Maureen O'Hara
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| Maureen O'Hara | |
 In the trailer for The Black Swan |
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| Born | Maureen FitzSimons August 17, 1920 Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1938–2000 |
| Spouse(s) | George H. Brown (1939–1941) Will Price (1941–1953) Charles F. Blair (1968–1978) |
Maureen O'Hara (born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920 in Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne.
She is fluent in Irish and used this in her films The Long Gray Line, The Quiet Man, and Only the Lonely.
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[edit] Beginnings
Maureen FitzSimons was born in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh on August 17, 1920.[1] She was the second oldest of six children by Charles Stewart Parnell FitzSimons and Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons. Her father was a Dublin businessman and part owner of Shamrock Rovers football club. Her mother, a former operatic contralto, was a successful womans' clothier. Her siblings were Peggy, the oldest, and younger Charles, Florrie, Margot and Jimmy. Peggy dedicated her life to a religious order, Sisters of Charity, and the younger children all went on to receive training at the Abbey Theater and the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution in Dublin. Maureen's dream at that time was to be an opera singer like her mother. She and Peggy had both been gifted with beautiful soprano voices.
FitzSimons' father was a very practical man and did not entirely support her theatrical aspirations. He insisted she learn a skill so that she would have something to fall back on to earn a living in case her experience in the performing arts was not successful. She enrolled in a business school and became a proficient bookkeeper and typist. Those skills proved helpful many years later when she was able to take and transcribe production notes dictated by John Ford for the screen adaptation of Maurice Walsh's short story "The Quiet Man".
FitzSimons did well in her Abbey training and was given an opportunity for a screen test in London. The studio adorned her in a "gold lamé dress with flapping sleeves like wings"[cite this quote] and heavy make-up with an ornate hair style. Reportedly, her thoughts concerning the incident were, "If this is the movies, I want nothing to do with them!"[cite this quote] The screen test was deemed to be far from satisfactory; however, actor Charles Laughton later saw the test and, despite the overdone makeup and costume, was intrigued, paying particular notice to her large and expressive eyes.
Laughton subsequently asked his business partner Eric Pommer to see the film clip. Pommer agreed with Laughton and O'Hara was offered an initial seven-year contract with their new company Mayflower Pictures. Her first major film was Jamaica Inn by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton was so pleased with O'Hara's performance that he cast her in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was to be filmed at RKO Studios in Hollywood that same year. Hours before boarding the Queen Mary to sail to America, a young man from the studio, George Brown, convinced her to marry him. O'Hara's mother and Laughton found out about it, and she was whisked away from the altar to the boat. The marriage was never consummated and later annulled.
After the successful completion of Hunchback, World War II began, and Laughton, realizing their studio could no longer film in London, sold O'Hara's contract to RKO. That studio cast her in low-budget films until she was rescued by director John Ford, who cast her as Angharad in How Green Was My Valley.
In 1946, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
In addition to her acting skills, O'Hara had a soprano voice and described singing as her first love. Unfortunately, the studio heads never capitalized on her musical talent, as she was already big box office in other genres of film. However, she was able to channel her love of singing through television. In the late '50s and early '60s, she was a guest on musical variety shows with Perry Como, Andy Williams, Betty Grable and Tennessee Ernie Ford. In 1960, she starred on Broadway in the musical Christine and released two successful recordings, Love Letters from Maureen O'Hara and Maureen O'Hara Sings her Favorite Irish Songs. Love Letters from Maureen O'Hara has been released on CD in Japan and is now out of print; Maureen O'Hara Sings Her Favorite Irish Songs has yet to be released on CD.
An icon of Hollywood's Golden Age, at the height of her career O'Hara was considered one of the world's most beautiful women. She is often remembered for her on-screen chemistry with John Wayne. They made five films together: Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, McLintock! and Big Jake. A clip of O'Hara's radiant face as she waves from a gate in John Ford's Academy Award-winning How Green Was My Valley, remains one of the most classic images preserved on film, and is often featured as a clip in montages and promotions.
[edit] Marriage, retirement and comeback
In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married George H. Brown,[2] a film producer, production assistant and occasional scriptwriter whose best known works include the first of Margaret Rutherford's 1960s Miss Marple mysteries, Murder She Said. At the insistence of O'Hara's parents, the marriage was annulled in 1941. Later that year, O'Hara married director Will Price, but the union ended in 1953, reportedly as a result of his alcohol abuse. She married her third husband, Charles F. Blair, Jr., in 1968. Blair was a pioneer of transatlantic aviation, a former Brigadier General of the U.S. Air Force and a former Chief Pilot at Pan Am. A few years after her marriage to Blair, O'Hara for the most part retired from acting. According to O'Hara, one day she was in the company of Blair and John Wayne when she was asked if she thought it was time for her to stop working and stay at home. Instead of getting into the argument Blair and Wayne were expecting, she agreed that it was time to quit. Blair died in 1978 when the engine of a Grumman Goose he was flying from St. Croix to St. Thomas exploded. Though completely devastated, O'Hara, with memories of "ten of the happiest years of her life," soldiered on. She was elected CEO and President of Antilles Airboats with the added distinction of being the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the U.S. Later she sold the airline with the permission of the shareholders.
O'Hara remained retired from acting until 1991, when she starred in the film Only the Lonely. She played Rose Muldoon, the domineering mother of a Chicago cop played by John Candy.
O'Hara provided audio commentary for the DVD releases of The Black Swan, Rio Grande, and The Quiet Man.
