the pauper and the prince: transformative masculinity in raoul walsh's regeneration (1915)

The Pauper and the Prince: Transformative Masculinityin Raoul Walsh's Regeneration

Tony Tracy

Film History: An International Journal, Volume 23, Number 4, 2011,pp. 414-427 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

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The Pauper and the Prince:

Transformative Masculinity

in Raoul Walsh’s

Regeneration%.� �� .� ��

Tony Tracy

Regeneration is among the most notable earlyfeature-length films produced in the UnitedStates and the first of over 140 feature filmsdirected by Raoul Walsh (although he had

already made over twenty one- and two-reelers).Released on 13 September 1915, the film marks thefeature debut of the still thriving Irish-American urbangangster theme and represents a significant devel-opment and reorientation in representations of Irish-American masculinity (although it is not listed under“Irish” in the AFI Within Our Gates catalogue).1 Nev-ertheless, it is a film that has drawn less scholarlycomment than one might expect.2 Admittedly, thepredictable contours of its melodramatic storyline -a Progressive Era parable centring on a fallen manand his redemption in the form of a good woman -were hardly ground-breaking. Even Walsh admittedthat “The plot was basic”, declaring that he onlydecided to make the film because “I felt that if I couldbreak away from the stereotyped format, I had abetterthan even chance at box office [success]”.3 This hesubstantially achieved by use of vivid location shoot-ing around New York’s Bowery and waterfront and asingularly dramatic sequence set on a Hudson “ex-cursion barge” where passengers are seen jumpingoverboard to avoid a fire (a scene inspired by the1904 General Slocum disaster and so realisticallystaged that it fooled local police and emergencyservices during its shooting).4

Since it was rediscovered in the 1970s andlater released on VHS/DVD, the film’s reputation hasgrown considerably, although its status has perhapsbeen hampered by the fact that Walsh’s debut suf-

fers from a production date that coincides with D.W.Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (on which he served asassistant director and made his most significant act-ing appearance as John Wilkes Booth), the formaland thematic preoccupations of which have gener-ated a long shadow in critical and popular debate ofearly American cinema. Regeneration is worthy ofexploration on a number of fronts not least for itscinematic qualities, its relationship to contemporaryviews on gender and ethnicity and the establishmentin American cinema of character-types and narrativestructures centred on urban, Irish-American criminal-ity, elements that continue to find expression in filmssuch as The Departed (2006) and The Town (2010).

The film’s source material, Owen Frawley Kil-dare’s autobiography My Mamie Rose (1903) – firstin print and subsequently on stage and film – offersan intriguing historical case study of a story’s pro-gress from page to screen over a period of twelveyears. The durability of its plot outline allows us aninsight into the themes and favoured modes ofpopular narrative during the early decades of thetwentieth century, while its modifications across thisperiod alert us to changes in such modes and em-phases for audiences of different media across this

Tony Tracy lectures at the Huston School of Film,National University of Ireland, Galway. His researchinterests include silent cinema, Irish film and televisionand Irish-American film. He recently produced BlazingtheTrail: TheO’Kalems in Ireland (2011)adocumentarywritten and directed by Peter Flynn.Correspondence to [email protected]

Film History, Volume 23, pp. 414–427, 2011. Copyright © 2011 Indiana University PressISSN: 0892-2160. Printed in United States of America

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 4, 2011 – p. 414

time-frame.5 By 1915, when Regeneration was made,Owen Kildare had already been dead for four yearsand his life story, once so public and celebrated, wasin eclipse. But the longer format of the feature filmwas ideal for his urban-set coming of age story, anarrative that melded ethnic masculine identity withProgressive Era values of self transformation andspiritual purity.

The new man: cultural contextThe protracted narrativization of Owen Frawley Kil-dare’s life story began with an article submitted to theNew York Sunday News in February 1902 when theauthor was aged 38.6 Following its publication, Kil-dare was invited to write a more developed autobi-ography for the February 1903 edition of SuccessMagazine; a publication whose title and ethos epito-mised the Progressive Era’s doctrine of self-reliance.Both accounts are structured by a clear, causal nar-rative of events: Kildare’s birth in Catherine Street (offthe Bowery, New York) in 1864; his membership in agang under the leadership of Tim Sullivan and hisemployment as a Bowery boxer and bar-man; hisaccidental meeting with a “little school teacher”,Marie Deering in 1894 – “who taught me to read andwrite and who made a man of me” – before heruntimely death in 1900, one month before they wereto be married.7 Kildare’s article in Success launchedhis career as a writer, provoking (according to hisown account) an “amazing, almost embarrassingresponse” of over four thousand letters “from allparts of the country”, including many from religiousministers and distinguished figures of the day.8

While Kildare’s story emphasised its uniqueand individual circumstances, its trajectory was en-tirely in keeping with the tenor of Success Magazine.Founded in 1897 by Orison Swett Marden, the maga-zine was just one activity of the entrepreneur’s Suc-

cess Company. Marden’s first book, Pushing to theFront, appeared in 1894 and he followed it with simi-larly themed best sellers including How to Succeedor, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune (1896), TheSecret of Achievement (1898) and Cheerfulness as aLife Power (1899), among many others.9 It is easy tosee why Frawley Kildare’s story would have ap-pealed to Marden. The honest chronicle of a manwho dragged himself out of the moral and socialdegradation of the Bowery to literacy and self-deter-mination matched exactly with the spirit of the “NewThought Movement” of which Marden’s world-viewwas a secular extrapolation. The majority of Marden’s“writing” (more accurately cut and paste didacticism)is in the tone of an Evangelical preacher; liberallymixing advice with quote and anecdote, drawing onthe personal testimonies or life-stories of successfulindividuals who began in humble circumstances torise above their backgrounds through will-power andself-belief. Marden’s view of success is also highlygendered: central to the success of the people hecites and profiles is the foregrounding of manhoodas a category of moral strength and ambition. Howto Succeed (1896), for instance, begins with thesection “First, Be a Man”, containing the key tenetsof this vision:

Although millions are out of employment in theUnited States, how difficult it is to find a thor-ough, reliable, self-dependent industriousman . . .. The world has a standing advertise-ment over the door of every profession, everyoccupation, every calling: “Wanted-A Man”.10

In this emphasis, Marden reflected the spirit ofhis era. In his essay “The Reorientation of AmericanCulture in the 1890s,” John Higham has identified thedecade as a pivotal point in the emergence of mod-ern masculinity, arguing that an emphasis on thebody came about as a reaction to changes in lifestyleand status precipitated by growing industrialisa-tion.11 For Higham this reorientation came from thevery top of American society in the figure of TheodoreRoosevelt, “the self-made man: athlete, scholar, sol-dier and cowboy president – the Everyman of mod-ern masculinity”. Three years before Frawley Kildarewrote his autobiography, Roosevelt outlined his phi-losophy in his famous “The Strenuous Life” lecture,in which he preached:

Not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doc-trine of the strenuous life, the life of effort, of

Fig. 1. R.A.Walsh’s namecredited abovethe title of hisfirst feature film,Regeneration(Fox, 1915).


