Maureen
O’Hara, the flame-haired Irish movie star who appeared in classics ranging from
the grim “How Green Was My Valley” to the uplifting “Miracle on
34th Street” and bantered unforgettably with John Wayne in several films.
She was 95.
O’Hara
died in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho, said Johnny Nicoletti, her
longtime manager.
“She
passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life
listening to music from her favorite movie, ‘The Quiet Man,'” said a
statement from her family.
“As
an actress, Maureen O’Hara brought unyielding strength and sudden sensitivity to
every role she played. Her characters were feisty and fearless, just as she was
in real life. She was also proudly Irish and spent her entire lifetime sharing
her heritage and the wonderful culture of the Emerald Isle with the
world,” said a family biography.
O’Hara
came to Hollywood to star in the 1939 “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”
and went on to a long career. During her movie heyday, she became known as the
Queen of Technicolor because of the camera’s love affair with her vivid hair,
pale complexion and fiery nature. After her start in Hollywood with
“Hunchback” and some minor films at RKO, she was borrowed by 20th
Century Fox to play the beautiful young daughter in the 1941 saga of a
coal-mining family, “How Green Was My Valley.”
“How
Green Was My Valley” went on to win five Oscars including best picture and
best director for John Ford, beating out Orson Welles and “Citizen
Kane” among others. It was the first of several films she made under the
direction of Ford, who grouchy nature seemed to melt in her presence. The
popularity of “How Green Was My Valley” confirmed O’Hara’s status as
a Hollywood star. RKO and Fox shared her contract, and her most successful
films were made at Fox.
They
included “Miracle on 34th Street,” the classic 1947 Christmas story
in which O’Hara was little Natalie Wood’s skeptical mother and among those
charmed by Edmund Gwenn as a man who believed he was Santa Claus. Other films
included the costume drama “The Foxes of Harrow” (Rex Harrison,
1947); the comedy “Sitting Pretty” (Clifton Webb, 1948); and the
sports comedy “Father Was a Fullback” (Fred MacMurray, 1949). Often
she sailed the high seas in colorful pirate adventures such as “The Black
Swan” with Tyrone Power, “The Spanish Main” with Paul Henreid,
“Sinbad the Sailor” with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and “Against All
Flags” with Errol Flynn.
With
Ford’s “Rio Grande” in 1950, O’Hara became Wayne’s favorite leading
lady. The most successful of their five films was the 1952 “The Quiet
Man,” also directed by Ford, in which she matched Wayne blow for blow in a
classic donnybrook. With her Irish spunk, she could stand up to the rugged
Duke, both on and off screen. She was proud when he remarked in an interview
that he preferred to work with men – “except for Maureen O’Hara; she’s a
great guy.”
“We
met through Ford, and we hit it right off,” she remarked in 1991. “I
adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.”
O’Hara’s
other movies with Wayne were “The Wings of Eagles” (1957),
“McClintock!” (1963) and “Big Jake” (1971). After her
studio contracts ended, she remained busy. She played the mother of twins, both
played by Hayley Mills, who conspire to reunite their divorced parents in the
1961 Disney comedy “The Parent Trap.” She was also in “Spencer’s
Mountain” with Henry Fonda (1963), a precursor to TV’s “The
Waltons”; and a Western, “The Rare Breed,” with James Stewart
(1966). In
1968, she married her third husband, Brig. Gen. Charles Blair. After “Big
Jake,” she quit movies to live with him in the Virgin Islands, where he
operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978.
“Being
married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me,
was enough for any woman,” she said in a 1995 Associated Press interview.
“It was the best time of my life.”
She
returned to movies in 1991 for a role that writer-director Chris Columbus had
written especially for her, as John Candy’s feisty mother in a sentimental
drama, “Only the Lonely.” It was not a box-office success.
Over
the following decade, she did three TV movies: “The Christmas Box,”
based on a best-selling book, a perennial holiday attraction; “Cab to
Canada,” a road picture; and “The Last Dance.” While making
“The Christmas Box” in 1995, she admitted that roles for someone her
age (75), were scarce: “The older a man gets, the younger the parts that
he plays. The older a woman gets, you’ve got to find parts that are believable.
Since I’m not a frail character, it’s not that easy.”
Maureen
FitzSimons was born in 1920 near Dublin, Ireland. Her mother was a well-known
opera singer, and her father owned a string of soccer teams. Through her
father, she learned to love sports; through her mother, she and her five
siblings were exposed to the theater.
“My
first ambition was to be the No. 1 actress in the world,” she recalled in
1999. “And when the whole world bowed at my feet, I would retire in glory
and never do anything again.”
Maureen
was admitted to the training program at Dublin’s famed Abbey Theater, where she
was a prize student. When word of the beautiful Irish teen reached London, she
was offered a screen test, and a friend convinced her reluctant parents to
allow it. Maureen considered the test a failure, but it led to a few small
roles in English films. The great actor Charles Laughton, who was producing and
starring in films made in England, saw the test and was intrigued by her
dancing eyes. At 17 she co-starred opposite him in a pirate yarn, “Jamaica
Inn,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton gave her a more manageable
name: O’Hara. With the onslaught of World War II, filmmaking virtually halted
in England. Laughton moved to RKO in Hollywood and starred as Quasimodo in
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” with O’Hara as the beautiful gypsy
girl, Esmeralda.
Her
first husband was director George Hanley Brown, whom she met while making
“Jamaica Inn.” When she moved to Hollywood, he remained in England
and the marriage was annulled. In 1941, she married a tall, handsome director,
Will Price, and they had a daughter, Bronwyn, in 1944. “The marriage was a
terrible mistake, and we divorced in 1952,” she said. She remained
unmarried until the wedding to Blair in 1968. After his death, she continued
living for many years in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, spending summers in
Ireland. More recently, she lived much of the time with a grandson in
Scottsdale, Ariz., though she kept a condo in St. Croix.
O’Hara’s
career was threatened by a manufactured scandal in 1957, when Confidential
magazine claimed she and a lover engaged in “the hottest show in
town” in a back row in Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater. But at the
time, she told AP, “I was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport
to prove it.” She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel trial
and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine eventually
went out of business.
On the
screen, O’Hara always played strong, willful women. In a 1991 interview, she
was asked if she was the same woman she appeared in movies.
“I
do like to get my own way,” she said. “But don’t think I’m not acting
when I’m up there. And don’t think I always get my own way. There have been
crushing disappointments. But when that happens, I say, ‘Find another hill to
climb.'”
She is
survived by her daughter, Bronwyn FitzSimons of Glengarriff, Ireland; her
grandson, Conor FitzSimons of Boise and two great-grandchildren.
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