself, and writing of Irish people, he managed to enlarge the form with sympathy and wit. Dooley is a complex character, full of contradictions, a Stage Irishman with the soul of a poet. James Joyce was enchanted by Dunne’s playfulness with language, and even gave Dooley a cameo appearance in Finegan’s Wake.

At the height of his fame, Dunne counted among his fans and friends people as disparate as Mark Twain, Henry Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt. His newspaper-reading bartender is said to have inspired a later political humorist, Will Rogers, who claimed that all he knew was what he read in the papers. Dunne published several book collections of Dooley essays, beginning with Mr. Dooley In Peace and In War (1898). His last collection, Mr. Dooley On Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils, was published in 1920. He died in New York in 1936.