The Pauper and the Prince FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 4 (2011) 415

labour and strife; to preach that highest formof success which comes, not to the man whodesires more easy peace, but to the man whodoes not shrink from danger, from hardship,or from bitter toil ... .12

Central to Roosevelt’s doctrine was the linkingof the health of the individual and the nation, “all thatis most American in the American character”.

In the last analysis a healthy state can exist onlywhen the men and women who make it up leadclean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the chil-dren are so trained that they shall endeavour,not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them;not to seek ease, but to know how to wresttriumph from toil and risk.13

As a cultural response to such exhortations,James Gilbert adds another dimension to the emer-gence of a new American manhood at this time in hisidentification of “spectatorship masculinity”,

[i]n which identity was formed (or imagined atleast) around the observation and emulation ofmasculine heroes in sport and public life,within the literary imagination or through massculture.14

Clearly, Marden’s writing and its focus on aself-actualising masculinity can be read against suchdevelopments, and Frawley Kildare’s autobiogra-phy, My Mamie Rose: The Story of My Regeneration,finally published in book form in 1903, is a product ofsuch a culture. Following Roosevelt’s edict, it explic-itly rejects “a life of slothful ease” and offers to thereader a lived example of self-willed effort and con-sequent success. Its moral authority, in the spirit ofthe times, is firmly located in its accessibility aspersonal experience. “Many men have told the sto-ries of their lives”, it begins. “I shall tell you mine. Notbecause I, as they have done great and importantthings, but because of the miracle which transformedme.” Here, as elsewhere during the Progressive Era,true manhood is understood as a transformativerather than a given quality, and in its attainment thephysical and spiritual become intertwined.

Highham has noted that the optimism of theera’s vision and self-belief was in marked contrast toOld World fin-de-siècle pessimism, an outlook exem-plified by Max Nordau’s work of social critique Entar-dung (1892), published to widespread acclaim in theUnited States in 1895 as Degeneration. Given the

success and notoriety of Nordau’s bleak analysis ofEuropean arts and culture, My Mamie Rose (and thesubsequent play and film Regeneration) can be readas a distinctly American counter-text in its populism,optimism and sense of a culture in the throes of liferather than death.15 “We stand”, wrote Nordau, “inthe midst of a severe mental epidemic, a sort of BlackDeath of degeneration and hysteria”.16 For Nordausuch hysteria had led to a society in a downwardspiral of decay. “Whoever looks upon civilisation asa good, having value and deserving to be defended,must mercilessly crush under his thumb the anti-so-cial vermin, i.e. the degenerates.”

Nordau’s book primarily attacked “degener-ate” art and saw it as symptomatic of a wider moraland cultural decline fostered by the social phenom-ena of modernity. However, he shared with AmericanProgressives a belief in self-discipline as a means ofenhancing the wider community:

Whoever preaches absence of discipline is anenemy of progress, and whoever worships his‘I’ is an enemy to society ... . [P]rogress is theeffect of an ever more rigorous subjugation ofthe beast in man, of an ever tenser self-re-straint, an ever keener sense of duty and re-sponsibility.17

While Kildare’s story of self-actualisation con-tains echoes of that discourse, its personal transfor-mation narrative of an uneducated Irish-Americancorner-boy made respectable also links it with theestablished and popular American genre of immi-grant autobiography and personal testimony. MyMamie Rose follows the genre’s convention of abefore and after structure, a progress from the limi-tations of the Old World – in this case the lowlifes ofthe Bowery – to the New World of white America, hereembodied in the figure of Marie Deering. A contem-poraneous and characteristic example of the immi-grant autobiography form is Jacob Riis’ The Makingof an American (1901) which celebrates Riis’ pas-sage from Denmark to the New World even as itargues for radical social reform of the New Yorkslums where Kildare lived at that very moment. In-deed Riis seems to address Kildare directly:

Light ahead! The very battle that is now wagedfor righteousness on the once forgotten EastSide is our answer to the cry of the young who,having seen the light, were willing no longer tolive in darkness ... . The work is bearing fruit.


416 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 4 (2011) Tony Tracy

On the East Side the young rise in rebellionagainst the slum ... . When we fight no longerfor the poor, but with the poor, the slum is takenin the rear and beaten already.

A final source of influence and touchstone forKildare’s narrative of transformation is the nineteenthcentury genre of evangelical conversion. A landmarkwork in this category is Jerry McCauley’s self-pub-lished Transformed: The History of a River Thief,Briefly Told (1876).18 McCauley, like Kildare, was anIrish-American living in New York’s downtown under-belly when he experienced redemption in the midstof squalor and went on to establish the first “rescue”missions for destitute men. Central to his conversionnarrative is an encounter while McCauley is in prisonwith “Miss D_”, a reformer who introduces him toprayer and God and sets him on the path to redemp-tion.19 Transformed is a pioneering work in its linkingof ethnicity, destitution, revelation and deliverance inAmerica, and My Mamie Rose is clearly indebted toits quasi-religious structure of a ‘new man’ emerging‘into the light’ through the intervention of a compas-sionate, middle-class woman.

