This page is a TRIBUTE to the legendary actress Maureen O'Hara. It is not affliated with Ms. O'Hara in any way.
By far the prettiest colleen who ever came to Hollywood from the Emerald Isle, this spirited actress played a wide variety of roles in films of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, appearing to best advantage in those directed by John Ford. Red-haired and green-eyed, with a lovely complexion, sunny smile, and eyecatching figure, she looked positively stunning in Technicolor. In her teens an ingenue with Dublin's Abbey Players, O'Hara made her screen debut in the British-made Kicking the Moon Around (1938). Shortly thereafter she appeared opposite Charles Laughton in Jamaica Inn (1939), a stodgy Victorian costumer directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton urged O'Hara to seek her fame in Hollywood, and she came to America later that year, playing Esmerelda to his Quasimodo in RKO's lavish production, The Hunchback of Notre Dame Subsequent roles in A Bill of Divorcement, Dance, Girl, Dance (both 1940), and They Met in Argentina (1941) did little to enhance her reputation, but after John Ford cast her in the female lead of How Green Was My Valley (also 1941), the moving, Oscar-winning picture about a Welsh coal-mining family, her career took off.
O'Hara bounced back and forth between RKO and 20th Century-Fox throughout the 1940s, starring in To the Shores of Tripoli, Ten Gentlemen From West Point, The Black Swan, (all 1942, the lastnamed her first in Technicolor), The Immortal Sergeant, This Land Is Mine, The Fallen Sparrow (all 1943), Buffalo Bill (1944), The Spanish Main (1945), Sentimental Journey, Do You Love Me? (both 1946), Sinbad the Sailor, The Homestretch, The Foxes of Harrow the classic Miracle on 34th Street (all 1947), Sitting Pretty (1948), The Forbidden Street, A Woman's Secret and Father Was a Fullback (all 1949). She then appeared in several actioners for Universal: Bagdad (1949), Comanche Territory (1950), and Flame of Araby (1951).
John Ford approached O'Hara about starring in his labor-of-love project, The Quiet Man in the mid 1940s; she even took pages of script down in shorthand for the director during jaunts on his yacht. But the film wasn't made until the early 1950s, and not until Ford, O'Hara, and John Wayne agreed to make a Western first (to satisfy Republic Pictures' chief Herbert J. Yates): 1950's Rio Grande The chemistry between Wayne and O'Hara was unmistakable, and they reached their peak in The Quiet Man (1952), as the American boxer and the high-spirited Irish lass he wants to marry.
Always at her most fetching in period garb, O'Hara matched blades with male antagonists in two 1952 swashbucklers, Against All Flags (opposite Errol Flynn) and At Sword's Point (opposite Cornel Wilde). She made several minor films before being called again by Ford, this time to costar in his West Point story, The Long Gray Line (1955). This same year she played Lady Godiva making the famous bareback horse ride demurely covered by long tresses. She was reunited with Wayne and Ford on The Wings of Eagles (1957), the story of Naval commander and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead.
O'Hara was off the screen for several years but returned, just as beautiful as ever, in Our Man in Havana (1960). By now playing mother parts, she appeared in The Parent Trap (1961, one of her favorites), Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), and Spencer's Mountain (1963), before reuniting with Wayne for the boisterous Western comedy McLintock! (also 1963). She subsequently made The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), The Rare Breed (1966), How Do I Love Thee? (1970), and Big Jake (1971, her last with Wayne) before abandoning the screen altogether. She made occasional appearances on TV over the years, even singing on a number of variety shows, and costarred in the 1973 remake of The Red Pony At that point, she left show business behind for the better part of two decades, before being wooed by writer-director Chris Columbus to play John Candy's irrepressible, obstinate mother in Only the Lonely (1991), a forceful performance that might have yielded an Oscar nomination if the film had been more widely seen. Her daughter, Bronwyn FitzSimons, pursued an acting career at one time, as did her brothers, James Lilburn and Charles FitzSimons (the latter becoming a producer instead).
Copyright 1994 Leonard Maltin
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