Home News TV Listings Movies Music Video Photos Radio Extra Book Club RTÉ Guide

Movie News

O'Hara at opening of Foynes museum

Veteran Hollywood star Maureen O'Hara was the special guest at the official opening of the renovated Foynes Flying Boat Museum this afternoon.
1 of 1 O'Hara - Screen great attends opening of Foynes Museum
O'Hara - Screen great attends opening of Foynes Museum

The museum first opened in 1989 and it celebrates the long tradition the town of Foynes has with the famous flying boats which brought passengers across the Atlantic since 1939, prior to the opening of Shannon Airport in 1945.

Maureen O'Hara has a long association with Foynes as her late husband Charlie Blair flew the last flying boat from Foynes to New York.

A major part of the €2m museum revamp has been the installation of a life-sized Boeing B314 Yankee Clipper, regarded as the Concorde of its day, and the largest and fastest civilian aircraft of its time, flying passengers from the US to Foynes.

It carried all the top Hollywood stars across the North Atlantic between 1939 and 1945. One of its major attractions was the famous Honeymoon Suite which was the preferred mode of travel for such screen icons as Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope and Gracie Fields during the golden age of flying boats.

The museum is expected to attract 50,000 visitors a year and generate €6m in income for the local economy.

add your own comment
User contributions and/or comments do not, unless specifically stated, represent the views of RTÉ.ie or RTÉ.
Click here for Terms of use

Must Watch TV

  • - The Apprentice

    9.00pm BBC One

    As Alan Sugar continues his search for his next business partner, the candidates are called to meet him on a rooftop overlooking the City of London, where countless financial deals are done on a daily basis. For one day only, the teams will be representing an online daily deals website that offers Londoners exclusive deals in hotel stays, beauty treatments, posh dinners and premium products. It's a test of the teams' negotiation skills; they must strike the right deal, get a good discount and deliver their offers to the website by close-of-business that evening. In the boardroom, there is a landslide victory, and the losers mount a desperate bid to stay in the running, but it seems that no one is safe from those fateful words, 'you're fired'.

  • - Lewis

    8.00pm UTV

    Another week, another suspicious death to be explained. This time, a lovelorn professor is found dead a day after her internet dating video is posted on a subversive media blog. All the evidence points to suicide, but Lewis is convinced there's more to it than meets the eye. But when a second body turns up, a new problem arises - the officers' own lives are laid bare for the world to see on the internet, and it seems ancient college history may have something to do with the case.

  • - The Killing

    10.00pm Channel 4

    Finally back in touch with Holder, Sarah reviews the case with him. They question why Rosie's backpack was dropped at the Larsen house two weeks after the murder. Was it the killer intending to torture the family, or was it a witness who felt remorse for not having come forward? Is it the same individual as the person with the Ogi Jun tattoo who was with Rosie on the Super 8 footage and who was also caught on the security camera at the Beau Soleil fire? Sarah and Holder stake out Janek's place and realise that Stan has apparently renewed his connection with the Polish mob. Still partially working outside the system, Sarah calls on a friend at the FBI to get more information about Janek and comes up with a new lead.

  • - Green is the Colour

    10.25pm RTÉ Two

    This second programme in the series about the history of football (the English kind!) examines life after independence as the FAI found itself with a mountain to climb to earn the right to call the national team 'Ireland'. The struggle was marked by the uneasy relationship between politics and sport, but the pain and heartbreak of failing to qualify for a major tournament was eased by a booming domestic league, which entered a golden era but would eventually see a decline as eyes turned towards the English game.