Older Than Ireland star Bessie Nolan passes away aged 106

Director Alex Fegan and the team behind acclaimed documentary Older Than Ireland pay a loving tribute to the film's scene stealer Bessie Nolan, who passed away on February 28th, at the grand old age of 106, and revisit their classic interview with a remarkable woman.

It is with extreme sadness that we learned that Bessie Nolan (106) has sadly passed away peacefully in her sleep. Our thoughts and prayers are with all her family.

Like when any Irish centenarian passes, the country loses a part of its history. None more so than today. When Older Than Ireland played on RTE One, as soon as she lit up her cigarette in the opening shot of the film, she lit up the nation. Twitter exploded and everyone wanted to meet her. At the film's premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh, Bessie joined us at the end for the q&a. So charmed was a man in the audience, he asked Bessie, then 103, on a date. Bessie said, "I'm too young for ya."

If you were to describe Bessie Nolan in one word to someone who had never met her, that word would be ‘legendary’. She was an inspiration.

Ireland’s oldest and most glamorous fashionista always had an interest in style, which was something we immediately noticed when we arrived to interview her. She was the personification of elegance. Sitting down to talk, we compliment her on how stylish she is but she was characteristically modest about and retorted with a quip about how "ancient" she was.

Bessie’s home is bright and colourful, much like her personality. In the corner of the living room hangs a photographic portrait of Bessie on her 100th birthday, the portrait evokes images of 1950’s Hollywood glamour coupled with modern style reminiscent of New York fashion icon Iris Apfel. In the days before ‘women’s lib’ and ‘girl power’, Bessie represented what those movements stood for. She was a strong, independent woman who had a successful career but still looked after her children at a time when a woman’s place was seen to be solely in the home.

There is a raw honesty and sincerity to Bessie; her answers are matter-of-fact at times but they always come from the heart. She is economical with her words and always to the point. While she admits there were moments when times were hard, her lifelong philosophy always encouraged her to pick herself up and dust herself off. As she says herself, "I was down but I was never out."

Watch - Bessie Nolan on The Late Late Show in 2015:

Although born in Clane, Co. Kildare on the 5th November, 1911, Bessie grew up in the Ranch in Inchicore. She frequently took the bus into the city centre where she met friends for lunch and a bit of gossip. Some of her earliest memories reach as far back as to when she was only 2-years-old. She remembers going out on a limb after a dare from her older brother.

"I followed my brother everywhere. He went up in a tree one day and he said ‘Bessie, can you climb up the tree?’ I said ‘yes.’ He said ‘go out on to that branch’ so I went out and it started bobbin’ up and down with the weight of me. He said, ‘you can stay there now until I come back’ and he left me up in the tree. Oh I scourged him. I was a real tomboy," jokes Bessie.

"I’d never lose a night’s sleep over a fella. Maybe I’m not natural! There’s always another one round the corner. I was never short of fellas!"

Climbing up trees wasn’t the only thing Bessie loved to do as a child. She vividly recalls all of the games she used to play as a young girl and thinks it’s a pity that many children these days are more interested in playing games of the virtual kind. "We played everything; ball beds, skipping, catty, hide and seek, everything. All the kids played it, you never see kids out playing now, they all have their little machines."

Ever the fearless child, Bessie was so excited to be given her first bike that she couldn’t resist taking it on a test ride down one of the steepest hills in Dublin. "I got my bike when I was 14, a Raleigh bike, I was delighted with that. I remember coming down Knockmaroon Hill, I didn’t know it was so steep and the tears were washing my face and a man got me and he said, ‘if I was your father I’d break your bloody neck.’ I was paralysed with fright because I didn’t realise it was so steep".

Older Than Ireland also spawned a successful book, with Bessie on the cover.

Bessie’s first day of school was another she’ll never forget. "I got a slap on my first day at school, I put up my hand but I didn’t know the answer. She had a big long ruler and she gave me a slap, the only slap I ever got". It was around the same time that her father gave her some sage advice that she still remembers to this day. "He used to say ‘keep away from the three Ds: the Divil, the Doctor and Drink,’ although he liked a pint. My mother hated pubs, hated them! A pub to my mother was like Hell’s Kitchen. That’s what she called it ‘Hell’s Kitchen!’"

As Bessie took us back to her childhood, one infamous day during the War of Independance stands out. It was the 25th May, 1921. She was only 10-years-old as she sat on a wall and watched the Custom House in Dublin go up in flames. "Yeah I remember sitting on the wall with a red, white and blue flag. A French woman lived beside us and she gave me a [french] red white and blue flag on a stick. I was sitting on the garden wall and my mother’s sister came over and said ‘where did you get that?’ I said ‘Mrs Sweeney’ and she nearly went berserk. The Custom House was blazing and me with a red, white and blue flag," laughs Bessie.

