Whether he’s sitting in his little scooter or using a well-worn walker, 89-year-old Malachy McCourt has a ubiquitous presence on the streets of Manhattan and in many a restaurant, event or on the occasion to celebrate being Irish. He’s been seen doing a reading at an annual Bloomsday celebrating; chatting at some cocktail reception or on the red-carpet doing a step-and-repeat for a new indie film he’s in.
In the grand old building where he shares a spacious apartment with his wife and various family, this upper Westside resident welcomes visitors into his well stocked sitting room/library. Surrounded by thousands of books and papers, Malachy holds court (so to speak) and waxes eloquent about many issues political, social, and familial. Even though it looks like he’s the best read man in the world, he acknowledged his lack of formal education. “I’m always thinking in one way or another, the words, and how sometimes I regret not having the formal education. I left school [in Ireland] when I was 13 and I was so bloody stupid.
“My last job there was when I was a house boy for the Jesuits. I used to polish their shoes and make their beds and polish the floor and all that. But they had a lovely library so I was able to look at that. I was very lucky. I found a History of India when I was six, and was a really thick book and I plowed through that. Took me about a year ‘cause that’s how I learned to read.”
That lack might have provided sufficient motivation for him to prove his skills otherwise, since McCourt has written numerous books drawing on his life and love for being Irish. Though the McCourt name got a bump thanks to late older brother Frank’ success with his family memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” Malachy has got quite a bibliography of his own. He’s done several tomes on Ireland such as “Voices of Ireland: Classic Writings of a Rich and Rare Land,” “Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad,” and “The Claddagh Ring: Ireland’s Cherished Symbol Of Friendship;” and then there his own memoirs. “A Monk Swimming” and “Singing My Him Song” details his life in Ireland and later return to the United States where he launched a successful Manhattan tavern frequented by many celebrities.
He addressed his sibling’s success — which brought further fame to the family name by spilling its secrets. “Before Frank published ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ he was always known as Malachy’s older brother given my long history in the entertainment world but once his book became a bestseller [selling beyond 10 million copies] and he won the Pulitzer Prize I was his younger brother — which was fine with me [he laughs].”
The last surviving McCourt, who all famously hailed from Limerick, Malachy’s been best known recently as Frank’s flame keeper (who died in 2009). Of course, he gets a sizable mention as the ebullient kid brother in the bestseller. Yet for a great many years, Malachy was the sociable and gregarious alternative to taciturn Frank’s more gloomy aura. Said Malachy, “Frank was one year, one month and one day older than me. Extremely bright and intelligent, he was a smallish kind of fellow. And he looked like a Protestant —with brown eyes and black hair. We often called him Cranky Frankie. He had a fierce temper. Even adults were terrified of him. He’d rise up in a second and had the gift of language, so he could reduce you with 10 words to nothing. But he had a gloomy outlook. We were going on holidays and Angela [the mother] was here. We were renting a big house and Frank was having difficulties with his first wife — the one I called ‘The War Department’ — and Frank was very, ‘I will come, no I won’t come’. The mother said, ‘Frank wouldn’t be happy unless he was miserable.’ In fact, that wife long kept Frank from being the great writer that he turned out to be. Once she was gone he was able to get his work done.
“I was after Frank for years saying ‘you better write that book!’ and he was teaching and talking in school and so forth, but the War Department would put him down and say, ‘Who would be interested in your shitty story about your pauper war life in your small town in Ireland and all that? Who’d give a shit about that?’ But finally he got it down.”
As Malachy revealed, Frank’s success was just about begin. “He thought he was going to get a few thousand-dollar advance, but when major publishers came calling the book received a sizable advance and his new career as author was on its way.”
Yet, it’s no wonder that Malachy had status as the other famous McCourt for a long time. As an actor, he’s been on stage, television and in numerous films including: 1970’s The Molly Maguires, ’78’s “The Brink’s Job,” 1982’s “Q,” ’85’s “Brewster’s Millions,” The January Man (1989), 2002’s “Beyond the Pale” and “Ash Wednesday.” And in 2003, McCourt played Francis Preston Blair in “Gods and Generals” . Recently he was found at the September premiere of “Toss It” — his most recent cinematic adventure — an indie-released anti-romantic rom-com. but that’s typical of McCourt. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Ireland, he eventually returned to the States in 1952 at 21 and immersed himself in New York and nightlife of the time. He gained initial fame as the owner of Malachy’s, his Third Avenue bar that became a legend in its day, where celebrities and others gathered nightly in its convivial atmosphere. The late actor Richard Harris was a frequent patrons who, though famous, took time to bartend for McCourt. But as things are won’t to go in NYC, McCourt and Harris had some issues and his erstwhile partners eventually pushed him out of his namesake hotpot and the business.
As for TV, he has appeared in three NYC-based soap operas: “Ryan’s Hope,” “Search for Tomorrow,”and “One Life to Live.” He also made Christmas-time appearances on “All My Children” as Father Clarence, who gave inspirational advice to Pine Valley residents. Through a short-lived role as a Catholic priest in “Oz,” HBO’s prison drama added to his supposed religious status. As you know, I’m politically to the left of Karl Marx, and an atheist. Thank God! This offended the Irish, they used to say, ‘You’re a disgrace to the Irish and Holy Mother Church and Holy Mother Ireland.’ So that’s what it is.”
