John Dolan: Dowtcha, Jessie, but Cork has had its share of Oscars joy too
Many, of course, proved anything but, much to the chagrin of the punters - and the delight of the bookies.
But I don’t think there is a word in the bookies’ lexicon for how much of a favourite Jessie Buckley is to win the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night. None of those words do her odds justice.
She is quoted variously at between 33 and 40 to 1 ON to become the first Irish winner of that category.
That means you would have to place €33 or €40 on her to win just €1!
In other words, Jessie, who is from Killarney, is so nailed on to lift the golden statuette in Los Angeles this weekend for her acclaimed performance in , that the bookies have given up the ghost.
Imagine if Ireland were leading Scotland 30-0 at half-time in their Six Nations match this weekend, and you wanted to bet on Ireland to go on to win the match. I imagine those odds would be around 40 to 1 on.
In fact, from an Irish viewpoint, it would almost now be a bigger story if Jessie didn’t win the Oscar - it would surely be the biggest upset in Academy Awards history.
Consider this: The biggest shock in recent years is said to have occurred in 2017, when lost out to for the Best Picture Oscar. The former was a ‘mere’ 9-2 on to win that year.
If I were one of Buckley’s fellow nominees - Rose Byrne, Kate Hudson, Renate Reinsve, or Emma Stone... I wouldn’t start rehearsing a victory speech. Just enjoy the night, hun!
Of course, the entire nation will be proud and thrilled when (yes, when) Jessie delivers her speech from the podium. But there will be the tiniest frisson of disappointment here on Leeside that the actress chose to be born a few miles on the wrong side of the Cork border - and in Kerry no less!
We never want to give those Kingdom types an inch, especially as the Munster Football Final is slated to take place in Killarney this spring - and Cork and Kerry are a likely match-up yet again. We know how that always ends up.
No, a win for Kerry is great for Kerry and Ireland, but here on Leeside, we aren’t too keen to hear the trumpet being blown for anything that might lead to the suggestion Cork isn’t the top dog.
It’s timely, then, to point out the many achievements of Cork folk in the 97 years since the Academy Awards began.
Naturally, we’ll start at the top - with our golden boy Cillian Murphy, who lifted the famous statuette two years ago for his lead role in .
He was heralded as the first Corkonian to win the Best Actor award, but that may be open to dispute. In fact, the legendary actor and crooner Bing Crosby has a stake to that record.
Crosby was nominated for a best actor Oscar several times, before finally winning in 1945 for his role in Going My Way - the film that also netted Dubliner Barry Fitzgerald an Oscar.
Crosby’s maternal great-grandparents hailed from Schull, where a wall of their old homestead is said to still stand.
Not a bad claim to fame, and Schull has a grand old view of Kerry too!
Speaking of grandparents... Bill Murray, who was nominated but missed out on an Oscar for in 2003, had a paternal grandfather who hailed from Cork,
Away from acting, Cork has come close in other fields at the Academy Awards. UCC-educated Doug Murray, an Irish citizen by marriage, was nominated in 2023 for Best Sound on , while Cork city-born Nora Twomey, founder of the Cartoon Saloon, has been nominated twice for Best Animated Feature.
Then there is the remarkable story of Cork academic Professor Niall Ó Murchadha, and his unlikely connection to Oscar success, as told in last year’s
When he was a UCC physics graduate in 1973, Niall spent a year at famed Princeton University in New Jersey, honing his passion for the subject, and his speciality, Albert Einstein’s laws of relativity.
As luck would have it, two documentary-makers were tasked with making a promotional film about the college and its student life that year, and the Cork man was among their interviewees
The half-hour short won Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 1974 Academy Awards.
In typical Cork fashion, the good professor didn’t let his brush with stardom go to his head.
Many years later, Niall, who was beloved by academia in Cork and around the world, and who sadly died in 2021, showed a review of the Princeton film to his UCC colleague, Patrick O’Shea.
“It described him as ‘the nerd’, which to us physicists is a compliment!” said Professor O’Shea, who went on to be President of UCC.
More than 50 years on, the film can be seen on YouTube.
Perhaps the unlikeliest Oscar connection to Cork, though, came in 1956, when a nine-minute film shot on Leeside was nominated for Best Short.
Called , it chastely tells the story of a fictional hurler who courts a camogie player in Cork.
Players from the iconic Rebel hurling team of that era and their legendary coach, Jim ‘Tough’ Barry, appear in the short, which can be viewed on the Irish Film Institute archive.
sadly missed out on the Oscar, and a few years ago, the Holly Bough tracked down its teenage male star, Cormac Gallagher, who had never acted before - or since.
He recalled of his childhood brush with fame: “There was no audition. I was called into the principal’s office in the North Mon and he said to me, in Irish, that there was some ‘amadaniocht’ (foolishness) taking place and did I want to participate. My mother always said I got the role because I had the whitest shorts!”
Cormac, who earned the princely sum of £10 for his efforts, went on to become one of Ireland’s foremost experts in the scientific field of psychoanalysis.
Gracefully, we on Leeside will naturally be hoping Jessie Buckley can add to Ireland’s Oscars haul this weekend. But we very much doubt she will go on to be a great scientist like those two Cork professors!
App?