My Mamie Rose is, then, autobiographyshaped by literary antecedents, the tensions andthemes of the Progressive Era and a view of transfor-mative manhood that is distinctly American. As wehave indicated, a crucial dimension of this context isthe figure of Marie Deering, who occupies both asymbolic and historical resonance within the text. Asa feminised ideal of succour and salvation, Deeringis an incarnation of New York harbour’s Statue ofLiberty (“Mother of Exiles”), whose inscribed invita-tion to the “tempest-tossed” is reconfigured as amelodramatic New York City love-story (Emma Laz-arus’s sonnet was placed on the statue in 1903, theyear of Kildare’s book). Her maternal, selfless anddesexualised nature also contains strong elementsof the Virgin Mary figure in a narrative with clearChristian overtones. Historically, she is repre-sentative of the dynamic female activists of the era.Nancy S. Dye has noted that “Women filled theprogressive landscape”, and quotes a contemporaryexplanation for their cultural centrality:

“Since men are more or less closely absorbedin business”, one clubwoman declared, “it hascome to pass that the initiative in civic mattershas developed largely upon women. It is morethan a coincidence that civic awakening that isstirring in our cities ... has come with the civic

activities of women’s clubs.” ... Women’sgrass-roots activism and their vision of a newcivic consciousness lay at the heart of earlyProgressive reform.20

Owen Kildare’s story is illustrative of such aconsciousness and a desire to reconnect the malespace of the streets with the female environment ofthe home. His first encounter with Marie Deeringcomes when her friend Ames brings her as part of aslumming party to “stare” at the strangeness of the“beastly other”, New York’s lower classes, where sheis immediately moved by the lack of opportunitiesafforded this underclass. Her attraction to Owen is,in the first instance, altruistic, and his subsequentvisits to her home, where he learns to read and write,are paradoxical developments in an era of “strenu-ous masculinity”. On the one hand, her concern forhis welfare and his schooling can be read as aprocess of feminization, but in the context of theculture of self improvement outlined above, and Kil-dare’s own comments that “she made me a man”, itis a process of enablement and self-actualizationarising from his transcendence of a physically de-fined identity to higher human values. The centralproposition of Kildare’s autobiography is that Marie’sintervention makes possible a transformation that the“degenerate” (criminal, idle) masculinity of thestreets and the patriarchal forces of American society(in the form of the law and upper class masculinity)cannot. Through compassion and education Marieopens a space in the social fabric that Owen is bothready and wiling to pass through. What subsequentversions of the story – including Walsh’s film – strug-

Fig. 2. Anna Q.Nillson as Marie,menaced by aproduct of theslums (WilliamSheer) inRegeneration.



gle to come to terms with are the melodramaticconsequences of this action: the nature and conse-quences of his feelings for her.

Kildare’s autobiography was an enormoussuccess, an outcome that was confidently antici-pated within the book itself with its inclusion of lettersand reviews of the earlier magazine draft of the story.Over the next five years Kildare built a reputation andcareer out of his insider knowledge of the Bowery andits denizens in such short stories and articles as “TheSentimental Side of the Slums”, “Hero Worship in theTenement” and “The Level of the Sodden”.21 “WhatLife Means to Me”, a Cosmopolitan article from June1907, was still re-telling his life-story and generalviews concerning the slums four years on. In 1906,by now a well known and respected public figure,

Kildare married Leita Ouida Bogartus (1889–1968) awell traveled and educated young woman then agedjust sixteen.22 Mrs. Owen Kildare (as she would besubsequently credited in her long and active publiclife) was very similar in character and commitment to“Mamie Rose” (indeed, it is easy to confuse the two)and would dedicate herself to women’s causes aswell as establishing a reputation as a novelist, writerand broadcaster during her long career. Althoughshe is not credited, she later claimed to have contrib-uted heavily to the stage adaptation of My MamieRose which Kildare wrote in collaboration with play-wright Walter Hackett (1876–1944).

Stage adaptationNow titled The Regeneration, the dramatic interpre-tation of his widely published life-story debuted inChicago in March 1908 before moving to New York,where it played for less than a month later the sameyear.23 It took the basic outline and most of the centralepisodes of Kildare’s autobiography but dramatizedthe story in four acts with “Mamie Rose” introducedat the end of Act I. This effectively reversed the book’semphasis, which gave almost two thirds of its spaceto the colorful life of the Bowery and associatedadventures, with the romance element occupyingonly the final third. In addition, the leading characterwas now known as Owen Conway (played by notedstage actor Arnold Daly), and the story introduced anumber of fictionalised elements. Contemporary re-views suggest that this was not the first time thematerial was brought to the stage – indicating thatthe “development” of the eventual film script wassome time in gestation. Esteemed critic Robert BurnsMantle noted that “it has had other forms and hasbeen tried here and there ... . He [Kildare] is probablystill unsatisfied as he should be but he has thesatisfaction of knowing that the play as evolved lastnight gripped and held the attention of an audience... .”. Burns Mantle was generally positive andpraised The Regeneration’s portrait of the urban un-derclass: “The Regeneration is a play that dealsdirectly with a pertinent problem of the cities – thesaving of a city tough”, and he concluded that it was“a purposeful drama that may be viewed with bothpleasure and profit”.24

This contrasted with the same paper’s extraor-dinary review of the same play when it opened atWallack’s Theatre, New York, in September 1908.Under the title “Two Owens and One Play”, FrantchinFyles wrote that,

Fig. 3. CrystalHerne as

“Mamie” andArnold Daly as

“Conway” inOwen Kildare andWalter Hackett’sstage version of

The Regeneration(1908).



A young man whose name isn’t Budweiser butnot far from that decided that Owen Kildarewould be a picturesque thing to call himself forhis handspring into literature. He went to live inthe Bowery, married a settlement worker andwrote a novel about one Owen Conway ... . Justto show life is stranger than fiction Owen Kil-dare’s romance came to successful Broadwayproduction while Owen Conway’s ended withhandcuffs.

The review concludes with the further incite-ment that “The other evening in the Bowery, ChuckConners told me that if Owen Kildare ever came backthere they would mob him”.25

The Regeneration, Fyles suggests, was builton a double deception: while Owen Kildare wasmaking money and success from his “life-story”, hisautobiographical other, Owen Conway, was deceit-fully portrayed as a condemned man. Secondly, Kil-dare's real name was similar to ‘Budweiser’, meaningthat he had disguised his origins for “picturesque”purposes. We will return to this second accusationlater, but what is of interest is that in the journey fromautobiographical literature to drama, Kildare’s storyand its claim to truth came under scrutiny. Yet thiswas by far a minority view and no other reviewsechoed or contained similar allegations. On the con-trary, the New York Times predicted (incorrectly) along run for the play.

The Regeneration opens in a Bowery cellarknown as “Chicory Hall”, the setting for all of Act I.One of the play’s principal features – and presumablypleasures - for its original audience is its ear for thecriminal banter of New York’s lower east side, apatois that would have to wait until the ethnic gang-ster films of 1930s before being heard by movie-go-ers. An early conversation reminiscing on the dayswhen [Owen] Conway was a legendary street fighteris illustrative of the colourful “low-life” chatter:

Dempsey: I belonged to the gang when Con-way strapped E-em-Alive [presumably someneighborhood tough] up again them stepsand betted the back of his bare back till hedropped and had to go to Bellevue for amonth. No – I didn’t see nothing! Them wasthe days when Conway and all of us was in theirglory. A scrap every five minutes and alwayssomething doing.

