This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Patrick Maume. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 23 April 1919, Ireland
Died: 26 January 2005
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
McAvin, Josie (Josephine) (1919–2005) theatrical stage manager, and set decorator in cinema and theatre, was born 23 April 1919 in Dublin, one of three daughters and three sons of John McAvin (d. 1938), cattle exporter, and his wife Mollie. Her father was the last serving high sheriff of Dublin. ‘He died when I was quite young,’ she later recalled, ‘and I think he might have been horrified to learn that I went to work in the film industry’ (Irish Times, 8 July 2004). McAvin trained as a teacher, and for a time was a member of the teaching staff of Marino College. She taught physical education until, deciding that teaching did not suit her, she joined her cousin Maureen Halligan and Halligan’s husband Ronald Ibbs in their touring theatrical company. She later became a stage manager at the Gate Theatre, working with Michael O’Herlihy (later employed by Walt Disney Productions) under Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir, doing a joint Gate and Gaiety season with them in 1950–51. Loving the road, she rejoined Ibbs and Halligan to tour America with their company as advance manager.
In 1958 McAvin was recruited as set decorator on Michael Anderson’s film Shake hands with the devil (released 1959), set during the Irish war of independence, filmed in Dublin, and starring James Cagney and Dana Wynter. This began the career for which she is best remembered, as a set decorator on films. Her work involved going through the screenplay with the production designer and preparing a detailed list of all the objects needed for each scene. For most of her career she worked with her sister Sunny Mulligan, who was the props buyer. Speaking of her experience on her first film, McAvin recalled that although she had no previous experience of the film industry she was able to learn quickly on the job: ‘If you get on with the production designers, you will be asked to work with them again and again. If you don’t get on, you may be gone within the first two weeks. I was never actually fired, but I came close to it a few times. But I worked on six films directed by Tony Richardson, and that was all through the same designer’ (Irish Times, 8 July 2004).
The Richardson films on which McAvin worked (as set decorator, or in other capacities) included The loneliness of the long distance runner (1962), The loved one (1965), The sailor from Gibraltar (1967), and Tom Jones (1963), for which she received her first Oscar nomination for art direction/set decoration in colour film (1964; the film itself won the Oscar for best picture). She received a second nomination (for black-and-white art direction/set decoration, 1966) for The spy who came in from the cold (1965, dir. Martin Ritt, starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom), which was shot in Dublin with Smithfield standing in for the divided Berlin of the Cold War.
McAvin worked as art director on over forty feature films and television movies, and fulfilled similar functions on about fifteen others. She participated in three films directed by John Huston: Sinful Davey (1969), A walk with love and death (1969), and The dead (1987). The latter, adapted from the story by James Joyce, was her personal joint favourite (with Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996)) of the movies on which she worked. Jordan also employed her on The butcher boy (1997). Other significant films in which she participated included Ryan’s daughter (1970, dir. David Lean), Educating Rita (1983, dir. Lewis Gilbert), The lonely passion of Judith Hearne (1987; dir. Jack Clayton), and The field (1990, dir. Jim Sheridan). She worked on the English section of the shoot of the financially disastrous and critically divisive western epic Heaven’s gate (1980; dir. Michael Cimino), which she later recalled as the only production on which she was not subjected to budgetary restrictions: ‘a great film and it was magic to work on it’ (Irish Times, 8 July 2004); she listed it among her ten favourite films in an Irish Times poll (30 December 1994.) In 1986 she finally secured an Academy Award (shared with Stephen Grimes) for her set decoration of Out of Africa (1985, dir. Sydney Pollack, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford); ironically, she thought the designers of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (also nominated) more deserving of the award. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted her ‘two-handed death grip’ on the Oscar statuette, and the strong Dublin accent in which she expressed her thanks to ‘the man above’ (25 March 1986). In 1995 McAvin won an Emmy award (the American television industry’s equivalent to the Oscars) for her work on the mini-series Scarlett (1994) – a sequel to Gone with the wind, partly set in Ireland – thus becoming the only Irish person to hold both an Oscar and an Emmy.
She also continued to work on stage sets, in 1959 accompanying – as ‘the busiest member of the company’ – a troupe of Irish actors to the Continent to present Siobhán McKenna in ‘Saint Joan’ by George Bernard Shaw at various festivals. As late as 1994 she decorated the set for Shivaun O’Casey’s production of ‘The plough and the stars’ by Shivaun’s father, Sean O’Casey. On occasion McAvin’s stage and film work overlapped, as when she first dressed the stage for Ronan O’Leary’s productions of ‘Riders to the sea’ by J. M. Synge, and the Holocaust play ‘Fragments of Isabella’ by Gabrielle Reidy and Michael Scott, then performed the same function for O’Leary’s films based on the productions (Riders to the sea (1987), Fragments of Isabella (1989)).
By 1984 McAvin was listed among the ‘key people in the world of Irish film’, as exemplifying ‘the art direction skills based here’ (Irish Times, 27 June 1985). She acted as a mentor to younger set designers such as Annie Siggins. After the success of My left foot (dir. Jim Sheridan) at the 1990 Oscars, McAvin commented: ‘I hope Charlie Haughey is watching this and realises that the government have to put money into the industry now’ (Irish Times, 28 March 1990). In 1998 she was included in a controversial list of the 100 most influential women in Ireland by IT magazine. The last film on which she worked was Evelyn (2002, dir. Bruce Beresford, starring Pierce Brosnan). Thereafter she gave occasional interviews and master classes (notably at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2004). She was a member of the art directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. McAvin died 26 January 2005 in Monkstown, Co. Dublin. She never married and had no children. Her funeral was from St Patrick’s church (Roman catholic), Monkstown.