AllMovie

In his second Playhouse 90 appearance of the 1956-57 season, Art Crney stars as Robert Briscoe, the colorful, controversial Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland. Although of Jewish parentage, Briscoe was "accepted" as a Hibernian through and through on the strength of his fearless patriotism during the 1916 Irish Rebellion against British rule. As a member in good standing of the original Irish Republican Army and the nationalist Sinn Fein movement, Briscoe worked side by side with another legendary Irish freedom fighter, Eamon de Valera, reserving his fighting for the nighttime hours while pursuing a daytime job as a wool salesman. Briscoe's tireless and death-defying efforts on behalf of his countrymen were rewarded in 1956, when he won the mayoral race in the Dublin that he helped to wrest free from British domination. This 90-minute drama proved quite an eye-opener to TV fans who knew Art Carney only for his comic characterizations on The Jackie Gleason Show.