Nellie: He’d lick anything on two feet.

Skinny: You’re talking ragtime. I made moremoney in one night than Conway did in a yearwhen the graft was good.

Nellie: You skinny rat – you ain’t fit to kissConway’s feet.26

A plot constant from book through stage-playto screenplay is the slumming of caricatured up-towncharacters on the Bowery, in search of thrilling andtitillating brushes with the immigrant / criminal “na-tives”:

Ollie Ames: This seems to be the real thing.

Parsons: Only a stone’s throw from Fifth Ave-nue.

In honor of the visitors, gang member Casey(“the Irish terrier”) gives an impromptu and colourfulexplanation on the origins of the cellar’s title:

This is a historical joint alright. Say, it used tobe used by a wise guy for to make that stuffcalled chicory, what you easys drink for coffee.But the blokey got stuck on us knuckle jabs,see, and when he was all in and to the bad, heuse to leave us bunk nights right here in thisdump. It was alright here while he was workingbut he used to dope the old chickory with slugdrop for live ones – you know the easies whenthey dropped in – so we grabbed the dumpand made Owen Conway the captain of thegang for putting away six sailors at once.

The play places Marie Deering among these“easies” come to look in tourist fashion at the “neth-erworld”. While the film version posits an instantattraction between Owen and Marie, in the play theymeet because she wishes to chastise his wantonlife-style:

Deering: Aren’t you ashamed.

Conway: Ashamed?! Ashamed of what?

Deering: Of yourself and your existence. Anidler and an impostor. Yes and worse, a thief.

Conway then tells her of his harsh upbringingand the lack of chances in his life to rise above hisbackground:

I had to hustle for myself with all the oddsagainst me. Where was you teachers and re-formers then? All I got was kicks and cursesand if you think it’s easy to get bread in this



Christian town, you’re off your nut. You’ll learnand feed the chinks and cannibals but yourown kind, us that’s born right here next door toyou, you leave ignorant and starving ... .

This exchange (and its colourful racism andsocial criticism) is removed from the film version,which re-inserts (from the novel) Kildare’s childhood– including the death of his parents and his fosteringby an Irish-American tenement family – as well as hisearly years among the street gangs. While the movefrom stage to screen loses the realism achieved bydialogue it more than makes up for it in Walsh’sevocative cinematography and location shooting,eradicating the need for such wordy exposition.

Act II of The Regeneration takes place at 27East Houston Street, home of the Deering family,where Owen has come to learn to read. RaoulWalsh’s film replaces the family home with a BoweryMission but both maintain Marie’s devotion to life inthe slums and her progressive view of humanity:“Most of the brutality down there is but the naturalresult of ignorance”, she tells Ollie Ames. “If you knewthe darkness in which they are born and reared. Ifyou knew the pitiful tragedies of their lives ... . I see itevery day and it breaks my heart.”

The final act of the play is set some six monthslater. It features a more mature and reflective Owen;now a literate thirty year old with a soul and a con-science. A departure from Kildare’s autobiography isthe introduction of the character Ollie Ames, onetimesuitor to Marie (who becomes a District Attorney inthe film version and thereby a representative of tra-

ditional white masculine authority). Although he issympathetically drawn, his function is clearly as acounterpoint to Owen’s acquired social status, toremind the audience of Owen’s uncertain masculineidentity. Ames advises Conway to leave Marie andthe settlement but presents his advice as man to manhonesty rather than class snobbery:

I want you to go on and up but it must be awayfrom her or you’ll never find happiness ... .Conway I think I am a gentleman. If I thoughtyou could make her happy, that you could shutout your badness, that it will never come andsoil her as it has today I’d say go in and winher with all my heart.

For Ames (and people like him), the socialclasses are incompatible; to be of a social lowerorder is to be a recidivist by definition. As a repre-sentative of the patriarchal order, Ames understandsthat Progressive ideas are all very well but not at theprice of upsetting the women of the upper classes.The advice is cast in melodramatic terms – Conwaywill make her unhappy – but the subtext is the prohi-bition of sexual union across class (and ethnic) lines.Conway cannot marry Marie not because there is anyresistance of will on either part – both he and sheseem to want to – but because it violates the naturallaw: he “soils” her whiteness. In its implied racialdimension, Ames’ “gentlemanly advice” articulates aview found in the Eugenics discourse of the era, adiscourse bound up with themes of degenerationand “race suicide”. In his 1912 essay “The Right ToBe Well-Born” for instance, Franklin Kirkbride writes:

The right to be well-born has been denied tomany. Society can redeem this injustice only inpart, and for that reason the very best thatintelligence and science can give is impera-tive. To the large and more fortunate majoritywho have been well-born, education and ahigher social conscience must teach race im-provement.27

In response to Ames’ advice, Owen takes theblame for hiding the thief Skinny and allows himselfto be arrested and led away by Police, thus endinghis rehabilitation and relationship with Marie. In sub-stituting the death of Marie Deering (from the novel)with Owens’s subsequent abandonment of romanticunion, The Regeneration seems to be aware of thecharged social implications of having a former streetthief and poor-born Irish-American marry an edu-

Fig. 4. Aslumming partyof “easies” getsmore than they

bargained for inthe theatrical

adaptation of TheRegeneration.



cated, white middle-class woman. The conclusion ofthe play makes clear that Conway accepts this, thathe is inherently unworthy of her: “I want to climb upto your level; don’t let me drag you down to mine.Don’t you see we gotta do the right thing becauseit’s right.” This final, unsettling assertion of a raceideology prohibits a reading of the play, for all itsbasis in Progressive ideas, as a variant of Israel’sZangwill’s widely cited The Melting Pot, first stagedin New York the very same year. In fact, it is the veryopposite of Zangwill’s vision of America as “God’scrucible”: it suggests that the ethnic class can benefitfrom contact with native whites but not become fullyone of them.

