Maureen O'Hara

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Maureen O'Hara (born Maurice Simons) was an Irish and American actress and singer who died on October 24, 2015.

She was a well-known redhead who was known for portraying a vivacious yet realistic heroine, often in westerns and adventure films.

She worked with producer John Ford and a longtime acquaintance John Wayne on several occasions.

O'Hara was one of Hollywood's last living actors. O'Hara grew up in Dublin, Ireland, and aspired to be an actress from a young age.

She appeared with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of ten and adolescent from the Abbey Theatre.

She was given a screen test, which was deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw the potential and hired her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939.

She moved to Hollywood the following year to star with him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame's production, and RKO Pictures gave her a deal.

She continued on to have a long and lucrative career, earning the nickname "the Queen of Technicolor." She appeared in films including How Green Was My Valley (1941), With John Ford (1942), The Black Swan (1947), The Spanish Main (1947), Monte Carlos (1947), and Comanche Territory (1950). In Rio Grande (1950), O'Hara made her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated.

The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), McLintock (1956). Big Jake (1961) and Big Jake (1971).

Many people wrongly assumed they were married or in a marriage because of her chemistry with Wayne. As she aged, O'Hara found herself in films including The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Rare Breed (1966).

She resigned from the industry in 1971 but returned 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991). O'Hara helped operate her third husband Charles F. Blair, Jr.'s flying business in St Croix, the American Virgin Islands, and published a newspaper, but later moved them to Glengariff, Ireland.

She was married three times and had one child, Bronwyn, with her second husband.

'Tis Herself,' her autobiography, was released in 2004 and became a New York Times Bestseller.

In November 2014, she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the caption "To Maun O'Hara, one of Hollywood's finest actresses, whose uplifting performances glowed with passion, warmth, and tenacity."

Early life and education

O'Hara, a native of Dublin, was born on August 17, 1920, and he lived on Beechwood Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. She said she was "born into the most amazing and eccentric family I had ever wished for." She was the second-eldest of six children of Charles and Marguerite (née Lilburn) FitzSimons (née Lilburn) FitzSimons, and the first red-headed child in the family. Her father worked in clothing and moved to Shamrock Rovers Football Club, a club that O'Hara has supported since childhood.

O'Hara inherited her singing voice from her mother, a former operatic contralto, and a highly respected women's clothier, who in her younger years was widely regarded as one of Ireland's most beautiful women. She said that after her mother died, men would leave their homes in order to get a glimpse of her in the street. Peggy, the eldest and younger Charles, Florrie, Margot, and Jimmy were among O'Hara's siblings. Peggy joined a religious order, becoming a Sister of Charity.

O'Hara's nickname "Baby Elephant" refers to him as a pudgy infant. She loved 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 she begged her father to find a women's team, and she even suggested that Glenmalure Park, Shamrock Rovers F.C.'s home ground, became "like a second home." As a child, she loved fighting and competed in judo. She later confessed to being jealous of boys in their youth and the liberty they enjoyed, as well as the fact that they could obtain apples from orchards and not get into jail.

In Dublin's Liberties City, O'Hara was first registered at the John Street West Girls' School near Thomas Street. She began dancing at the age of 5, when a fortune teller predicted that she would be wealthy and famous, and she'd tell her neighbors that she would "become the world's most popular actress." Her ardent family had embraced the theory. O'Hara'Hara immediately felt the attraction to performing in front of an audience as she read a poem on stage in school at the age of six. She trained in drama, music, and dance with her siblings at Dublin's Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution. O'Hara's infatuation with the arts prompted O'Hara to refer to the family as the "Irish von Trapp family."

After her lessons, O'Hara joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and began working in amateur theatre in the evenings. Robin Hood in a Christmas pantomime was one of her early appearances. At this point, O'Hara's ambition was to be a stage actress. O'Hara's father had reached a height of 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m), and her mother was worried that she'd become "the tallest girl" in Ireland by the age of 12, as Mau'Hara's father was 6 foot 4 inches (1.93 m). When O'Hara's growth was limited by two inches, she expressed relief.

At the age of 14, O'Hara appeared on the Abbey Theatre for the first time. Despite being coached by playwright Lennox Robinson, she found her time in the theater traumatic. She received the first Dramatic Award of the national competition of the performing arts, the Dublin Feis Award, in 1934 for her appearance as Portia in The Merchant of Venice. She began working with Crumlin Laundry before joining Eveready Battery Company, where she served as a typist and bookkeeper. She later put her writing skills to use when she wrote The Quiet Man for John Ford.

She was the youngest student to graduate from Guildhall School of Music at the time in 1936, and the following year she captured the Dawn Beauty Competition, winning £50. O'Hara's matured as a young woman, as well as many actresses, became more self-conscious, which affected her for a long time. O'Hara "sensed there was someone out front watching me, perhaps critically" in one performance, which was watched by her father from the back of the theater. My arms felt as lead. The night after, I put on a rotten show. "I woke up with the horrible feeling that I was laughing at."

