Mara goes box office as Giants play with fire
The film role made famous two years ago by Noomi Rapace in the original Swedish adaptation of that big-selling novel is a huge pair of natty, goth shoes to fill.
But then Mara, 26, is used to inheriting great expectations. She is the flesh and blood of two of the NFL’s most storied institutions: the Pittsburgh Steelers, founded in 1933 by Art Rooney, and the New York Football Giants, founded in 1925 by Tim Mara.
Rooney and Mara were joined at the hip in the early days of professional football. They were chief allies as the NFL found its feet. The dominance of the more traditional — and decidedly more amateur — College Football was a huge obstacle for these ambitious men and their fellow owners before World War II.
Their relationship was forged at racetracks where Rooney had discovered the perfect outlet for the insatiable penchant for gambling and competition he had developed in Pittsburgh’s rough and ready Ward neighborhood, the predominantly Irish district where he came of age as a boxer and baseball player.
During the late summer of 1937, while Rooney was enjoying a profitable few days at Saratoga on the back of a few tips provided by Mara, his winnings gave the bookies such a fright that the market began to be dictated by his heavy punts.
All the while his wife Kass was on the verge of sending their third son into the world. Rooney was staying at Mara’s house and he promised his old friend that he would name his new son Tim in his honour in order to preserve the memory of that glorious week.
Over 40 years later Tim’s daughter Kathleen married Chris Mara, grandson of the first Tim. During the four and half decades that passed, the Steelers (four Super Bowls in the 1970s) and the Giants established themselves as cornerstones of the NFL.
Their daughter may have enjoyed a quasi-aristocratic upbringing but she is doing her best to establish herself in her own right.
“I didn’t love football growing up, and I’m not obsessed with it,” she told Allure Magazine. “My whole family is really into it. I’m not. But I do really like it, and of course I appreciate it because of my family — it’s a huge part of my heritage.”
I recently got through the well-written and hefty tome that chronicles her great-grandfather’s busy life on this earth. “Rooney: A Sporting Life” was put together by two historians and a journalism professor, Rob Ruck, Michael P Weber and Maggie Jones Patterson.
Although it’s a book that seems at times too enjoyable to be based in fact, the tale about how Dan Rooney, current US ambassador to Ireland, took the reins at the Steelers is one of those you really want to be true.
Art Rooney deplored pretentiousness, according to Ruck et al, and he feared his club would lose its blue collar image after they dominated the 1970s in a manner that hasn’t been witnessed since. And so when it came time for his son’s coronation, Rooney Snr was keen to avoid any pomp.
Here’s how the book describes it: “He asked (Steelers public relations director) Joe Gordon, ‘You know that thing you give the media?’ Gordon was confused. ‘You know,’ Art said, ‘that book.’ Joe guessed the media guide... ‘This year,’ Art instructed, ‘I want you to make Danny the president in there.’ When Gordon asked how Art wanted to be described, ‘What’s that thing they call it — the chairman of the board?’ Had he discussed this with Dan? ‘I don’t have to talk to Dan about this,’ Art snorted. ‘Just do it.’ There was no announcement and nobody realised that the presidency had changed hands. That was just how Art wanted it.”
While the Steelers have spent the last decade being a perennial Super Bowl front runner (and continue in that vein, despite Monday night’s defeat at the San Francisco 49ers), the Mara side of Rooney Mara’s family tree is facing into a nerve-shredding weekend that could spoil Christmas in the blue parts of New York and New Jersey.
Christmas Eve’s “Battle of the Big Apple” will be a make-or-possibly-break showdown for the Giants and the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium, the state-of-the-art but not very popular structure the teams share on the bleak marshes of north-eastern New Jersey.
It remains to be seen whether Rooney Mara will be in the director’s box on Saturday. You get the feeling, however, that the only result she’ll really care about will be the figures at the box office.
* john.w.riordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