Film adaptationKildare’s story was adapted for the screen threetimes during the silent period. The first, a Danishversion called Det mørke punkt, was released in 1911(ironically it was a truer account of his life than any-thing produced in English).28 Fox produced RaoulWalsh’s The Regeneration in 1915, and Irving Cum-mings’s Fool’s Highway was released by Universal in1924.29 Given their personal and professional close-ness, it is not surprising that Walsh’s film displaystraces of D.W. Griffith’s influence in its themes, visu-als and melodramatic counterpoint of impossiblelove between a pure woman and an unsuitable man.In its idealised and ultimately victimised treatment ofMarie by the Bowery toughs, it is also comparablewith a number of Griffith films which placed idealizedfemale heroines in mortal danger. In the other direc-tion, Griffith would draw on Regeneration’s climacticscene in his memorable staging of Lillian Gish hidingin a closet from her brutish step-father (Donald Crisp)in Broken Blossoms (1919). Indeed, both films sharea triangular conception of love and salvation with apure woman positioned as an evangelical figurecaught between two men – one who is moved toself-transcendence by her purity while the other at-tempts to destroy it. For Walsh, as for Griffith, the useof a virginal and morally impeccable woman in themidst of a dark and dangerous urban milieu was adramatically effective means of articulating aManichean view of modernity. But if Walsh was influ-enced by Griffith – and returned the favour – hiscasting of former Kalem actress Anna Q. Nilsson inthe role of Marie, and Rockliffe Fellowes (bearing astriking resemblance to Marlon Brando) as Owen,brought depth and uncommon acting subtlety and

emotional realism to roles that Griffith habitually ren-dered in two-dimensional terms. Although just a dec-ade younger than Griffith, Walsh’s career wouldendure another fifty years (he directed his last featurein 1964), and Regeneration is the first of a number offilms he directed that foregrounded an urban Irish-American masculinity, including The Bowery (1933),Gentleman Jim (1942) and White Heat (1949). Thefirst of these returned to the lower east side settingof his debut, but differed markedly in tone, rejectingthe moralising melodrama of his 1915 film in favourof a rowdy narrative centring on the shenanigans ofassorted colorful characters of New York’s “GayNineties” (including Irish American boxing champJohn L Sullivan, subject of Gentleman Jim). Thesocial commentary and Progressive tone of Regen-eration is replaced with fast talk, songs and barroomfisticuffs in a rambunctious reimagining of the period.While its narrative also grew out of real incidents, TheBowery’s preference for larger than life personalitiesover historical accuracy anticipates Walsh’s equallynostalgic portrait of The Roaring Twenties (1939).

The coincidence of production between Re-generation and The Birth of a Nation offers an illumi-nating contrast in contemporaneous representationsof African and Irish-American masculinities. Ed Guer-rero argues that Griffith’s representation of African-Americans in The Birth of a Nation came frompersonal experience of radical changes to the con-struction of southern white masculinity:

The insecurity and economic turmoil rampantthroughout the postbellum South had under-

Fig. 5. Skinny(William Sheer)confronts aportent of hisown death inWalsh’sRegeneration.



mined the white southern male’s role asprovider for his family; thus he sought to inflatehis depreciated sense of manhood by takingup the honorific task of protecting White Wom-anhood against the newly constructed spectreof the “brute Negro”.30

Simultaneously, Lincoln’s policy of conscrip-tion in the later stages of that war gave rise to the NewYork draft riots of 1863 where (male) Irish immigrantsattempted to scapegoat and distance themselvesfrom black conscripts (even as their compatriots inthe New York Police attempted to restore order). Inits argument for the setting aside of regional differ-ences in order to exert racial supremacy – for that issurely is what The Birth of a Nation’s final melodra-matic romantic coupling between northern andsouthern whites must be read as – Griffith’s filmovertly argues that the formation of the KKK wasjustified by the “threat”, primarily sexual, of blackmasculinity. Regeneration considers a related sce-nario of inter-marriage, and while it cannot finallyquite resolve a lower-class Irish-American marryinga “pure” middle-class American woman, it clearlysuggests that it is conceivable and ultimately permis-sible. By 1915, this possibility is made more accept-able in the film’s departure from the play’s conclusion(where Owen declares himself unworthy of Marie andallows himself to be led from the stage in handcuffs– voluntarily containing his own sexuality). The filmavoids this act of self-abnegation and returns to theconclusion of the book, where Owen’s desire forunion is cut short by Marie’s premature death. How-ever, instead of her dying from an ill-fated chill (aswas the historical reality), the screen Owen inadver-tently shoots his loved one as he attempts to rescueher from the far more extreme prospect of rape bySkinny (William Sheer), the most depraved and des-picable of the gang members. As she dies, Marieasks Owen not to avenge her death. He promises,but melodramatic closure is nevertheless served bythe visually dramatic shooting of Skinny (by the loyalHunchback) as he attempts to escape by a washingline strung between two tenements. In his rejectionof violence and displacement of revenge onto aphysically deformed alter-masculinity, Owen finallybecomes worthy of Marie at the moment of her death.Physically and morally differentiated from the “abnor-mal” social and sexual identities of Skinny andHunchback, Owen visits Marie’s grave in the film’sfinal scene as an equal – in direct contrast to the

play’s conclusion, where she retains moral supe-riority. In the American cinema of 1915, Owen’s work-ing-class Irishness is no longer insurmountably“other”.

While Walsh’s direction is influenced by Grif-fith, he displays a distinctive directorial personality ina number of key scenes. The central action sequencefeaturing day-trippers jumping from a burning shipinto the river Hudson (referred to above) is a classicof silent cinema spectacle. His employment in earlyscenes of extras drawn from the Bowery and NewYork waterfront anticipates Eisenstein’s use of ty-page by a decade and brings great authenticity tohis story and setting. Notably, Walsh reclaims andeven amplifies the ethnic context present in the auto-biography which was somewhat elided in the stageadaptation, making this an important early film inrepresentations of Irish-America. He evocativelystages the early years of Owen Conway’s childhoodin a lower-east side tenement, beginning with theboy’s loss of his parents and his move across the hallto his stereotypical adoptive Irish parents – themother matronly and the father drunk and abusive.In small but important scene later in the film Owen iscalled upon to rescue a baby from a drunkard fatherwhose inebriation has scared his wife from the familydive. This couple are also marked as Irish; the impli-cation is that these are Owen’s people and – in hismission to rescue the baby and subdue the Irishdrunkard – the social environment he has risenabove. The scene, not present in either the book orplay, positions Owen as a redeemer and role model.Like the infant he was once fated by genes and socialcircumstance, but has confounded class and ethnicdestiny. Owen’s Irish origins are important in signal-ling how far he has come and Walsh’s use of themin this respect anticipated the large number of Irishcharacters in the many tenement films of the 1920s– films like Amarilly of Clothes Line Alley (1918), TheCohens and the Kellys (1926), Irene (1926), and ofcourse Fool’s Highway (1924). Following Walsh’slead, such films would use Irish characters to exploretensions and themes dealing with the wider culturalconcerns about the assimilation of second genera-tion ‘immigrant’ children. In such scenarios Irishnesswould quickly assume a symbolic as well as historicfunction (as it does here); representative of the ten-sions between the old and the new world frequentlyresolved by melodramatic plotline featuring inter-class romance. Regeneration’s rejection of such aresolution – through the death of Marie – would be



replaced by happier conclusions (although in manyinstances the gender positions would be reversed).