From a young age Bessie had so many male admirers calling her house that her father got tired of having to answer the phone. "I’d never lose a night’s sleep over a fella. Maybe I’m not natural! There’s always another one round the corner. I was never short of fellas! The phone would ring and I’d say ‘tell him I’m not in’ and me father would say, ‘I’m not telling any more bloody lies for you’".

One such admirer was definitely a source of contention for Bessie’s family, as she tells us about a young Black and Tan called "Brasso". "Yeah, I remember the little fella. I think he was only about 18 and he was at the Khyber Pass. ‘Brasso’ we used to call him. He gave me a tin of bully beef and when I brought it home my mother said, ‘where did you get that?’ I said ‘Brasso gave it to me.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘take that back to Brasso’. So I had to go back to Brasso with the tin of bully beef. He was a British soldier. He was only a kid, a nice lad, but I wasn’t allowed to keep it."

But it wasn’t just Brasso and the local lads that were admirers of Bessie. One night, whilst watching a film in one of Dublin’s premier theatres, she found out that she had admirers in very high places indeed."I used to go to The Royal every Sunday and the coatroom woman used to say, ‘someone here admires you very much.’ I said, ‘who? I don’t know anyone here’ and she said, ‘well I’m not telling. I’ll tell you someday’. She didn’t tell me for months after. Darby O’Gill was on in The Royal and it was completely booked out, you couldn’t get a ticket. It was crammed. Hawkins Street was black with cars. So I was putting in my coat and I said, ‘who is supposed to admire me?’ She said, ‘Charlie Elliman,’ the fella that owned the feckin’ Theatre Royal, one of the Elliman’s. Me with a Jewman! Jesus my father would go mad! I don’t know what he had against them. I think he thought they crucified Christ," jokes Bessie.

"Death doesn’t bother me. You live as long as God wants, you can’t die when you want to. You can live too long. What do you want to live for when you’ve nothing to live for? I’ve done all I wanted to do."

For as long as Bessie can remember she was a fan of music and dancing, frequenting just about every dance hall in Dublin at one stage or another. "I danced in every ballroom in Dublin: Clery’s, The Metropole, The Royal, everywhere. The Metropole was lovely and there was another one on Abbey Street where the Adelphi is; that was a beautiful ballroom. They used to have six professional male dancers and six female dancers and you could buy a ticket and dance with the professionals. It was all bow tie and all glamour."

So, when it comes to the notion of love at first sight, is Bessie a believer? Well, in short she is, but thinks that fate has a lot to do with it. "Now there’s a girl down past the shops and when she was 7 years of age her mother used to say, ‘if I catch you with that young fella again I’ll kill you’ and they are married now, live in Palmerstown beside my son and they’re still together like that [crossing her fingers]. They were only 7 when they used to play together, so I think your life is mapped out for you."

For those who are not lucky enough to experience love at first sight, Bessie believes that all is not lost and it is possible that your love for someone can be nurtured so it may grow in time. "Maybe you do meet someone, I don’t think I really loved my husband. We grew together," explains Bessie quite matter-of-factly.

Bessie’s future husband, Jackie, had been chasing her since she was 14. "I went with loads of fellas that were loaded with money and I picked the poorest one." Jackie was determined to charm her. "He was chasing me from when I was 14. Molly Clarke used to bring letters and she’d say ‘would you go out with that fella, I’m fed up playing postman.’ I went with loads of other fellas but he was always there."

For Bessie, news of Jackie’s intention to propose came via a third party. "I knew the family well. They were a very nice family and his mother used to come to tea in our house and I remember she said to my mother, ‘Jackie wants to get engaged.’" When the time came for him to propose, Jackie did so in the traditional way, much to the surprise of his mother. "He proposed the usual way. He got down on his knees. His mother thought he’d never get me but he did. I got on with her. I was the white-haired girl with his mother."

Her wedding day was held in the centre of Dublin. "I was married in James’ Street Chapel at twelve o’clock on a Sunday, after 12 o’clock mass. Jackie’s mother sang My Blue-Eyed Irish Boy. It was a lovely day." They settled down in Drimnagh where they raised a family of four children.

What’s the key to a successful marriage? Well, Bessie thinks that compromise should come before all else; "a man is a man and a woman is a woman, they’re two different people and it takes an awful lot of understanding and give-and-take. You can’t have it your own way all the time. You have your own ideas and I have my ideas, we’re not both right. So you have to compromise."

