Christmas Cards Help World’s Refugees – Amharc Éireann: Eagrán 130

Oscar-winning actor Dame Margaret Rutherford visited Trinity College in December 1961 to help promote the launch of charity christmas cards.

Enterprising students were selling cards depicting famous paintings reproduced with the kind permission of the National Gallery of Ireland.  The proceeds would go towards the Irish Père Pire Refugee Fund.

Père Dominique Pire, born in 1910, was a Belgian Dominican friar whose work helping refugees in post-World War II Europe saw him receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958. He was visited Ireland in 1963. Margaret Rutherford was an English character actress best known for her performance in a series of films as the iconic Agatha Christie character Ms. Marple.  She was no stranger to Ireland having toured the country as Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in 1957.

Produced by Gael Linn, Amharc Éireann (A View of Ireland) is Ireland’s longest-running indigenous newsreel series. It was distributed to cinemas throughout the country to  promote the Irish language. The first 36 issues were produced as single-topic films which were released monthly, followed in 1959 by weekly, multi-story newsreels featuring a broad range of topics, from hard news stories to lighter magazine-style items. Between 1956 and 1964, 267 editions of the newsreel were produced for cinema exhibition.

To see more of the Gael Linn Collection, click here.

With kind permission of Gael Linn.