Tongue in cheek but fun

Irish Voice, Wednesday, 18 May 2005

Cops Toss Irish from LA Hotel

by Sean O’Driscoll

AN Irish actor who was featured in Raging Bull and Titanic has hit out at Los Angeles cops after they aggressively broke up a sing song by Irish academics at the Beverly Hills Hilton last week.

The bar of the Hilton Hotel was swarmed with cops after a hotel manager called time on academics celebrating an Irish degree conferring for actress Angelica Huston and game show king and TV star Merv Griffin.

The sudden rush of cops into the hotel bar narrowly missed a meeting in the lobby with former Irish Prime Minister, Dr. Garrett FitzGerald.

About 70 tuxedo and ball-gown glad (sic.) academics were told to leave the bar immediately after some patrons protested that the cops were being totally over the top.

One Donegal woman told the cops they were behaving like Margaret Thatcher’s stormtroopers during the worst of the Troubles.

LA-based actor Shay Duffin, originally from Dublin, said he complained about the cops’ behaviour to a Hilton hotel manager the next day.

Duffin knows about responsible bar etiquette - he played barman in Titanic, telling Leonardo DiCaprio and his card playing Scandinavian friends to hurry up because they only had five minutes to go before the ship took off.

He was also the ring announcer in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, and will retake his barman role in the upcoming Scorsese movie The Departed.

He said the event left a bad feeling after a successful conferring ceremony in the hotel.

Huston was awarded an honorary degree for her role as patron of the Huston School of Digital Film and Media at the National University of Ireland in Galway.

Author Ray Bradbury was also honoured, as was Griffin, creator of Jeopardy and other TV shows. Angela Lansbury, star of Murder, She Wrote, was also at the event.

Things took a bad turn when patrons visited the bar afterwards. An academic from the University of Galway’s engineering department played the button accordion while Duffin sang “The Auld Triangle”.

The president of NUI Galway, Dr. Iognaid O Muircheartaigh, was also there for much of the night, as was Geraldine Hughes, star of the one woman show Belfast Blues.

As the night progressed, last orders were called and many of the patrons continued singing. A large van of heavily armed police arrived, shouting “Everybody out of here, this place is closed!” according to Duffin.

Academics were tossed out of the bar, and women were not allowed to return for their handbags.

Duffin said that he had complained to the LA police and had yet to hear an official response.

The Hilton’s day manager, Tim Friedman, said he had heard about the confrontation from his overnight manager and knew that the security team had written a report on it.

He said that staff in the bar had asked patrons very politely to leave a number of times. When this failed, security was called and when a groupof about 30 patrons still refused to leave, the police were called because the hotel did not want a confrontation between their own security team and the customers.