Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara and the Mayo connection
by Tom Gillespie
One hundred and one years ago this week Maureen O’Hara, one of the most successful actresses of the golden age of Hollywood, was born, on Tuesday, August 17, 1920.
Her association with Mayo and John Wayne was in the 1952 making of The Quiet Man film, which was shot on location in and around the village of Cong and where a statue of O’Hora and Wayne holds pride of place.
She was a redhead Irish-American actress and singer and was known for playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films.
On numerous occasions she worked with director John Forde and long-time friend John Wayne, with particular success with The Quiet Man.
O'Hara cited the film to be her ‘personal favourite of all the pictures I have made. It is the one I am most proud of, and I tend to be very protective of it. I loved Mary Kate Danaher. I loved the hell and fire in her’.
O'Hara grew up in Dublin in a Catholic family and aspired to become an actress from a very young age.
She trained with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14.
She was given a screen test, which was deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw potential and arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939.
She moved to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was given a contract by RKO Pictures.
From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquired the nickname 'The Queen of Technicolor’.
She appeared in films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941) (her first collaboration with John Ford), The Black Sawn with Tyrone Power (1942), The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947) with John Payne and Natalie Wood and Comanche Territory (1950).
O'Hara made her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated, in Rio Grande (1950). This was followed by The Quiet Man and Wings of Eagles (1957), McLintock (1963) and Big Jake (1971). Such was her strong chemistry with Wayne that many assumed they were married or in a relationship.
In the 1960s O'Hara increasingly turned to more motherly roles as she aged, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961) and The Rare Breed (1966).
She retired from the industry in 1971 but returned 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991).
O'Hara was called the Queen of Technicolor because when that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendour better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion.
One critic praised her in an otherwise negative review of the 1950 film Comanche Territory with the sentiment, 'Framed in Technicolor, Miss O'Hara somehow seems more significant than a setting sun’. Even the creators of the process claimed her as its best advertisement.
In the late 1970s, O'Hara helped run her third husband Charles F. Blair Jr.'s flying business in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, and edited a magazine, but later sold them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland.
She was married three times, and had one daughter, Bronwyn, with her second husband.
Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and became a New York Times best-seller.
In November 2014, she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription: ‘To Maureen O'Hara, one of Hollywood's brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength’.
O'Hara began life as Maureen FitzSimons on Beechwood Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. She stated that she was ‘born into the most remarkable and eccentric family I could have possibly hoped for’.
O'Hara was the second oldest of six children of Charles and Marguerite (née Lilburn) FitzSimons, and the only red-headed child in the family.
Her father was in the clothing business and bought into Shamrock Rovers Football Club, a team O'Hara supported from childhood.
She inherited her singing voice from her mother, a former operatic contralto and successful woman’s clothier who in her younger years was widely considered to have been one of Ireland's most beautiful women.
O'Hara noted that whenever her mother left the house, men would leave their houses just so they could catch a glimpse of her in the street.
O'Hara's siblings were Peggy, the oldest, and younger Charles, Florrie, Margot and Jimmy. Peggy dedicated her life to a religious order, becoming a Sister of Charity.
O'Hara earned the nickname ‘Baby Elephant’ for being a pudgy infant. A tomboy, she enjoyed fishing in the River Dodder, riding horses, swimming and soccer, and would play boys' games and climb trees.
O'Hara was so keen on soccer that at one point she pressed her father to found a women's team, and professed that Glenmalure Park, the home ground of Shamrock Rovers, became ‘like a second home’.
She enjoyed fighting, and trained in judo as a teenager. She later admitted that she displayed a jealousy towards boys in her youth and the freedom they had, and that they could steal apples from orchards and not get into trouble.
On October 14, 2015, Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho, from natural causes.
She was 95 years old. O'Hara's remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles Blair.