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Sean McClory as Major Kibbee

Sean McClory was born in Dublin, Ireland, but spent his early life in Galway. He was the son of Hugh Patrick, an architect and civil engineer, and Mary Margaret Ball, who had been a model. Sean decided to become an actor and joined Dublin's renowned Abbey Theater (also known as the National Theater of Ireland, opened in 1904).

He rose through the ranks playing in productions of the works of such authors as William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, and soon began to play leads mostly in comedies (popular through most of the 1940s and into the 1950s).

When comedies began to fade from the theater after World War II, McClory with turned an eye toward film. In early 1947 he decided to make the jump to America and break into Hollywood. His first roles were that of a staple in American films: the Irish cop, which he played in two of the "Dick Tracy" series in 1947.

In 1949 he signed a short contract with 20th Century-Fox. By 1950 he was showing up in more notable films - though uncredited, particularly in The Glass Menagerie (1950). Within a year McClory's talents were being showcased in various small feature roles.

John Ford finally began casting - a painstaking process for the finicky director -- for his long conceived The Quiet Man (1952) and chose McClory for a small but showy part, in which he was seen throughout the film feature with Charles B. Fitzsimons, the younger brother of the film's star, Maureen O'Hara, playing an Irish villager.

Although some of the cast were familiar members of the "John Ford Stock Company", many roles were filled by actual Irish villagers (the film was shot on location) and included a generous helping of Abbey Theater alumni: the Shields brothers (Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields) and Jack MacGowran, in addition to O'Hara McClory.

Ford wanted him for roles in several of his subsequent films, however McClory's busy film and TV schedule only allowed him to accept roles in two other Ford films, The Long Gray Line and Cheyenne Autumn.

In 1953 McClory played one of his standout roles as menacing, shady archaeologist Jefferson in Plunder of the Sun (1953), a good adventure thriller helped along by location shooting in Mexico.

McClory, with a white-tinted crewcut and dark glasses (very effective), had the opportunity to reveal the depth of his talent and really stole the picture from star Glenn Ford, who couldn't get away from his usual mumbling delivery.

McClory had a cultured, neutral Irish brogue that fit well in small- or big-screen performances, unlike such Irish actors as Barry Fitzgerald who, though very effective and beloved, had a thick brogue that kept him forever cast as an Irishman.

As a result, McClory was much more at home in American TV and had many memorable roles from 1953 onward, appearing in a gamut of episodic TV in addition to his feature film work.

However, it was his frequent appearances on the small screen that enabled McClory to stand out in viewers' memories, especially in a range of western and adventure series (in which he played a good sprinkling of Irish characters) well into the 1970s.

Though not as busy in the 1980s as he was in the '70s, one role in which he truly stood out was in an adaptation by John Huston of Irish writer James Joyce's famous 1907 short story "The Dead" made in 1987 (The Dead (1987)), his final film appearance.

McClory's role as Mr. Grace was not a character in the original story but was created by Huston and his son Tony Huston to provide McClory with a reading of the medieval Irish poem "Young Donal", which was very effective to the mood of this look at Irish family remembrance.

Patricia notices something in the desert.

P. MEDFORD: Hold it.

They found a mound. An ant pops it's head out to discard bones from the nest. The high pitch sound of the creature is heard.

P. MEDFORD: Fly back over it as close as you can.

The bones are flung down into a pile of more bones accumulated over time. Patricia takes snapshots with her camera.

P. MEDFORD: We just found your missing persons.

O'BRIEN: Look Dr. Medford, you're being very inconsistent about this. First you insist this is top secret. Nobody else must know or do anything about getting rid of these bigs ants including Kibbee, me, and the rest of us.

H. MEDFORD: That's correct, General. Absolute secrecy is imperative.

O'BRIEN: Allright, then you turn around and say time is the most important thing.

H. MEDFORD: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Now I've been instructed to take orders from you, give you anything you ask for. If time is that important, why don't you let me go in there tonight with some bombers and wipe out that nest?

H. MEDFORD: Now, now, if you just calm down, General, I'll explain. Doctor, please put up that chart. Time is important, more so than you realize, but bombing that nest tonight will only aggravate our problem. The reason none of them have been seeing during the day, even by the police spotting-planes is because they don't like the heat of the desert.

They forage only between sunset and dawn when it's cool. So half the colony wouldn't even be inside the nest tonight. Our best chance will be during the hottest spot of the day tomorrow. Now this, this is a typical ant nest. Observe the details. Here's the entrance. These are tunnels and corridors, food chambers.

Note the wonderful and intricate engineering. Water traps, so none will drown during rains. This is somewhat over-simplified I admit, but it will give you some idea of what we're up against. Did you know that some species of desert ants dig down as deep as thirty feet or more?

GRAHAM: Well then that nest we found today might go down hundreds of feet.

KIBBEE: If we can pinpoint that opening at the top, we can seal it up for good.

H. MEDFORD: Well the creatures would only tunnel out somewhere else, and we don't want that nest, damaged, not yet.

O'BRIEN: Well what do we do now?

H. MEDFORD: First we wait till noon tomorrow. By that time, all of them should be within the nest. To keep them confined in their area is our next problem. We have two possibilities. The first would be to flood the nest. Ants will not come through deep water, no, they breath through their sides, you know.

PETERSON: Excuse me Doctor, but there's no water line within twenty miles of that place.

O'BRIEN: So that's why you asked me to check our meteorological station.

H. MEDFORD: Is there any chance of our getting cloud formations?

O'BRIEN: No, nothing that make cloud seeding pay off. Nobody's had much luck in making it rain in this part of the desert anyway. . . What's the second possibility?

H. MEDFORD: Enough heat to drive the ants deeper down their nest and hold them down for awhile.

KIBBEE: But no bombing, huh? How about phosphorous?. We could target that mound with bazookas.

O'BRIEN: That would keep the surface area hot allright. What happens after that?

H. MEDFORD: We then drop cyanide gas into the opening and kill them.

O'BRIEN: How can you be sure we got all of them?

H. MEDFORD: We go into the nest and find out.