Personal life and death

In 1939, O'Hara secretly married George H. Brown, a film designer, production assistant, and occasional scriptwriter who had appeared on the set of Jamaica Inn. They married at St Paul's Church in Station Road, Harrow, on June 13, just days before she left for Hollywood. Brown stayed in England to shoot a film with Paul Robeson. Brown announced that he and O'Hara had kept the affair private and that they would have a complete marriage ceremony in October 1939, but O'Hara never returned. In 1941, the marriage was annulled. On January 25, 1946, O'Hara became a naturalized American citizen.

In December 1941, O'Hara married William Houston Price, who was the dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. On her wedding night, she lost her virginity to Price and immediately regretted it, while wondering to herself, "What the hell have I done now?" O'Hara discovered Price was an alcoholic right away from the honeymoon. Bronwyn Bridget Price, the couple's daughter, was born on June 30, 1944. O'Hara's marriage to Price gradually declined throughout the 1940s due to alcohol use, and she often wanted to file for divorce but felt guilty due to her Catholic convictions. In July 1951, Price learned that the marriage was over and filed for divorce on the grounds of "incompatibility." On their 10th wedding anniversary, Price left the house they shared in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on December 29, 1951.

O'Hara never denied having extramarital affairs, but frequent collaborator Anthony Quinn confessed to falling in love with her on the set of Sinbad the Sailor. He said she was "brought out the Gaelic in him" and that she was "the most understanding woman on this earth" who "brought out the Gaelic in him." Quinn said they had been involved in a prank, adding that "after a while we all got sick of the deceit."

O'Hara was a wealthy Mexican politician and banker from 1953 to 1967. On a trip to Mexico in 1951, she met him at a restaurant. Parra "rescued me from the darkness of an intimate marriage and brought me right back to the bright light of life," O'Hara said. "Leaving him was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do." As her Parra experience progressed, she learned Spanish and even enrolled her daughter in a Mexican academy. In 1953, she moved to Somma Way in Bel Air, where she and Parra were among Mexico City's frequent visitors. She sent a detective to follow Parra in Mexico, finding that he was completely transparent about his ex-wife's friendship and that she could trust him. John Ford adamantly looked Parra, and it had a huge influence on her marriage to Ford in the 1950s as he often interfered in her affairs and mourned the demise of her marriage to Price, who was a devout Catholic like O'Hara. Price continued to bully O'Hara for dating Parra and lodged a lawsuit against her on June 20, 1955, demanding Bronwyn's custody and accusing her of immorality. O'Hara has filed a countersuit, charging him with contempt of court for refusing to pay $50 per month in child care and a $7 a month alimony. When Ford blasted O'Hara and her brother Charles, he said, "if the whore sister of yours can pull herself away from that Mexican long enough to do a little publicity for us," he told Charles.

O'Hara also filed a $5 million lawsuit against Confidential magazine for alleged evidence of pornographic conduct with Parra during a screening of a film at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on July 9, 1957. "Maureen had trouble finding a white silk blouse that had been neatly buttoned," one of the charges was said. Now it wasn't," and she was forced to sit up and play innocent when the usher shone a flashlight at them. O'Hara pleaded guilty by presenting a passport proving that she was in Spain shooting Fire Over Africa at the time. In her autobiography, she claimed that she became the first actress to win a lawsuit against a company tabloid when Confidential was reportedly found guilty of libel and plotting to reveal obscenity.

On March 12, 1968, O'Hara married Charles F. Blair Jr., an 11-year-old woman, for her third husband. Blair, a pioneer of transatlantic aviation, a former chief pilot of Pan Am, a former chief pilot of Pan Am, and the founding and chief of the Virgin Islands airline Antilles Air Boats in the United States, was a pioneer of transatlantic aviation. For the most part, she performed in comedy after her marriage to Blair, O'Hara. In the special features section of the DVD release of The Quiet Man, a tale about O'Hara's resignation was told about being married but not being a good, stay at home housewife, but Blair himself wanted her to avoid acting and assisting with his company. Blair died in 1978 while flying a Grumman Goose for his airline from Saint Croix to St. Thomas, crashing due to an engine failure. O'Hara was elected CEO and president of the airline, with the added distinction of becoming the first female president of a scheduled airline in the United States.

In 1978, O'Hara was diagnosed with uterine cancer, which had to be removed with an operation. During this time, John Wayne's cancer was particularly affecting, and Wayne allegedly sobbed on the phone when she told him that her own cancer had been confirmed. O'Hara was instrumental in Wayne's receiving a special award shortly before his death the following year. "John Wayne is not just an actor," she said. "John Wayne is the United States of America" and he's personally selected the portrait of him to go on. Wayne's death in June 1979 put her into deep depression that took several years to recover.

