BetteBack January 16, 1998: Bette Midler Lined Up To Star With Anjelica Houston In ‘The Mammy’

The Mirror
January 16, 1998

DUBLIN funnyman Brendan O’Carroll has pulled off a major coup for his new movie The Mammy.

Angelica Houston will play the title role and direct the film – and Brendan has lined-up another top actress to star alongside her.

The legendary Bette Midler is now in the frame to play a major part in the movie, which begins filming in Dublin this summer.

O’Carroll‘s business and stage partner Gerry Browne reveals: “I was stunned when Brendan told me he had lined-up Bette Midler.

“It’s unbelievable that we’ve got both her and Angelica in the one movie.”

According to Browne, all the finance is now in place for The Mammy, based on O’Carroll’s best-seller of the same name.

He adds: “Midler will play Marian, Agnes’s (Houston) best friend who dies of cancer. In the book the two of them worked as fruit and veg dealers in Moore Street.”

O’Carroll and Browne are dealing from offices in the old Initial Services building in Cabra. As well as The Mammy, they are putting in place a second film.

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“Mammy” is what Irish children call their mothers and The Mammy is Agnes Browne–a widow struggling to raise seven children in a North Dublin neighborhood in the 1960s. Popular Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll chronicles the comic misadventures of this large and lively family with raw humor and great affection. Forced to be mother, father, and referee to her battling clan, the ever-resourceful Agnes Browne occasionally finds a spare moment to trade gossip and quips with her best pal Marion Monks (alias “The Kaiser”) and even finds herself pursued by the amorous Frenchman who runs the local pizza parlor.

Like the novels of Roddy Doyle, The Mammy features pitch-perfect dialogue, lightning wit, and a host of colorful characters. Earthy and exuberant, the novel brilliantly captures the brash energy and cheerful irreverence of working-class Irish life.