THE DECISION by Jane Russell to adopt an Irish baby boy caused great controversy in the early 1950s. The Hollywood star and her husband, Bob Waterfield, adopted Tommy Kavanagh in 1952, some time after meeting his mother, Florrie Kavanagh, at the Savoy Hotel in London.
In October 1951, The Irish Timesreported the actor was anxious to adopt an Irish baby boy as a brother to her adopted daughter. She was unable to have children after an abortion years earlier and had looked at the possibility of adopting a baby boy from Europe.
However, she told the reporter in London that it seemed impossible because British law would not allow her to take a child from England and Italy would not allow it because she was under 40 and a Protestant. She said she had been advised to try Ireland but was worried that similar obstacles would arise there.
“My husband is Irish and he would very much like to adopt an Irish baby. If it is possible, I would like to fly to Dublin this week to pick out a child and make all the arrangements for bringing him to America,” she said.
The newspaper quoted Ms AB Odlum of the Church of Ireland Moral Welfare Organisation, who said the actor would be most ill- advised to come to Ireland and expect to adopt a baby “out of the blue”. She advised the actor to go through the official channels.
While in London, though, Russell was contacted by Florence Kavanagh, who had heard of her interest in adopting a baby and who had read that she was devoutly religious. Ms Kavanagh and her husband, Michael, had moved from Ireland some years earlier and were struggling to raise their young family in south London.
She phoned the Savoy, where Russell and her mother were staying, and offered to give the actor her 15-month-old baby if she would give him a good home, education and love.
In her autobiography My Path and My Detours, Russell said she agreed to meet Ms Kavanagh with baby Tommy. She got the impression that Ms Kavanagh thought she was sending her baby to heaven, as he would be raised by a Christian family in a land of opportunity.
“He had blue eyes that looked straight through you and a mass of golden curls. He looked exactly like the pictures of my brother Billie, who had died at 16 months,” she wrote.
Russell’s mother later wrote that they met Irish diplomatic officials at 4pm “and at six o’clock we were on the plane. It all happened so fast that the press knew nothing.”
However, there was a flurry of media coverage once it emerged that the baby had gone to the US. The adoption embarrassed the Irish authorities and renewed the focus on the loose adoption laws.
The boy, renamed Thomas Waterfield, is now about 60 and was at the actor’s bedside with his adoptive brother and sister when their mother died on Monday, according to media reports.
He lives in Arizona and achieved some fame of his own through his involvement with the band Toucan Eddy.