Blair bought O'Hara, a travel magazine, in 1976, which she began to edit from their home for many years in Saint Croix. She sold it in 1980 to USA Today in order to spend more time with her daughter and grandson Conor (born 1970). She died on the airline business the following year, which included 120 flights a day with a fleet of 27 planes. O'Hara had extensive prior experience in business dating back to the 1940s, when she operated under her name in Tarzana, Los Angeles, specializing in women's clothing. O'Hara spent more time in Glengarriff, Ireland's southwest coast, and organized a golf tournament there in 1984 in her husband's memory. In 1989, a hurricane that devastated her home in Saint Croix. When she was in New York researching the costs of rebuilding, she had six consecutive heart attacks and underwent an angioplasty. After suffering a stroke in 2005, she moved to Glengariff permanently.

O'Hara's family contacted social workers in May 2012 to report that O'Hara, a short-term memory loss, was a victim of elder abuse. After receiving the doctor's permission to fly, O'Hara and her grandson moved to Idaho in September 2012. She suffered from type 2 diabetes and short-term memory loss in her last years.

O'Hara performed in Winterset, Iowa, on May 24th, 2013. The occasion was monumental for the new John Wayne Birthplace Museum, with Iowa Governor Terry Branstad naming 25 May 2013 as "Maureen O'Hara Day" in Iowa. The Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band, who travelled from Chicago for the occasion, was among the participants on the show.

O'Hara died in her sleep at her Boise, Idaho, from natural causes on October 24. She was 95 years old. O'Hara's remains were buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, next to her late husband Charles Blair.

O'Hara, a committed conservative republic, supported the presidential campaigns of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Source

Film career

O'Hara was given her first major role at the Abbey Theatre at the age of 17, but the attention of actor-singer Harry Richman distracted her. Richman arranged a meeting with the hotel's general manager while dining with her family at the hotel. She suggested that she go to Elstree Studios for a screen test and become a film actress. O'Hara and her mother arrived in London a few days later. The studio adorned her with a "gold lamé jacket with flapping sleeves like wings" and heavy makeup with an ornate hair style, which was deemed far from perfect during the screen test. O'Hara reacted angrily at the audition, having to walk in and pick up a phone. "My God, get me right to the Abbey," she recalled saying to herself. Charles Laughton later attended the test and was fascinated, particularly because of her large and expressive eyes, despite overdoned makeup and costume, was intrigued. They arranged to speak with O'Hara through a talent firm run by Connie Chapman and Vere Barker after obtaining his business partner Erich Pommer's permission. During which she said, "I am very sorry but absolutely no" was impressed with O'Hara, especially because of her lack of nerves and refusal to read an extract upon her request, which was not prepared. She was given a seven-year deal with Mayflower Pictures, the company's new company. Despite being shocked that she was given a young job, they accepted, and O'Hara celebrated Ireland before arriving back in London to begin her film career. "I owe my entire career to Mr. Pommer," O'Hara later revealed.

O'Hara made her screen debut in Walter Forde's Kicking the Moon Around (1938), but she did not consider it part of her filmography. Richman had welcomed her to Forde at Elstree Studios, but she was not cast in the film but she decided to give one line in honor of Richman for assisting with her screen test. Laughton arranged for her to appear in My Irish Molly (1938), the only film she directed under her real name, Maupee FitzSimons. Eiléen O'Shea, a woman who saves an orphanage named Molly, is the protagonist in this film. "One could argue that O'Hara never looked as enticing as she does in Little Miss Molly," said biographer Aubrey Malone, even though she isn't 'Maureen O'Hara' not 'Maureen O'Hara' yet." She has no makeup and there is no Hollywood glamour, but she has wore no makeup, and there is no Hollywood glamour, but she does it because? She is rapturously beautiful, not least because she is rapturously beautiful. Her accent is thick, which is perhaps why she didn't talk much about the movie. It also seems that it was made in the 1920s rather than the 1930s, rather than the 1930s, so primitive are the sets and characters." Malone said that although the lot was "woesome," it is a "quaint film" that O'Hara scholars should watch if only to see early evidence of her natural instinct for dramatic timing and scene interpretation."

