User:Sarah Dicker

Having emigrated to Boston in 1905, Mullen began working in the States factories and warehouses, during the winter months and spent summers on rural contract-labour teams. Having successfully lead a strike in a Boston wool-house, he earned a charter from the American Federation of Labour and became a founder in a union of city-wide wool-house workers (1916). Following this, he met a fellow emigrant James Larkin, who was an Irish labour leader, having joined the James Connolly Socialist Club. Mullen’s trade-union activism lead him to be sacked from several jobs and blacklisted my employers in Boston, turning him to engage in illegal liquor trafficking. Mullen then returned home in 1921 to the gruelling life of the Aran peasant. His circumstances improved slightly when he attained a horse and sidecar, in which he carried out hauling jobs here and there, and also to drive visitors around the Island to view the scenery.

In November 1931, Robert J. Flaherty, an American documentary film maker, along with his family, visited the island and contracted Mullen to drive them around Aran. They formed a connection, and when Flaherty returned back to the Island the following year, he employed Mullen as his local-contact man and also assistant director for his film, “Man of Aran”. He recruited cast members from the island’s population and also coached them into carrying out scenes for the film, which were at times dangerous, as they were filmed on the edges of cliffs and also in tough sea conditions. Mullen stared in the film as a basking shark hunter. He spent nine weeks in London recording sound dialogue in the Gaumont-British studios along with his fellow cast members. Following the success of the film, Mullen wrote a book with the same title “Man of Aran” (October 1934), which included accounts of the making of the film, along with other parts of his life. There then came three more volumes, a novel depicting Aran life “Hero Breed” (1936); a folklore collection “Irish Tales” (1938); and an autobiography “Come another day” (1940) in which he goes into more detail of his years in America and his subsequent return to Aran.