Constance "Connie" Smith was born in 1929 on Limerick's Wolfe Tone Street and would later become a star who burned brightly, but all too briefly, during the golden age of Hollywood cinema. Now she's the subject of the latest Lyric Feature - documentary maker Sharon Slater writes about the appeal of Connie’s long forgotten story...
All too often, my thoughts return to a cold, dark January day in 1929, the day a young couple, newly married and full of hope, welcomed their daughter, Constance "Connie" Smith, into the world. She was born in a modest flat on Wolfe Tone Street in Limerick. Her father arrived in Limerick with the army a year earlier to work on the Shannon Scheme. This scheme was an ambitious project to harness the power of the Shannon River and bring electricity to Ireland. Little did he know that his daughter would one day outshine any of the lights he helped to create.
Why do I think of that day and of Connie's birth? About twenty years ago, my curiosity about the history of Limerick led me to the entertainment section in a 1950s newspaper. There I saw the name Constance Smith, as the Limerick-born star of a big Hollywood movie, Treasure of the Golden Condor.
This raised both my eyebrows.
Watch the trailer for Treasure Of The Golden Condor
First, I had never heard of this film and second, I had never heard of Connie. After asking others around me, I realized they had never heard of her either. The puzzle began with the question who was Connie and why had her name vanished from living memory?
As I began to dig, her story became more and more interesting. She moved from Limerick to Dublin, from Dublin to London, from London to Hollywood. There she starred on the screen with well-known actors like Jack Palance, walked across the stage at the Academy Awards, and rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s elite, including Groucho Marx, who spent time with Connie and her first husband.
For over a decade she was everywhere—her face on the covers of magazines and her name in lights, but then her star burned too bright and collapsed, a supernova turned into a black hole pulling all mention of her into obscurity. Connie lived for fifty years after Treasure of the Golden Condor was released, the last forty spent out of the public eye.
That fleeting discovery in a yellowed newspaper sparked something in me. After catching the glimmer of her stardust, I set out to uncover Connie’s story and restore her name to the place it deserves, among Ireland’s trailblazing talents. For too long her light was dimmed by time and circumstance. Now Connie is set to get an exultant third act, with a new immersive - and eponymous - show at Limerick's Theatre Royal by playwrights Ann Blake and Joanne Ryan.
As her story resurfaces, perhaps the people of Limerick, and Ireland beyond, will remember the local girl who once lit up Hollywood.
The Lyric Feature: Connie Gets a Rewrite, RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 12th of October at 6pm - listen to more from The Lyric Feature here