Mary Yellen in Jamaica Inn (1939), directed by Alfred Hitchcock and co-starring Laughton, was O'Hara's first big film role. At a Cornish tavern, O'Hara depicted the innkeeper's niece, an orphanage who lives with her aunt and uncle, as "torn between her family's love and her admiration for a lawman in disguise." Laughton insisted that her name be changed to "O'Mara" or "O'Hara" in short, but she eventually decided against the latter after showing contempt at both. "I like MauzSimons and I want to keep it," Laughton replied, "You're Maureen O'Hara." (O'Hara) Later this year, O'Hara would say, "nobody will ever get [FitzSimons] straight.) O'Hara said that Laughton had always wanted a daughter of his own and treated her as such, and that Laughton's death in 1962 was similar to losing a parent. She did well under Hitchcock, boasting to have "never felt the strange sense of detachment with Hitchcock that many other actors said to have felt while working with him." On the contrary, Laughton was embroiled in a bitter struggle with Hitchcock throughout the process and resented many of Hitchcock's ideas, including changing the appearance of the villain from the novel. Despite the fact that Jamaica Inn is generally seen by critics and the film itself as one of his poorest films, O'Hara was lauded by one reviewer who said, "the newcomer, Maun O'Hara, is charming to look at and promises as an actor." Seeing the film was an eye opener for O'Hara and a change in self-perception, having always seen herself as a boy and discovering that on film she was a woman of extraordinary beauty to others. She returned to Ireland for a short time after the film was completed, and she was sad that life would never be the same again, and she was angry when she tried to make pleasant chat to some local girls but they refused her advances, considering her to be so rude.

Laughton was so happy with O'Hara's appearance in Jamaica Inn that she was cast opposite him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) for RKO in Hollywood. She and her mother travelled by train to Hollywood, New York, and then back by rail to Hollywood. Lew Wasserman, O'Hara's handler, arranged a pay raise from $80 a week to $700 a week. "People were making a fuss over me before the film was even released," she said as the new RKO's main star. O'Hara portrayed Esmeralda, a gypsy dancer who is arrested and later sentenced to death by the Parisian authorities. At first, director William Dieterle expressed worry that O'Hara was too tall and disliked her wavy hair by insisting that she step under a shower to straighten it out. Filming in the San Fernando Valley began during the summer of its hottest in the country's history. O'Hara referred to it as a "physically demanding shoot" due to the heavy makeup and costume requirements, and she recalls that she gasped at Laughton in makeup as Quasimodo, remarking, "Good God, Charles."

Is that really you?"

O'Hara insisted on doing her own stunts from the start, and no safety nets were used in the scene in which the hangman holds a noose around her neck. The film was a commercial success, grossing $3 million at the box office. O'Hara was generally lauded for her appearance, but some commentators believed that Laughton stole the show. "The comparison between Laughton and O'Hara as the young-faced, tenderly solicitous gypsy girl is Hollywood teaming at its most inspired," one observer wrote.

Following the completion of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, World War II began, and Laughton, realizing that his company couldn't film in London, sold O'Hara's contract to RKO. Later, O'Hara confessed that this "broke my heart," and that "I felt completely abandoned in a strange and faraway place." She was next seen in John Farrow's A Bill of Divorcement (1940), a recreation of George Cukor's 1932 film A bill of Divorcement (1940). In a film in which she felt she had a "screenplay [which] was mediocre at best," O'Hara portrayed Sydney Fairchild, who was played by Katharine Hepburn in the original. Since Farrow reportedly made "suggest remarks" to her and began stalking her at home, it was difficult for him to work; once he realized that O'Hara was not interested in her sexually, he began bullying her on set. One day, O'Hara punched him in the chest, putting an end to the mistreatment. Reviewers blasted O'Hara's performance, with the writer of The New York Sun claiming she "lacked the energy and desperation it must have; nor does she have a spark of humor." She then discovered her role in Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), where she first performed as an aspiring ballerina. She considered it to have been a physically demanding film and felt threatened by Lucille Ball during the production as she had been a former Ziegfeld and Goldwyn girl and was a top dancer. Longs after the film was completed, the two remained close friends for many years.

O'Hara began 1941 by appearing in They Met in Argentina, RKO's response to Down Argentine Way (1940). O'Hara later revealed that she "knew it was going to be a stinker; bad script, poor writer, preposterous plot, and forgettable music." She became more dissatisfied with her work's course at that time. O'Hara had "reached a point of anxiety, where she was about to throw in the towel, to end her deal," Ida Zeitlin wrote, before crumbling against the stone wall of indifference and howl like a baby wolf. She pleaded with her agent for a small part in John Ford's forthcoming film How Green Was My Valley (1941), a film about a close, hardworking Welsh mining family living in the heart of the South Wales Valleys in the 19th century. The film, which received the Academy Award for Best Picture, began an artistic partnership with Ford that would last 20 years and five feature films.

Katarine Hepburn and Gene Tierney were given their leading roles as Angharad, which she was given without a full screen test. It was made possible by a change to her RKO's deal, in which Fox bought the rights to feature O'Hara in a single film each year. O'Hara and his wife Mary were often visiting Ford and his wife Mary in social visits and spending time aboard his yacht Araner, and Ford gave her the nickname "rosebud." Despite this, Ford was a vivacious character with a meager streak, and in one instance she punched O'Hara in the chest for some unknown reason, but she only took it from him because she wanted to tell him she could take a punch like a man. How Green Was My Valley was supposed to be shot in the Rhondda Valley but on a $1.25 million budget, it had to be shot in the San Fernando Valley, which required 150 builders six months to complete.

