Young Cassidy

Young Cassidy
1966 Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Jack Cardiff John Ford
Produced by	Robert Emmett Ginna Robert D. Graff
Written by	John Whiting
Based on	Mirror in My House by Seán O'Casey
Starring	Rod Taylor Julie Christie Maggie Smith
Music by	Sean O'Riada
Cinematography	Edward Scaife
Edited by	Anne V. Coates
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	22 April 1965
Running time	110 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$1 million (est.)

Young Cassidy is a 1965 film directed by Jack Cardiff and John Ford. The film stars Rod Taylor, Julie Christie, and Maggie Smith. The film is a biographical drama based upon the life of the playwright Seán O'Casey.

Set in 1911 and the growing protest against British rule in Ireland, young John Cassidy (Seán O'Casey) is a labourer by day and a pamphleteer by night. When the pamphlets he has written incite riots, Cassidy realizes he can do more for his people with the pen than with the sword. He writes a new play, The Plough and the Stars, which he submits to the Abbey Theatre (which had already rejected another of his plays, The Shadow of a Gunman), and is surprised when W.B. Yeats, the founder of the Abbey, accepts and produces his new play. The opening of the play causes the audience to riot, and he loses many friends; but he is undeterred and is soon acclaimed as Ireland's outstanding young playwright.

As early as 1907, performances of John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World resulted in riots by theatergoers, which had to be quelled by police. The real W.B Yeats, a friend of both authors, said similar words at or after both riots.Young Cassidy brings this parallel history (the riots of The Plough and the Stars and The Playboy of the Western World) to vivid life, tied together by the character of Yeats.

Based on Seán O'Casey's autobiography Mirror in my House (the umbrella title under which the six autobiographies he published from 1939 to 1956 were republished, in two large volumes, in 1956), the movie began production in 1964, changing his name in the film to John Cassidy. O'Casey had read earlier drafts of the movie, and gave his approval to the script, as well as to the choice of lead actor, Rod Taylor.