Gabriel Walsh

Gabriel Walsh, born in Dublin, is a writer, publishing books and producing scripts for TV shows and movies.

At the age of 15, while employed as a waiter at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, he encountered the renowned Irish Opera singer Margaret Burke-Sheridan (1889–1958). Margaret Burke-Sheridan persuaded his family to permit his relocation to the United States for educational purposes. Subsequently, Walsh enrolled at the Lee Strasberg School of Acting in both New York and Los Angeles.

Since the 1970s, Walsh has either been writing screen plays, acting, co-producing or writing for the Evening Echo newspaper in Cork.

In 1970, Walsh wrote the screen-play Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx which stars Gene Wilder as Quackser Fortune and Margot Kidder as Zazel Pierce.

Quackser Fortune grabbed the attention of Jean Renoir. Gene Wilder, in his book Kiss Me Like A Stranger published by St Martin's Press, quotes the legendary French Director as saying, "Not since Chaplin have I come across such as character as this Quackser."

The movie received mixed reviews when it was first released in 1970. But in 1971, Walsh's screenplay was nominated for Best Comedy written for the screen at the Writers Guild of America. In 2012, Quackser Fortune has a Cousin in the Bronx was listed in the Sunday Times as one of the top 100 Irish movies ever produced.

Walsh appeared in a number of movies including Night Flowers in 1979, which he wrote and co-produced. The film received the ecumenical award at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1979. Heaven's Gate 1981; The returning 1983 and featured in TV series Wild Wild West in 1970.

The author wrote several plays including "The Brandy Dancers" in 1978 and "Hearts" which was produced by Eric Morris Theatre in LA.

In 2012, Gabriel Walsh's memoirs "Maggie's Breakfast", published by Poolbeg Publishing, about his "life-changing" encounter with Margaret Burke Sheridan, joined the best seller list. The book recounts his up-bringing in Dublin in 1940s and 1950s as one of ten children to the moment he departs to New York, barely literate, to live and be educated by his new guardians, Wall Street economists and investors, Emerson and Ruth Houghton Axe. The book's sequel "I Dream Alone", which covers the young boy's life at the Axe Castle in Tarrytown, Westchester County, New York, was published in 2013.