O'Hara recalled that Ford would allow her to perform extensively during the filming, but that "no one dared step out of line," gave the actors a sense of stability. During the shooting, O'Hara became such good friends with Anna Lee that she later named her daughter Bronwyn after Lee's name. The film was lauded by the critics and was nominated for ten Academy Awards, three of which were named Best Picture. Both O'Hara and co-star Walter Pidgeon, who played the minister, were praised for their performances, with Variety announcing that "Maureen O'Hara, the object of his unrequited love, marries the mine owner's son out of pique."

Joseph McBride, a film critic, thought O'Hara's appearance to have been the most emotionally enthralling he'd seen since Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland (1936). After her character was married, O'Hara said her favorite scene in the film took place outside the church, "I make my way down the steps to the carriage below, the sun grabs my veil, and the stars it out in a perfect circle all the way around my face." It floats straight up above my head and points to the heavens. It's amazing."

When the United States first began World War II in 1941, many of the best actors became involved in the war effort, and O'Hara was struggling to find good co-stars. She claims she began acting in adventure films, which allowed her to expand her acting experience and hold her fame in Hollywood. O'Hara had intended to appear in Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake in early 1942, but she was hospitalized in early 1942, where she had her appendix and two ovarian cysts removed at Reno Hospital. Producer Zanuck scoffed at the venture, feeling it was an excuse for a break. He dismissed it off as "probably a piece left over from an abortion," which greatly offended her as a devout Catholic.

O'Hara appeared in To the Shores of Tripoli, her first Technicolor film and first on-screen collaboration with John Payne in which she played Navy nurse Lieutenant Mary Carter. Despite the fact that the film was a commercial hit and became a "service pictures" of the period, O'Hara later said that she "couldn't understand why his (Bruce Humberstone's) pictures never seemed to match their high box-office receipts." "Nobody in the film seemed to have lived" in Malone's narrator. The character's emotions, as well as their uniforms, seem to be too streamlined."

In Henry Hathaway's Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942), which tells the fictional history of the first class of the United States Military Academy in the early 19th century, O'Hara next played an unconventional socialite who joins the army as a cook. Payne dropped out and was replaced by George Montgomery, who was described as "positively loathsome" in the film. Montgomery wanted to make a pass at her during the film, prolonging his kiss with her after the director had yelled "cut." In Henry King's swashbuckler The Black Swan, O'Hara appeared opposite Tyrone Power, Laird Cregar, and Anthony Quinn later that year. "everything you could want in a lavish pirate picture" was O'Hara's word: a majestic ship with thundering cannons; a hero braving menacing villains... sword fights; magnificent costumes." She found it enthralling to work with Power, who is known for his "wicked sense of humor." O'Hara became very worried about one scene in which she is thrown overboard in her underwear by Power, and sent a warning letter back to Ireland in advance. In one scene that culminated in screen changes to make it seem as if it were a dinner ring, she refused to take her wedding ring off in a single scene. Though critics applauded the film and was considered one of the period's most entertaining adventure films, the New York Times' critic found that O'Hara's character lacks depth, noting that "Maureen O'Hara is brunette and stunning," implying that "all the role requires."

In the 1943 war movie Immortal Sergeant, O'Hara played Henry Fonda's love interest. Fonda was taking his service entry exams at the time and had his head in books between takes, according to O'Hara, who claimed that 20th Century Fox publicized one of the last love scenes between them in the film as Fonda's last screen kiss before entering the war. In Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine for RKO, she then played a European school teacher opposite George Sanders and Charles Laughton in their final film together. O'Hara is shown teary-eyed on screen for a long time after being involved in a court case in the film during a touching address by Laughton. Malone thought her performance was good, both weeping and eliciting, but Renoir may have overdoned the film and stunned the audience as a result.

Later, she appeared in Richard Wallace's The Fallen Sparrow opposite John Garfield, who was described as "my shortest leading man, an outspoken Communist, and a real sweetheart." Despite the fact that they were doing well, Garfield did not regard her as an actress. "Asking to her growing fame in film, O'Hara's career, he considers This Land is Mine and The Fallen Sparrow as two key images in her career," helping her "step away from the gimcrack melodrama of adventure films."

Despite the fact that O'Hara was once known as "Queen of Technicolor" (as Rhonda Fleming), she confessed to dislike the process because it needed special cameras and strong light that burned her eyes and gave her a klieg eye. She claimed that the word negatively affected her career, rather than a well-rounded actress. In William A. Wellman's biographical western Buffalo Bill in 1944, O'Hara was cast opposite Joel McCrea. Despite that O'Hara did not believe McCrea was strong enough for the part of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, and while Malone gave her "little to do," it did well at the box office. Variety, contrary to O'Hara's review, was largely supportive of the film, describing it as a "super-western and often a tear-jerker" and that McCrea was convincing in the role and that O'Hara's own performance was "satisfactory."

