Thought to be lost, at least one fragment, 4 minutes long exist.
When this film was going into production Marie Dressler was out of work and considering taking a job as a housekeeper. According to Dressler's autobiography, the night the her friend Francis Marion called and offered it to her, she was considering committing suicide.
The Associated Press reported that on 4 October 1927, the American-Irish Vigilance Committee and affiliated organizations with "promotion of a dignified expression of Irish art" as their purpose, had announced in New York City that they had filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission in "a move to dethrone Will H. Hays as head of the motion picture industry." The petition asserted that the pictures "The Callahans and the Murphys," " Irish Hearts," "The Shamrock and the Rose," and " The Garden of Allah" were a gross libel on the Irish race. ("Irish Move to Stop Undignified Films, Want Hays Removed," The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Wednesday 5 October 1927, Volume 61, Number 35, page 1.).
The petition was not successful.
The petition was not successful.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has withdrawn "The Callahans and the Murphys" from the market entirely, as a result of a protest from Cardinal Dougherty, Archbishop of Philadelphia. (Harrison's Reprot - November 26, 1927)
About six minutes of footage from this film survive, in two separate clips owned by the Library of Congress and the Irish Film Institute. Both were included in an article in The New York Times posted on March 15, 2024.