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Life
1902-1953 [Frederick Laurence Green; ‘Laurie’]; b. Portsmouth; English novelist; settled in Belfast 1932; novels include Odd Man Out (1945) dealing with IRA raid, filmed in Belfast by Carol Reed in 1947 with James Mason, F. L. McCormick and Cyril Cusack; also issued A Flask for the Journey (1946) and Mist on the Water (1948), novels with Irish settings. DIL KUN
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Works
Odd Man Out (London: Michael Joseph 1945), and Do. (London: Book Club 1946; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1948; London: Cardinal Books 1991).
For films, see Kevin Rockett, Cinema & Ireland (1988) [infra].
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Commentary
Cyril Cusack called Odd Man Out [1946] a ‘bad book made into a very good film'. (See obit. notices, Irish Times, 8 Oct. 1993.)
Robert Greacen, Even Without Irene (1969; rep. Lagan 1995), known as Laurie; film version of Odd Man Out, with Tomelty; Diana Wynward in film of his On the Night of the Fire; Green starts twitting me on the so-called Ulster Renaissance’, and then tell me about his latest project. “I’m writing”, he says, “what you and your friends should be writing, about the real dramas going on here. You people ignore what’s going on on your own doorstep.” [147]
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References
British Library holds, Odd Man Out (London: Michael Joseph 1945; Penguin 1948; Raven Tree Mystery Series 1982; Cardinal Books 1991) [0 74740 823 8]; A Flask for the Journey (London: Michael Joseph 1946); The Magician (London: Michael Joseph 1951); Ambush for the Hunter (London: Michael Joseph 1952); Clouds in the Wind (London: Michael Joseph 1950); A Fragment of Glass (London: Michael Joseph 1947); Sulius Penton (London: John Murray 1934); Mist of the Waters (London: Michael Joseph 1948); Music in the Park (London: Michael Joseph 1942); On the Edge of the Sea (London: Michael Joseph 1944); The Sound of Water (London: Michael Joseph 1940); On the Night of the Fire (London: Michael Joseph 1949); A Song for the Angels (London: Michael Joseph 1943). See also J. W. Foster, Themes and Forces in Ulster Fiction (1974).
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Kevin Rockett, et al., eds, Cinema & Ireland (1988), Odd Man Out (1947), 105 [dir. Carl Reed], 111 [1947], 152-183 [story of Johnny (James Mason); heavily indebted to German expressionism and American film noir; Johnny as a victim; pessimism embedded in its structure; precursor in the fatalism of The Informer; Johnny will never belong to Kathleen; 234-6, critique by Conor Cruise O’Brien, comparing its cinematic view of Belfast favourably with the mists of The Informer, especially as ‘distracting attention from the inadequacies and improbabilities of the story and the long dreariness of the dialogue,’ The Bell, Vol. 14, no. 2 (May 1947), p.57] 247 [Cave Hill, topographical associations of], 264 [compared with Cal]. DIL cites Odd Man Out, in Three British Screenplays, ed. Roger Manvill (Lon, Methuen/British Film Academy 1950), pp.83-202.
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BBC, Radio Times (1992): F. L. Green, Odd Man Out, filmed by Carol Reed, with James Mason, F. J. McCormick, Kathleen Ryan, and Cyril Cusack - also Joseph Tomelty (1949) [var. 1947]. (See also plot summary, infra.)
Belfast Public Library holds 11 novels from 1940-1952, including On the Night of the Fire (1939); Sound of Water (1940); Music in the Park (1942); Song for the Angels (1943); Odd Man Out (1951); Ambush for a Hunter (1952); Clouds in the Winds; A Flask for the Journey (1946) [Irish setting]; Fragment of Glass; Julius Penton; Magician (1951); Mist on the Water (1948) [Irish setting].
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Notes
Odd Man Out (1) - plot summary: Johnny McQueen, an escaped IRA man, is wounded in a raid on a mill [factory] for money, and spends the film eluding the police; minor characters including the artist Lukie and the medical student Tober give him shelter for their own reasons; his companions are betrayed by Teresa, the shebeen keeper; Kathleen Sullivan, who loves him from the start, swears that she will not let him hang, preferring to shot him herself; Father Tom, the parish priest who has know the ‘all of the boys’ since childhood, tries to dissuade her. His only interest is to hear Johnny’s last confession; when finally Kathleen finds a dying Johnnie she opens fire upon the police, who shoot both of them down; the police inspector is portrayed as a sympathetic man, but a law and order realist (with an English accent); the Irish characters are treacherous, and the first to extend comfort to McQueen is a English woman and her daughter lately arrived in Ireland; her husband argues the case for law and order, and she for compassion. (BBC Radio Times).
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Odd Man Out? (2): Sheridan Morley’s biography of Mason was entitled Odd Man Out (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1989).
Ciaran Carson, ‘Intelligence’, a prose-poem in Belfast Confetti, contains references: ‘[...] and I see now through the time-warp something like the Belfast of Odd Man Out as the camera pans down from some aerial vision [...&c.]’.
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