O'Hara appeared in The Spanish Main in 1945 as feisty noblewoman Contessa Francesca, the daughter of a Mexican viceroy's niece. O'Hara called it "one of my more decorative roles" because her character is a more obnoxious one among the men on board, and her face is smothered in chimney soot during the film. When another actress falsely told RKO executive Joe Nolan that she was "as big as a horse" after giving birth to a daughter in 1944, O'Hara almost didn't win the role. Around this time, a "real actor" named Kathryn" wrongfully accused O'Hara of making sexual advances in an elevator, which she believes was a way for the actress to stand out at the start of her career. During the making of The Spanish Main, John Ford, who had initially turned down for being shabbily dressed, was later admitted. He told her about the 1952 project that would become The Quiet Man (1952). In RKO's first film in the three-color Technicolor process, O'Hara states that she "shows her resolve not to leave her sexuality at the birthing stool," claiming she looks "deliciously fragrant in the splashy histrionics on display here."

In Walter Lang's Sentimental Journey, she played an actor with a fatal heart disease in the same year. "O'Hara's" was a commercially lucrative venture, reducing my agents and the hardest brass at Fox to mush when they saw it." Critics were critical of the film, and Harvard later named it as the worst film of all time. One critic slammed O'Hara as "just another one of those rare Hollywood juvenile products that in workday life would profit from a good concealment," while Bosley Crowther dismissed it as a "compound of hackneyed events, maudlin dialogue, and preposterously bad acting." O'Hara's musical Do You Love Me portrayed a prim, bespectacled music school dean who transforms herself into a fashionable, sophisticated lady in the big city. "One of the worst pictures I've ever made," she said. It was frustrating to her that she could not put her talents to good use, and that she did not even participate in it.

In The Razor's Edge (1946), which followed Tierney, John Wayne's film Tycoon (1947), and Bob Hope's The Paleface (1947), which went to Jane Russell, O'Hara was offered roles. She resigned from The Paleface because she was going through a difficult personal period and "didn't think I would be able to laugh every day and have fun." She later regretted turning it down and admitted that she'd made a "terrible mistake." In the adventure film Sinbad the Sailor, O'Hara starred opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in 1947. O'Hara leads Sinbad to find Alexander the Great's hidden treasure. She found the situation to be "ridiculous," but it became a "pot of money for RKO," as RKO's "pot of money" was spent, but that "action-adventures almost always did"," he said. "O'Hara looks stunning and she gets to wear some of her best costumes of her career" — a different one in virtually every scene — but her conversations are eerily empty. In early scenes, she shows promise that she'll be more than window dressing," but the film "completely lacks drama." According to The New York Times, O'Hara overt costume changes made watching her a "exhausting" experience.

After being cast as Cornel Wilde's love interest in Humberstone's The Homestretch (1947), O'Hara became dissatisfied with Hollywood and took a long break to return to Ireland, where most suspect she didn't look well, having shed a lot of weight. Doris Walker, the mother of Susan Walker (played by a young Natalie Wood) in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), she received a call from 20th Century Fox to play her character. On NBC, it became a perennial Christmas tradition, with a classic network television show on NBC airing every Thanksgiving Day. "I have been mother to almost forty children in films, but I have always had a special place in my heart for little Natalie," O'Hara said. I always called Mamma Mauma Mauma Mauma and I called her Natasha... we always wanted to do the scenes in Macy's at night because the store was packed with people doing their Christmas shopping at night. Natalie loved this because it meant she was allowed to stay up late. I loved this period with Natalie. We loved to stroll through the bookstore and take a look at all the toys and girls' clothing and shoes. "I cries horribly" on the day she died. The film received several accolades, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

In O'Hara's last film of 1947, she appeared as a Creole woman opposite Rex Harrison in John M. Stahl's The Foxes of Harrow; the film was set in New Orleans during pre-Civil War New Orleans. O'Hara had been "angling" to appear in Forever Amber (1947), Fox's biggest historical romance at the time, but believes that due to a contractual misunderstanding, neither of her joint contract owners, Fox and RKO, would allow her to appear in a "major actor car" at the time. "Understandably disliked each other from the outset," O'Hara and Harrison found him to be "rude, vulgar, and selfish." Harrison had hoped she disliked him simply because he was British. He reportedly clumsied in her face during dance routines and accused her of anti-Semitism, despite being married to a Jewish woman (Lilli Palmer) at the time, which she vehemently denied. Variety, acknowledging the length, believes that O'Hara and Harrison brought off their dramatic scenes with "surprising skill." In the commercially hit comedy film Sitting Pretty, O'Hara starred opposite Robert Young for a year. The New York Times praised O'Hara and Young as husband and wife, adding that they were "incredibly clever" in their portrayal of "elaborate indignation, alternating with good-natured skepticism.