Stranger than fictionIronically, Owen Kildare’s Broadway debut markedthe beginning of the end of his career as a writer andthe gradual supplanting of his fictionalised biographyin the public sphere by a pathetic and tragic reality.Soon after his stage play The Regeneration opened,life seemed to undercut art in a New York DailyTribune headline: “Wife has Owen Kildare Ar-rested”.31 The report details how “Mrs Owen Kildare”had her husband arrested after he had been drinkingand “she was afraid he would squander some moneywhich she expected him to receive for some work ina few days. Mr Kildare was first taken to Hood Wrighthospital ... but the physicians there did not think hiscase serious enough to warrant keeping him.” In alengthy feature, his wife claimed that the writerstarted drinking on account of his disappointment inthe changes wrought on his life story by the produc-ers of The Regeneration and its “failure”. The NewYork Times expanded on the story the following dayin a lengthy account of Kildare’s current circum-stances in a news feature under the heading: “KildareA Wreck, Sent to an Asylum”. This piece has anunnamed journalist visit the Kildare family homewhere,

[S]tanding in their little flat last night ... with herhand resting on his typewriter, where he haddone all his recent work, and with trembling lipsand eyes dimmed by tears, Mrs. Kildare de-clared that a cruel injustice had been doneboth to her and to her husband by the reportthat she had had him arrested. . . . Mr. Kildareis ill because of the failure of The Regeneration... . Mr. Kildare had the present acute attack ofaphasis [sic] and nervous collapse on Sundaynight. He was unable to speak and soon be-came unconscious.32

The report concludes with Mrs. Kildare statingthat her husband “does not drink except a little,occasionally, and his present trouble is dues solelyto his worry over the failure of The Regeneration”. InMarch he was reported as having fallen down sub-way steps in New York (a report carried on the frontpage of The Washington Times).33 Four months laterhowever, the New York Tribune again published anunsavoury account of Kildare’s character under theheadline “Owen Kildare Violent”, which reported that

the writer – who had now been confined to ManhattanState Hospital for several months (i.e., since theprevious report) – “became wildly hysterical yester-day while visiting his wife and baby at the Kildarehome, number 2 West 101st Street ... and was takenback to hospital”. In a puzzling turn it continues, “Onthe trip across the river he seemed optimistic andshowed no trace of the melancholia which hasmarked most of his stay on Ward’s Island”. Accord-ing to the report, Kildare had been in good spiritsduring his visit home but then “the writer suffered anattack of despondency ‘no one cares for me anylonger’ he cried ...”.

Owen Kildare never left the Manhattan StateHospital between 1908 (just after the premiere of hisplay) and his death. In 1910 his wife was reported tobe living in Chicago “while her husband is seriouslyill in New York”.34 By the end of that year she had hadgained an annulment and remarried. In early Febru-

Fig. 6. Universaladvertises Fool’s

Highway, IrvingCummings’sadaptation of MyMamie Rose, onthe cover of TheFilm Daily, 13January 1924.



ary 1911, three years after the stage adaptation andeight years since the publication of the novel whichmade him a famous and exemplary instance of Pro-gressive Era self-transcendence, Owen Kildare dieda broken man. His obituary ran under the headline“‘Kipling of the Bowery’ Dies”, and said “Broken inhealth and spirit he died on Saturday in the Manhat-tan State Hospital for the insane at Ward’s Island.Kildare was 47 years old and had a picturesquecareer”.35 “His collapse was sudden”, said the NewYork Times, and ascribed it to various causes, amongthem the failure of his play The Regeneration.36

It was an extraordinary end to so public atestimony of redemption. If newspaper reports are tobe believed, Kildare’s transformation, so recentlydeclared a miracle, literally drove him mad. In ironiccounterpoint to his central theme of the redeemingpower of love and its parallel discourses of purifica-tion and of moral and physical health, Kildare col-lapsed at the very apogee of personal andprofessional success. (An irony captured by the firstfilm adaptation, Det mørke punkt.) Some newspa-pers blamed it on alcoholism and a relapse of char-acter – a theme, as we have seen, present in thestage version of the story. With hindsight however,his demise can be better understood. Contemporaryaccounts described the writer’s cause of death as“paresis” (also known as “paralytic dementia”), acondition which in the early Twentieth Century wasconsidered to be purely psychiatric in nature butwhich has since been identified as a rare conditiondeveloping from untreated syphilis. Now referred toas neurosyphilis, it is understood to “provoke brain

cell damage causing paralysis, tremors, seizuresand mental decline”, leading to gradual incapacityand eventually death.37 Tragically and ironically, Kil-dare did not in fact undergo a regeneration in anybiological sense, but fell prey to the degenerativeimpulses of modernity that he sought to vanquish.He moved from a position of social outcast to enjoyan all-too-brief moment as a publicly-alluded exem-plar of God’s mercy and personal willpower, only tofind himself just as quickly returned to the marginsamong another caste of “untouchables”, the men-tally insane.