Describing himself this way he added, “I hear people talk about going to heaven. Why would you want to go there? To sit at the right hand of God, looking into his earlobe for eternity? I wouldn’t want to be with him. I’m with Dorothy Parker, ‘heaven for the comfort, hell for the company’.
McCourt also built quite a reputation in left-of-center politics. In April 2006, McCourt announced he would seek the New York State governorship in the November election as a Green Party candidate. Running under the slogan, “Don’t waste your vote, give it to me,” McCourt promised to recall the state National Guard from Iraq, make public education free through college, and to institute a statewide “sickness care” system. Though endorsed by Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen Iraq War soldier, The League of Women Voters excluded him from the gubernatorial debate. He came in a distant third in the general election, receiving 40,729 votes (or just under 1%), 9,271 votes short of what was required to gain automatic access in the 2010 election. “That was the Green Party and they asked me if I would run for Governor and I said, “Fine!’ I had no idea that I was going to be, I said, ‘What does a Governor do? You’ll have to tell me.’ So, I got more than 40,000 people voting for me. Up in Syracuse, the reporter there asked ‘What will you do when you’re first elected?’ And I said ‘Well, I will do away with that name Empire State, because I don’t want to be Emperor, I want to be Governor.’ I just decided to have a lot of fun. The Green Party requires you to have 50,000 votes to stay on the ballot so I didn’t.
Malachy’s myriad successes have the feel of a man determined to leave behind the poverty of his formative years. Especially with the acting thing. “When I was a kid, there was a group in Limerick called The College Players, an amateur group. Being from the slums and all, I thought, ‘Jesus it would be lovely to join them!’ but they were aupper class and very British. In Limerick, there were many people like that, with the fucking snobbery. I was about 12 or 13. I asked who was in charge of The Cottage Players and solicitor sent me down. So, I went down to his office, and was still in short pants, snotty nose, scabby knees, scabby eyes and a haircut that looked like it’d been done with a knife and fork! You know, all the appointees of poverty. Finally, I went in and he’s sitting there looking at me with such distaste and I said, ‘I’d like to join The College Players Sir.’ ‘You would? For what?’ he said. I said, ‘To be an actor sir.’ ‘And what makes you think you could be an actor?’ ‘Because I’d like to be sir.’ ‘Well, if ever we need anybody of your type, we’ll send for you.’ So, I left. And I didn’t make I there in Limerick.
“Then I come to New York, I’m working in the service for a while, working on the docks, unloading cargo and so on. I’m making a nice bit of money, almost $2.75 an hour which was good stuff at the time. I’d just go to theater by myself, because Broadway was only $7 or $8. I went to see a group called the Irish Flairs, and again got this urge. So, I asked someone, ‘Excuse me can I speak to the boss?’ I don’t remember his name but he said, ‘Well I’m the producer what can I do for you?’ ‘I’d like to join your group,’ ‘Oh, you would? Do you have any experience?’ I said ‘No, but I don’t need it I’m Irish.’ ‘Will you read for us?’ ‘I will.’ So, following Sunday after a few bloody Mary’s I went and read. Someone was leaving the cast, a fella my age, and they put me in. And that was the beginning. Just like that.”
In 1970, McCourt released an album, And the Children Toll the Passing of the Day and in the ‘70s, hosted a WMCA talk show. More recently, he appeared on various WBAI (the late lamented NYC’s freeform radio station) programs such as Radio Free Éireann and had hosted a call-in radio forum on Sundays at 11am. He noted, “I used to say, I can’t wait to hear what I have to say next on the radio. So, the writing was very spontaneous. But Bob Dylan used to say was ‘I don’t write songs. I write them down.’”
And he’s done his share of theater whether as a regular guest artist at the Scranton, Pennsylvania, Public Theatre — performing in “Inherit the Wind,” and “Love Letters” or doing “A Couple of Blaguards” which he co-wrote with brother Frank and they performed it together for quite a while.
His Limerick childhood has cast a long shadow on his life, for many reasons. Born of Angela (Sheehan) and Malachy McCourt in NYC, McCourt was raised there until his USA return in ’52. As the last surviving child from among seven McCourts kids, following the death of his younger brother Alphonsus in 2016, he admits that much of the family’s wit and poetic bent comes from mother Angela. “When she was dying in a New York hospital [from emphysema], she turned to the doctor and said, ‘We come from a long line of dead people’ When we took turns to sit with her near the end, she popped her eyes open and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I thought you might die tonight’. She then said, ‘I might, I might not. That’s my business’.”
Malachy never fully reconciled with Malachy Sr, who lived out his final days in Belfast. “I wrote him a letter once and outlined my grievances, rages and resentments, and finished it, ‘with all of that said, I forgive you’. I got a very short note back, ‘Dear Malachy, thank you for your letter, I’m trying to catch the last post. Your father.’ Then he died. That was the last communication we had.”
With that, Malachy Jr. reflected, “I love the Irish approach to death and I’m always talking about death — it’s a great subject. The thing is, humans have a 100 per cent mortality rate. I do wish the Government would do something about that. At my age now, I’m in the departure lounge, and all the brothers and Mary Margaret [a sister, who died as an infant, as did brothers Eugene and Oliver] are gone. I look at life as being purely temporary. Live every day as if it’s your last, and one day, you’ll be right. I wake up in the morning and if I see the ceiling, I think ‘this is terrific!’ If a coffin lid is there in front of my nose, well f*** it, I’m not going to bother.”