Times were to get bad for Bessie when lack of work in Ireland in the 1940’s forced her husband to travel to the UK to seek employment. She raised the family whilst Jackie spent twelve years working as head supervisor with a construction company in West Bromwich. "I remember one day I only had a shilling to feed five of us so I bought a Spanish onion, a jar of candy sauce and a turnover loaf and that fed the lot of us. After that I said, ‘feck this,’ so I went out and got myself a job and never looked back". When Jackie started to climb the promotion ladder in the UK, he wanted Bessie to move over but she was reluctant to go, having gotten used to life on her own in Dublin. "He sent me a catalogue of houses to buy one and I wouldn’t go. I knew where I was here but I wouldn’t know where I was over there."

It was in 1946 that Bessie was given just one hour to live when she was struck down with toxaemia of the kidneys. Doctors were so worried that they advised sending for Jackie who was still in England. Taking it all in her stride, Bessie quickly recovered and life went back to normal. "The doctor went out and I got up and ironed the shirts for school the next morning" she recalls.

A widow for over forty years, Bessie can vividly remember the day she realised all was not well with Jackie. "I remember he came in one night and he was sitting on the sofa and beads of perspiration was teaming on him and I said, ‘I’ll go up for the doctor’." Jackie was a smoker and when the doctor arrived he gave him a word of advice, which Bessie remembers to this day. "There were twenty Players on the table and he said ‘are they your cigarettes?’ and Jackie said ‘yes’. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let them be the last cigarettes you’ll smoke’ and they were." Jackie sadly passed away in 1969.

Although Bessie never remarried, she was certainly not short of proposals over the years following Jackie’s passing. There were at least three she remembers, but in the end she turned them all down preferring to lead an independent life in control of her own destiny.

There were however some events that were outside of her control. Peter, her brother, emigrated to America like many Irish people, in search of a better life. Tragically, his American dream came to an end one night when his life was cut short on the streets of New York. "My brother had a sheet metal factory, his own business and he was coming out on the Friday night and he was locking up when four fellas jumped him. He was murdered and they found his body eight miles outside New York. It’s still an open case. They never got anyone for it."

Bessie at home, in Older Than Ireland

While she admits that modern Ireland has changed, mostly for the better, she does feel that kids today have markedly different ambitions compared to years gone by. "They all want to be models now and they all want to be glamour girls and rock stars. I think the world has gone mad. It was much simpler when we were growing up. I buy a box of powder, does me twelve months. I cut my own hair, always cut my own hair. I haven’t stood in a hairdressers in twenty years. Now the girls spend a fortune on themselves; false eyelashes, false this, false that. There’s a girl down past the shops, she’s a lovely looking girl if she left herself alone. She has her hair up high, blonde, dyed. I think she’s four sets of eyelashes. You can’t see her eyes; her lashes are down to her nose. Half a tonne of black [on her face]. I’d love to wash her and see her [without make-up]. She’s a lovely girl but she’s ruining herself."

Bessie has definitely noticed a change over the years with our attitudes towards money and how we view material things. "People are living beyond their means, dining out, wining out. You go up to Liffey Valley [Shopping Centre] and look into McDonalds; whole families are there eating out with their kids. They’ve beautiful kitchens, beautiful homes but they don’t cook meals in them. There’s no such thing as sitting around with the family anymore. I’d rather have my dinner at home, I still cook my own dinner - old habits die hard." It’s the erosion of our community spirit and lack of concern for our fellow neighbours that Bessie sees as the real issue in modern society. "There’s a woman that lives on the end of this street for the past three years and I’ve never seen her, would you believe that? I’ve never seen the woman. There’s no such thing now as neighbours anymore. Although I do have one, second house up. She’s brilliant. She knocks on the door or rings me up to ask: ‘do you want anything in the shops?’ She’s very good, she’s the only one; all the rest are strangers," Bessie laments.

"I was down but I was never out."

So, as our fascinating chat with Bessie winds toward an end, the conversation inevitably turns to the great beyond and whether Bessie has any regrets. "Death doesn’t bother me. You live as long as God wants, you can’t die when you want to. You can live too long. What do you want to live for when you’ve nothing to live for? I’ve done all I wanted to do."

One thing she perhaps wouldn’t mind is one more holiday in the sun. When Bessie received the cheque from the President, her decision on how to spend it was an easy one. "Two and a half thousand, so I spent that. I went to the Canary Islands with the family and we had a ball!"

As for regrets, well it’s hardly a surprise to learn Bessie doesn’t have many. She believes a higher power holds the cards in terms of what’s in store for us, in spite of our best laid plans. "I had my life planned out; I’d get married and have a lovely home. I’d have two children and I’d give them a good education. That all went by the board. I think your life is planned for you. You make proposals and God laughs. What I can’t understand is: eternal damnation. If Christ died for all the sins in the world, why would he send you to Hell?" Bessie questions.

So how did Bessie make it to this incredible age? Well, as ever, Bessie just smiles before saying: "My daughter said I’m not on the [death] register. God forgot all about me. I think he did."

We’re not sure anyone could forget Bessie. Rest in Peace.