O'Hara portrayed herself in 1949 as a "unsatisfied talent manager who shoots her star client in a rage" opposite Melvyn Douglas in A Woman's Secret. She only agreed to work in the company to fulfill RKO's one-picture-a-year contractual responsibilities. It was a box office flop that was not well-received critically at the time—director Nicholas Ray himself was dissatisfied with it. In the Victorian melodrama The Forbidden Street, which was shot at Shepperton Studios in London, she appeared as a wealthy widow who falls in love with an alcoholic artist (Dana Andrews). O'Hara thought that her appearance was weak and that she confessed that she did not have her heart set on the film. After the poorly received comedy Father Was a Fullback, which Picturegoer magazine described as a "unsatisfie blend of Freud and football," she starred in her first film with Universal Pictures, Bagdad, portraying Princess Marjan. The film was shot on location in Lone Pine, California, in the Alabama Hills. O'Hara said that the film earned a significant amount of money for Universal, and that its success resulted in Universal's acquisition of her RKO contract. Malone wrote that she sings, dances, fights, and loves in a tale of derring-do that ticks all the right boxes for an opulent history lesson, adding that "when it came to dexterity in action, O'Hara was a nonpareil."

O'Hara played an unusual role in the 1950 Technicolor Western, Comanche Territory, as Katie Howards, a fiery saloon owner who dresses, acts, and fights like a man with hair tied back. During the recording, she "mastered the American bullwhip" in a way that Crowther described as "more significant than a setting sun" in that she "tackles her role with such zeal that the remainder of the cast, including the Indians, are effectively subpoenaed." She got her first billing over co-star Macdonald Carey. In Tripoli, O'Hara's second husband, William Houston Price, starred O'Hara as Countess D'Arneau opposite John Payne. In the Western Rio Grande, John Ford's last installment of his cavalry trilogy, she was next cast. It was the first of five films made by John Wayne in over 22 years, including The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), McLintock! (1963), and Big Jake (1971), the first three of which were directed by Ford. "Working with John Wayne was pleasurable for me right from our very first scenes together." Wayne's chemistry was so strong that many people assumed they were married, and newspapers occasionally published sensational stories about people claiming to be their love child. Tanya, a Tunisian princess, was cast in the swashbuckler film Flame of Araby (1951), and she received a call from Universal Pictures in April 1951. O'Hara "despised" the film and all that it stood for, but she had no choice but to make it or be suspended, but she had no choice but to make it or be suspended. By this time, she was growing sick of the positions she was given and wanted to do ones that were more nuanced than those she had encountered thus far.

Claire O'Hara appeared in At Sword's Point in 1952, when she appeared as "new Mau'Hara" on At Sword's Point. The film had been made in 1949 but was not released until 1952. Under Belgian-born fencing master Fred Cavens, the job was the most physically demanding of her career, doing her own stunts and training in the art of fencing for six weeks. Howard Hughes, the director, and she looted director Lewis Allen, whom she thought was "cold as ice." The critic of The New York Times applauded O'Hara's swordsmanship in the film, noting that she was "snarling like a Fury" and impales her opponents as if she were threading a needle. In Lewis Milestone's drama Kangaroo (1952), set during the 1900 drought, O'Hara next played an Irish immigrant Australian-based cowgirl, Dell McGuire. Kangaroo is best known for shooting on location in Australia, mainly in the desert near Port Augusta. Although O'Hara resents the production, she found the Australians extremely welcoming. The Australian government offered a plot of land during the production to own permanently, but she turned it down for political reasons, only to find that major oil reserves were on the property.

In Ford's romantic comedy drama, The Quiet Man, O'Hara starred opposite John Wayne once more in 1952. O'Hara said the film was shot on location in Cong, County Mayo, Ireland. She described it as her "personal favorite of all the pictures I've made." It's the one I'm most proud of, and I'm always protective of it. I adored Mary Kate Danaher. I loved the heat and fire in her. Malone claims that she never appeared in an interview without revealing this information. During the manufacture and constant ribbing, O'Hara was dissatisfied with Ford's harsh treatment of Wayne. Though Ford generally treated her well, on one occasion when filming a cart scene in which the wind in her eyes made it impossible to see, Ford yelled "Open your damn eyes" and O'Hara flipped, asking, "What will a bald-headed boy of a bitch like you know about hair lashing across his eyeballs?"