There is a final element to the Owen Kildarestory which alters our understanding of its value andsignificance. As we have outlined, his autobiographywas shaped and fostered at a pivotal moment inidentity politics: the Progressive Era’s belief in self-help and changing ideas about masculinity. It waspredicated on the belief in identity transformation:identity as fluid and mouldable rather than fixed anddeterministic. For a narrative of transformation tohave authority and moral weight, its starting pointmust be rooted in clear, definable and recognisableparameters. The truth of Kildare’s experience israised repeatedly both within his autobiographicalaccount and in the commentary surrounding it. Anearly article in the New York Sunday News, for in-stance is at pains to make clear that “Owen Kildareis a real man and that is his real name. He is widelyknown on the Bowery, where he lives.”38 A reprintedletter from the widely popular novelist Hall Cainepraised an early version of his story: “I have beendeeply touched by it. Nothing more true or humanhas come my way for a long time.” Yet as indicatedabove, one reviewer of The Regeneration stage playquestioned the true identity of Kildare, a theme thatwas also central to a New York Times feature whichappeared soon after Kildare’s death, where “Red”Shaughnessy states, “I knowed Owen Kildare whenhe was Tom Carroll”.39 Carroll took the name ofKildare, according to the article, because of his suc-cess as a fighter. “Instead of being born in an east-side tenement, as the biographies said, he first sawthe light on the western shore of Maryland, or so theBowery believes.” The revelation is not fatal; it sug-gests that Kildare’s birthplace and myth of origin wasadopted even if he wasn’t. The figure of the orphanedchild was a staple of Victorian melodrama and popu-lar American film of the silent period. This was clearlythe intention of Kildare – his adoption by and laterrejection of the Irish couple is symbolic of his root-

Fig. 7. AugustBlom’s Det

mørke punkt(1911), the first

and mostaccurate accountof Owen Kildare’s

regeneration.[Courtesy of Det

DanskeFilmmuseum.]



lessness at the time he met Marie Deering. The factthat he was of Irish origins – Tom Carroll – suggeststhat he identified with those of similar patronage thathe encountered there.

This reading however, requires even greaterelasticity in light of the New York Times obituary ofMrs Owen Kildare (Leita Bogardus) who died inMarch 1967.40 In addition to her own long and pro-ductive life, the text mentions “her late first husband,the former Prince Peter Loris Poninski. He assumedthe name Owen Kildare when he came to America atthe turn of the century.” This seems extraordinary andthere is little to corroborate the claim beyond theearlier reference to “a name not far from Budweiser”and the fact that in the 1920 US census, the birth-place of the father (i.e. Kildare) of the couple’s onlydaughter Lowen Kildare (later Christman) is listed asRussia.41 Nevertheless, it is characteristic of a workthat underwent multiple versions, emphases, author-ships, and character names, resulting in crucial as-pects of Owen Kildare’s “true” story remaining finallyunverifiable. But as a testimony to the ambitions andtensions of his era it is as valid a piece of “spectaclemasculinity” as the confession narratives, immigrantautobiographies and popular fiction that dominatedthe age. In its foregrounding of a poor, uneducatedIrish-American male that strives for social accep-tance Kildare created a forceful and influential modelin American drama and film of the everyman whiteethnic, the new American, invited to rise above hisorigins and take his place within the “native” Ameri-can mainstream though discipline and self-belief.

ConclusionsRaoul Walsh’s debut feature film, Regeneration, of-fers the historian of American silent cinema severalpoints of engagement. Besides its significance asthe first feature film of an important Hollywood direc-tor (and one of the few silent films directed by Walshto survive), it displays the energy and directorial skillsthat would remain hallmarks of this most charismaticof American filmmakers. We have attempted here togo beyond Walsh’s dismissal of the “basic plot” toan exploration of the biographical, textual and con-textual sources of its characterisation and narrative.Central to these are its origins in Progressive Eraideology and shifting paradigms of gender, ethnicityand American identity during that period. Across its

variant iterations, we have attempted to locate thetensions and contradictions of its dramatic conflict,specifically the theme of social mobility as it relatesto the protagonist’s personal transformation. Para-doxically, despite the certainties that characterisedits literary influences and cultural context, Kildare’sregeneration remains unresolved in life and art. Hisbiography elided the resolution of class and socialdifferences between himself and Marie Deering (onaccount of her premature death) and neither his(short) life as a publicly admired writer afterwards,nor the films adapted from his story, were able to finda means of reconciling his success at self-develop-ment and liberation from street crime with romanticor personal fulfilment. This uncertain quality carriedover into rumours – both during his life and after it –that he was not who he said he was, that his originswere uncertain to begin with. That perhaps he hadtaken on an Irish identity for literary purposes. But ifhe did, he would not have been unique. Laura Brow-der has shown that “ethnic impersonator autobiog-raphies” that “creatively reconstruct identity usingessential racial and ethnic categories” have been aconstant, if necessarily obscured, subgenre ofAmerican literature since the nineteenth century42.Browder argues that “Ethnic autobiographies havefulfilled and continue to perform a number of culturalfunctions, but one purpose has remained the same:to offer the authentic voice of a minority group to areading audience composed primarily of white, mid-dle-class Americans”.43 Unable to completely denyor verify such accusations we are nonetheless drawnto the conclusion that in Kildare’s autobiography,and even more so in Walsh’s direction (in scenesidentified above), Irish-American identity functionedsimilarly to underscore the writer’s origins as both anauthentic voice of marginal masculinity within con-temporary American life and, more importantly,through race and the advantage of English, of beingcapable of entering into mainstream white Americanculture. This ambivalent status permits his chasteidealization at the conclusion of Walsh’s film (as heprays at the grave of his beloved) and it was theusefulness of this duality – as both marginal andpotential normative identity – that would continue toensure the prominence of male-centred Irish-Ameri-can stories in American film throughout the studio eraand into our own time.



1. While the Irish were often seen on screen (usually asobjects of caricature) during the first decade ofAmerican cinema, and became widely representedduring the 1920s, their appearance in the transitionalperiod of the early-mid teens is surprisingly sparseby comparison and, where evident, largely limited tostereotype.

2. Judith Weisenfeld‘s essay, “Regeneration”, is themost substantial treatment of the film to date. SeeColleen McDannel, Catholics in the Movies (Oxfordand New York: Oxford University Press, 2008),33–59.

3. Raoul Walsh, Each Man in His Time: The Life Storyof a Director (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1974), 46.

4. See “Burning Steamer Fools Police”, The Sun (12August 1915): 7. The scene was a recreation of the1904 “PS General Slocum” excursion boat disaster,in which an estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people onboard died.

5. The “first” label attached to The Squaw Man (1914)has been variously contested, with William K. Ever-son arguing, “There was no sudden and spectacularbreakthrough to the multiple-reel silent feature asthere was with sound ... its only historical claim canbe that it was the first feature made in the area nowknown as Hollywood”. William K. Everson, AmericanSilent Film (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 56.

6. “An Epitome of the Career of Owen Kildare”, NewYork Sunday News (2 February 1902): np. Accordingto his own account, Kildare was born in New YorkCity on 11 June 1864.

