Movie featuring Custume Barracks soldiers screened 50 years ago

ABOVE: Martin McCabe on the set of ‘Alfred the Great’

STORY: DAVID FLYNN

Vikings returned to Lough Ree in the late 1960s as part of a major feature film which starred prominent actors such as Ian McKellan, Michael York and Sinead Cusack in her first credited movie role. It was fifty years ago this month that the movie, ‘Alfred The Great’ opened for two nights in Athlone’s Adelphi Cinema.

The movie was set in the ninth century in England and was about young Alfred (played by David Hemmings) planning to join the priesthood until he saw Vikings attacking his homeland. He led Christians to fight against the newcomers in bloody endless battles.

Custume Barracks soldiers were extras on the movie, and many of them played Vikings.

The late Mick McCarth told the Westmeath Independent in 2009 about his memories of being on the set of ‘Alfred The Great’. Mick was an oarsman along with many other army lads on the production.

“We got thirty shillings a day, and had to row back from one place to another across Lough Ree, but I will always be remembered as the Viking who was wearing a wristwatch in the film,” laughed Mick, in the interview in 2009.

While it wasn’t the worst epic and battle movie of the era, ‘Alfred the Great’ didn’t break any records at the British box-office.

The movie was often broadcast on the TCM television channel, but it hasn’t been seen on television for several years.

Gearoid O’Brien recalled in an Athlone Miscellany article in the Westmeath Independent, going to Hodson Bay in July 1968 to view the Viking Longships which were moored there during a break in filming.

“Fit young soldiers from Custume Barracks were drafted in to man the longboats and the presence of the film crew caused quite a stir in the area,” wrote Gearoid, in his Westmeath Independent article. “The film was undistinguished, though critics admired it for the background detail and indeed for the vivid battle scenes which were filmed on Lough Ree.”

Gearoid said that the movie was eventually shown over two nights in May 1970 in the Adelphi Cinema, which was in Garden Vale, Athlone.

“There were no fanfare of trumpets or celebration and it did not warrant even a passing mention in the local newspaper,” said Gearoid, who said he presumed many who were involved in the movie went to see it.

Declan McCabe from Assumption Road, Athlone, is a Professor of Biology at St Michael’s College in Vermont, USA. His late father, Martin McCabe was an extra on the movie, and Declan wrote recently about some of his father’s memories about the soldiers acting in ‘Alfred The Great’.

“Some of the men earned extra money by doing some of the riskier shots and my father earned his extra money by lying on the battlefield and permitting a horse to walk up to his 'body' and then circle around his head,” said Declan. “Some extras were unwilling to risk being stepped on, but my father's familiarity with horses convinced him that the horse would avoid stepping on a person.”

“After days of shooting with large numbers of extras on the shores of the River Shannon, the crew would repaint the brown grass using large buckets of green paint,” he said.

In his office in Vermont, Declan has his father’s prop sword from the movie.

Selected scenes from ‘Alfred the Great’ can be seen on YouTube.