Maureen O'Hara (above) born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland. She studied for a career as a professional stage actress from a young age and had no ambition for film (despite two previous small roles) when she was invited by Charles Laughton to appear in Hitchcock's British productions of Jamaica Inn in 1938. Soon under contract to Laughton and producer Erich Pommer's production company (Mayflower Pictures, where her name was changed to 'O'Hara' because 'FitzSimons' would not as easily fit upon a marquee), she was required to travel to Hollywood to be in Laughton's version of Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). Despite her protests, O'Hara's contract to
Mayflower was sold to RKO because Laughton and Pommer's company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Required to stay in Hollywood, and with international travel nearly impossible because of the war in Europe, O'Hara settled into a long string of RKO movies, few of which she felt capitalized upon her theatre training but relied instead upon her beauty.
A favorite actress of director John Ford, and frequent co-star with John Wayne with whom she had a long-term friendship until his death in 1979. O'Hara is probably best known for starring in Ford's The Quiet Man (1951) for whom she also acted as an unofficial script editor and transcriptionist for six years prior to it being filmed, meeting Ford on weekends to work out the adaptation of the original short story. Another perennial favorite film is the Christmas-themed Miracle on 34th Street (1947), also the seven pirate/swashbuckler films she made during the 1940s and 50s. For such genre movies (along with westerns) O'Hara frequently performed her own stunts and utilized her training as a fencing artist.
She wrote the somewhat controversial autobiography 'Tis Herself in 2004 for the Simon and Shuster book publisher. The book recounts her three marriages, her battles with Hollywood hierarchy, an intimate analysis of John Wayne and John Ford, among others, and her legal fight to be recognized as both an Irish and American citizen. |