7. Owen Frawley Kildare, My Mamie Rose: The Story ofMy Regeneration (New York: Grosset and Dunlap,1903), 298.

8. Ibid., 302.

9. His writings are collected in The Wisdom Of OrisonSwett Marden Vol. I: How to Succeed, An Iron Will,and Cheerfulness as a Life Power (Radford: WilderPublications, 2007); The Wisdom Of Orison SwettMarden Vol. II: Pushing to the Front, Stories from Life(Radford: Wilder Publications, 2007) and CollectedWorks of Orison Swett Marden (BiblioBazaar, 2007).

10. Marden, How to Succeed: or, Stepping-Stones toFame and Fortune (New York: Success PublishingCo., 1896), 5.

11. John Higham, “The Reorientation of American Cul-ture in the 1890s” in Hanging Together: Unity andDiversity in American Culture (New Haven and Lon-don: Yale University Press, 2001), 173–199.

12. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life” – Speechbefore the Hamilton Club, Chicago, 10 April 1899.

http://www.bartleby.com/58/1.html (accessed 13May 2011).

13. Ibid.

14. James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching forMasculinity in the 1950s (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press, 2005), 23.

15. For an account of the reception of Degeneration inAmerica see, LindaL.Maik, “Nordau’sDegeneration:The American Controversy”, Journal of the History ofIdeas, Vol. 50, No. 4 (October–December, 1989):607–623.

16. Max Nordau, Degeneration, with an introduction byGeorge L. Mosse (New York: D. Appleton and Com-pany 1968), 551.

17. Ibid., 5.

18. Available at www.archive.org.

19. Ibid., 26

20. Nancy S. Dye, Gender, Class Race and Reform inthe Progressive Era (Lexington: University of Ken-tucky Press, 1994), 1–2.

21. Published respectively in The Saturday Evening Post(2 September 1905); The Saturday Evening Post (16September 1905); Pearson’s Magazine (March1905).

22. According to a 1913 source in which she is quoted.See “Official Programme for Women Suffrage Pro-cession 1913,” in Janet Beer et al., American Femi-nism: Key Source Documents, 1848–1920. (London:Routledge, 2003), 366. The couple had a daughtertogether, Lowen Loris Kildare, the writer’s only child.

23. Source: Internet Broadway Database:http://www.ibdb.com/show.php?id=7432(accessed 2008).

24. Robert Burns Mantle, “The Regeneration”, ChicagoDaily Tribune (9 March 1908): 8.

25. Frantchin Fyles, “Two Owens and One Play”, Chi-cago Daily Tribune (6 September 1908): 6.

26. Walter Hackett, The Regeneration, A Play in Four Acts(1908). All quotations are from an unpaginated type-script of the original play script held at New YorkPublic Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection.

27. 2 March 1912, American Philosophical Society, ERO,MSC77, Series 1, Box35: Trait Files. A scanned copywas found at: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/image_header.pl?id=351&printable=1&detailed (accessed 13 May 2011).

28. This film, released on 7 December 1911, was alsoknown as Mamie Rose and Annie Bell in the UK.Produced by Nordisk Films, it was directed by theimportant Danish director August Blom. The Danishversion differed considerably from the dramatized

Notes



version staged in the United States. The protagonistOwen Kildare is once again rescued from the slumsby an upper class female – Annie Bell – who teacheshim how to writeandprovidesaconduit for his “poeticvisions”. They marry, but instead of social commen-tary this version positions Owen as a highly strungartist who falls victim to hisown demons. After severaloutbursts he takes to his bed an alcoholic, is com-mitted to hospital and eventually dies in her arms.Thus the problem of their social incompatibility issolved by his own weaknesses. What is extraordinaryabout this version is how much closer it is to the truestory of Owen Kildare, who also died a broken manin an asylum in 1911.

29. Directed by Irving Cummings and produced by Uni-versal Pictures, the film starred Pat O’Malley andMary Philbin in the lead roles, as well as Universal“immigrant” stalwarts CharlesMurray,KatePriceandMax Davidson. Kate Price’s typecasting as an Irishmother in many Universal films of the 1920s may beaccounted for by the fact that she was Irish born.The prolific actress (usually opposite Charlie Murray)was born Katherine Duffy in County Cork and is bestknown for her iconic portrayal of Mrs. Kelly in TheKellys and the Cohens film series.

30. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: the African Ameri-can Image in Film (Temple University Press, 1993),12.

31. New York Daily Tribune (24 November 1908): 12.

32. “Kildare aWreck.Sent toanAsylum”, New YorkTimes(25 November 1908): 2.

33. “Owen Kildare Hurt By Fall,” The Washington Times(18 March 1908): 1.

34. Chicago Daily Tribune (6 April 1910).

35. “‘Kipling of the Bowery’ Dies”, Chicago Daily News(7 February 1911).

36. “Kildare, Writer, Dead of Paresis”, New York Times(7 February 1911).

37. “Neurosyphilis-Overview”, Medical EncyclopediaIndex, University of Maryland Medical Center.http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/000703.htm

38. “An Epitome of the Career of Owen Kildare”, NewYork Sunday News 2 February 1902): np.

39. “The Bowery Mourns for Owen Kildare”, New YorkTimes (12 February 1911): 16.

40. “Mrs. Owen Kildare, Broadcaster, Is Dead at 78”,New York Times (23 March 1967): 35.

41. United States Census, 1920. “Obituary: LowenChristman”, The Harlem Valley Times (15 August1985): 8.

42. Laura Browder, Slippery Characters: Ethnic Imper-sonators and American Identities (Chapel Hill andLondon: The University of North Carolina Press,2000), 2.

43. Ibid., 4.

Abstract: The Pauper and the Prince: Transformative Masculinity in RaoulWalsh’s Regeneration,by Tony Tracy

This essay explores the stage and screen adaptations of Owen Kildare’s immigrant redemption memoir,My Mamie Rose, Published as autobiography in 1903, it was dramatized in 1908 and filmed on threeseparate occasions between 1911 and 1924, most notably by Raoul Walsh in 1915 as Regeneration. Theauthor aligns Kildare’s narrative with contextual discourses on masculinity, racial purity and transformativeidentity in assessing its significance as a cinematic representation of Irish-American masculinity in the earlyfeature film period.

Key words: Regeneration (film, 1915); My Mamie Rose; the Story of My Regeneration (book, 1903); TheRegeneration (play, 1908); Owen Kildare; Raoul Walsh; Irish-Americans; immigrant autobiography.

