The Long Journey Home: Irish in America - Success
A film for the PBS Emmy award-winning series, featuring profiles of Eugene O'Neill and Joe Kennedy.  But the main protagonists of the film are the Boston Irish in the years after World War II and the story of how they were finally able to move out of the Irish ghetto and join a new secular middle-class America. It also shows the changes that accompanied their jump from the working class, and the loss of cultural ties and Irish identity. The personal stories of Irish families ambivalent about making the "move over," giving up old patterns and core values, offers a rare look at the price of American "success" and
the pain of assimilation. The film concludes with JFK's ascent to the presidency and what his myth represents
to the Irish in America.
- premiered on PBS
- produced for Thomas Lennon Assoc., Disney, and WGBH
"looks and sounds like a labor of love," - The New York Times Made by "a consummate storyteller," - Boston Globe
Rated in the year's ten best by TV Guide and the series earned a Writers' Guild nomination and 4 Emmy nominations.
Play a clip from the film