[edit] Achievements
O'Hara was named Irish America magazine's "Woman of the Year" in 2005, with festivities held at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
She was given the Heritage Award by the Ireland-American Fund in 1991.
For her contributions to the motion picture industry, O'Hara has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7004 Hollywood Blvd. In 1993, she was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was also awarded the Golden Boot Award.
She wrote the foreword for the cookbook At Home in Ireland. In March 1999, O'Hara was selected to be Grand Marshal of New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade. In 2007, she wrote the foreword for the biography of her dear friend, actress Anna Lee.
In 2004, the actress released her autobiography 'Tis Herself, published by Simon & Schuster. In the same year, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Film and Television Academy in her native Dublin.
In 2006, O'Hara attended the Grand Reopening and Expansion of the Flying Boats Museum in Foynes, Limerick, Ireland, as a patron of the museum. A significant portion of the museum is dedicated to her late husband Charles.
O'Hara donated her late husband's seaplane (Sikorsky VS-44A) "The Queen of the Skies" to the New England Air Museum. The restoration of the plane took 8 years and time was donated by former pilots and mechanics in honour of Charles Blair.
Now officially retired, she divides her time among homes in Glengarriff, County Cork, Ireland, Arizona and the Virgin Islands.
[edit] Siblings
Maureen was one of six children. Her siblings James, Florrie and Charles B. FitzSimons are deceased. Surviving are Sister Margaret Mary, a nun, and Mrs. Margot Edwards.
[edit] Filmography
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1938 | Kicking the Moon Around | Secretary |
| My Irish Molly | Eileen O'Shea | |
| 1939 | Jamaica Inn | Mary Yellen |
| The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Esmeralda | |
| Dance, Girl, Dance | Judy O'Brien | |
| 1941 | They Met in Argentina | Lolita O'Shea |
| How Green Was My Valley | Angharad | |
| 1942 | To the Shores of Tripoli | Mary Carter |
| Ten Gentlemen from West Point | Carolyn Bainbridge | |
| The Black Swan | Lady Margaret Denby | |
| 1943 | Immortal Sergeant | Valentine Lee |
| This Land Is Mine | Louise Martin | |
| The Fallen Sparrow | Toni Donne | |
| 1944 | Buffalo Bill | Louisa Frederici Cody |
| 1945 | The Spanish Main | Contessa Francesca |
| 1946 | Sentimental Journey | Julie Beck / Weatherly |
| Do You Love Me | Katherine "Kitten" Hilliard | |
| 1947 | Sinbad the Sailor | Shireen |
| The Homestretch | Leslie Hale | |
| Miracle on 34th Street | Doris Walker | |
| The Foxes of Harrow | Odalie "Lilli" D'Arceneaux | |
| 1948 | Sitting Pretty | Tacey King |
| 1949 | A Woman's Secret | Marian Washburn |
| The Affairs of Adelaide (U.K. title: Britannia Mews) |
Adelaide "Addie" Culver | |
| Father was a Fullback | Elizabeth Cooper | |
| Bagdad | Princess Marjan | |
| 1950 | Comanche Territory | Katie Howard |
| Tripoli | Countess D'Arneau | |
| Rio Grande | Mrs. Kathleen Yorke | |
| 1951 | Flame of Araby | Princess Tanya |
| 1952 | At Sword's Point | Claire |
| Kangaroo | Dell McGuire | |
| The Quiet Man | Mary Kate Danaher | |
| Against All Flags | Prudence "Spitfire" Stevens | |
| 1953 | The Redhead from Wyoming | Kate Maxwell |
| War Arrow | Elaine Corwin | |
| 1954 | Malaga | Joanna Dana |
| 1955 | The Long Gray Line | Mary O'Donnell |
| The Magnificent Matador | Karen Harrison | |
| Lady Godiva of Coventry | Lady Godiva | |
| 1956 | Lisbon | Sylvia Merrill |
| Everything But the Truth | Joan Madison | |
| 1957 | The Wings of Eagles | Min Wead |
| 1959 | Our Man in Havana | Beatrice Severn |
| 1961 | The Deadly Companions | Kit Tilden |
| The Parent Trap | Margaret "Maggie" McKendrick | |
| 1962 | Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation | Peggy Hobbs |
| 1963 | Spencer's Mountain | Olivia Spencer |
| McLintock! | Katherine Gilhooley McLintock | |
| 1965 | The Battle of the Villa Fiorita | Moira |
| 1966 | The Rare Breed | Martha Price |
| 1970 | How Do I Love Thee? | Elsie Waltz |
| 1971 | Big Jake | Martha McCandles |
| 1991 | Only the Lonely | Rose Muldoon |
| 1994 | A Century of Cinema | Herself |
[edit] Television Work
- Mrs. Miniver (1960)
- The Red Pony (1973)
- The Christmas Box (1995)
- Cab to Canada (1998)
- The Last Dance (2000)
[edit] References
- ^ Flynn, John; Jerry Kelleher (2003). Dublin Journeys in America. High Table Publishing. pp. 148-149. ISBN 0-9544694-1-0. http://www.hi-table.com/dublin.html.
- ^ Vallance, Tom (January 9, 2001). "Obituary: George H. Brown". The Independent. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010109/ai_n9664815. Retrieved on March 27, 2009.
- The Hoops by Paul Doolan and Robert Goggins (ISBN 0-7171-2121-6)
[edit] External links
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