Maureen O’Hara

Only one man seemed capable of taming her, as we were able to see in The Quiet Man . Because the fact is that the one who faced her the most times -in the movies, of course- was the great John Wayne , of whom Maureen O’Hara was an excellent friend and unconditional admirer throughout her life: “As an actress, I wish that all the actors were like Duke Wayne. And as a person, I would be delighted if all the people could be as honest and genuine as he is. He’s such a man.” Ugh, those words aren’t bad for a guy, and even more so if they’re pronounced by a woman of the stature of Maureen O’Hara. But it is that rarely have we seen film couples on screen with as much chemistry as the one given off by the two lovers of Innisfree.

Maureen FitzSimons was born on August 17, 1920 in Ranelagh, a suburb of Dublin. Her mother, Marguerita, was a gifted alto and her father, Charles, had a business in Dublin and was also part owner of a football team, the Shawrocks Rovers. Maureen was the second of her six children. The girl showed character from her early years, as she liked to appear in the boys’ games and athletic sports, and she also possessed a natural grace for acting. In such a way that she, after participating in radio programs and children’s theater, won an award for acting in the theater and at the age of 14 she was admitted to the prestigious Abbey Theater in Dublin. In 1938, Maureen O’Hara was in her first film, the musical Kicking the Moon Around ., with a small role of secretary. Her importance grew in her next film, My Irish Molly . And after her, her life changed forever. She attended a casting in which the great English actor Charles Laughton was present , and after seeing the young FitzSimons he was materially spellbound. He signed her to participate in the movie Posada Jamaica , directed by Hitchcock. But before shooting, the prosecution witness protagonist changed the actress’s last name, and she went from being Maureen FitzSimons to being Maureen O’Hara.

From that moment on, Maureen O’Hara’s career is located in the United States. Beyond the seas he went to shoot her next film, also with Laughton: Esmeralda, la gypsy (1939). Hollywood was amazed by the beauty of that Irish gypsy and her good roles began to arrive. Maureen was not yet 20 years old. At that time the actress’s love affairs began, since she married for the first time, although the marriage would be annulled two years later. She subsequently remarried, albeit this time to director Will Price .. However, the marriage also failed, and the couple divorced in 1953, with one daughter. Many years later, in 1968, it seems that Maureen O’Hara finally found the man of her life, an army general to whom she was married until her death in 1978.

The 40s and 50s were the most successful decades for Maureen O’Hara and her face became one of the claims for the public. In 1941 she met the other John of her life, the director who would offer her the best roles. In How Green Was My Valley , the actress gave life to the older sister of a family of miners in Wales, in one of those “maternal” roles that John Ford liked so much . Throughout her career, she would work again with the Maine director on five other films, which are undoubtedly among the most prestigious of her filmography. Her roles as her wife, with a strong character and huge heart are unforgettable. There are Rio Grande , Cradle of heroes and Written under the sun, in addition to the aforementioned The Quiet Man . As you can see, three of those films were starring John Wayne. But Maureen O’Hara’s collaborations with Duke weren’t just limited to those directed by Ford. In 1963 she made a memorable pairing with Wayne in the comic western The Great MacLintock and they repeated eight years later in The Big Jack , their last film together. The friendship between Wayne and O’Hara remained alive until the death of the actor, who always had a part of the actress’s house available to welcome him during his visits. He was called The “John Wayne Wing.”

The air of an indomitable woman, with reddish hair and a certain wild impetus, made Maureen O’Hara also ideal to embody the heroines of adventure films with a tendency towards exoticism. She was the “enemy” partner of Tyrone Power in the pirate classic The Black Swan (1942), she was Joel McCrea ‘s partner in The Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1944), she fell in love with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Sinbad the Sailor (1947) . She was a princess in Baghdad (1949) and in The Barbarossa Brothers (1951) and a countess in Tripoli (1950), and fell in love with the gallant Errol Flynn in The Island of the Corsairs(1952), etc But he also had time for more solid dramas, such as the work he did with his “godfather” Laughton in the excellent This Land Is Mine (1943), an American film by the great Jean Renoir . Maureen O’Hara also stood out in the role of her mother in the Christmas One Lives Illusion (1947) and, finally, in the delicious modern Nanny (1948), by Walter Lang . Other good films from the fifties are the bullfighter Santos el Magnifico (1955) and the “Greeneana” Our Man in Havana (1959). In 1961 she returned to the top with the memorable comedy You to Boston and I to California.. But from then on Maureen O’Hara gradually left the cinema, and her last significant role was the one she joined Henry Fonda in The Red Pony (1973) . She later she and she would only intervene sporadically in some television product, until her swan song in the telefilm The Last Dance in the year 2000. Maureen O’Hara lived in retirement for a long time in St. Croix, a small town in the Islands Virgins. She passed away at age 95 in Idaho.