The Quiet Man was both a critical and commercial success in its first year of release, grossing $3.8 million domestically against a $1.75 million budget. O'Hara was described by film critic James Berardinelli as "the ultimate match for Wayne" and that "he never threatens him to steal a scene without a fight" and that "sometimes she snatches one away from him on her own," while film critic and sports writer Danny Peary praised their chemistry, "demonstrating love, vulnerability, and tenderness." According to Harry Carey Jr., who said that O'Hara had a keen gaze with Wayne in all of the films they made together, director Ford was dissatisfied with the film's romantic scenes and did not shoot the scene until the last day. The film had been nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but O'Hara was furious that she was not nominated for an award. Martin Scorsese, a film director, called The Quiet Man "one of the best films of all time," and in 1996, it ranked among the Irish Times' best films.

Errol Flynn, the actor's last film appearance, was against All Flags. During the production, O'Hara, who knew Flynn's fame as a womanizer, was on alert. Flynn's alcoholism was a problem, and she was "impressed by him personally" and thought "the producer forbids alcohol on the set, Errol would inject oranges with booze and eat them during breaks." According to Steve Jacques, O'Hara outdid Flynn in the combat scenes, several of which had to be cut from the final version to shield Flynn's heroic image. The film was a commercially lucrative venture.

She appeared in The Redhead from Wyoming, which she described as "another western stinkeroo for Universal," and appeared in another western with Jeff Chandler, War Arrow. "Jeff was a true sweetheart, but being around him was like playing with a broomstick," O'Hara said.

In 1954, O'Hara appeared in Malaga, also known as Fire over Africa, which was shot on location in Spain. O'Hara portrayed a Mata Hari-like agent who is trying to locate the ringleader of a smuggling ring in Tangiers. With frequent verbal sparring, Malone compares O'Hara and Macdonald Carey's film as agent Van Logan to that of Bogart and Bacall. "Maureen O'Hara is very handsome in Technicolor, but her expressions are limited—primarily to indignation at killing smugglers or removing knives from dying males," the Monthly Film Bulletin stated.

O'Hara took her fourth picture with Ford, The Long Gray Line, in 1955, which she characterized as "by far the most difficult" due to her deteriorating relations with John Ford. John Wayne had intended to co-star, but O'Hara recommended Tyrone Power in lieu of him due to a juggling schedule. O'Hara and Power's Irish accents are overdoned, according to Malone, who says there is no hint of a Donegal accent in it. "Well, did Herself have a good shit this morning?" the film director said at the lowest point in O'Hara's friendship with Ford, and each day he would greet her. If she was in a good mood, he would ask the crew if she was in a good mood, and if not, he would say "then we're going to have a bad day" and vice versa. He would compel her to "move her fat Irish assassination." When O'Hara reportedly saw him kissing an actor on camera, they became more intimate; Ford knew she was a closeted homosexual. O'Hara's Magnificent Matador depicted a spoilt, wealthy American who falls in love with a brooding, agony, about-to-retire matador (Anthony Quinn) in Mexico. For O'Hara's part of Karen Harrison, Ava Gardner, who was dating a bullfighter in real life, Luis Miguel Domingun, and Lana Turner were considered. The critics had sluggishly condemned the film. Lady Godiva of Coventry, one of her best-known roles, appeared in Lady Godiva of Coventry later this year. O'Hara was not nude in the film, wearing a "full body leotard and underwear that was obscured by my long hairs," according to Universal.

With Harry Cohn, the producer of Columbia Pictures, O'Hara negotiated a new five-picture deal in December 1955, costing him $85,000 per picture.

She appeared in the Portuguese-set melodramatic mystery film Lisbon for Republic Pictures for the following year. "Bette Davis was right," she said of her character for the first time in her career, and she laughed because bitches are amusing to play. She is caught in a love triangle with Ray Milland and Claude Rains, who, according to Malone, attempted to "outsuade each other" during the whole film. She produced Everything But the Truth for Universal later this year, at a time in her career where she was attempting to distance herself from adventure films. O'Hara's opinion was so bad that neither she nor her family saw it, although she loved working with John Forsythe.

O'Hara's 1957. With The Wings of Eagles, she brought an old friend of Ford's Frank "Spig" Wead, a naval aviator who became a screenwriter in Hollywood, came to an end. "Wayne and O'Hara interacted well in these early scenes, giving effortless performances and displaying a strong chemistry." In little nuances between them, one can imagine the offscreen relationship. Although not a big corporate success, it did a good job in the eyes of the critics. O'Hara's relationship with Ford grew increasingly bitter, and he referred to her as a "greet bitch" to director Joseph McBride, who had expressed an interest in seeing her in The Rising of the Moon. O'Hara later described him as a "instant killer" who would say the opposite of what he felt and said of his resentment: "He wanted to be born in Ireland and he wanted to be an Irish rebel." The fact that he didn't leave him angry was disappointing."

Despite the fact that O'Hara was deliberately moving away from adventure films, an ongoing court trial against Confidential magazine in 1957 and 1958, and an operation for a missing disk, which required her to wear a full body brace for four months, effectively banging out any more action films for her. She took lessons in singing to improve her skills during this time away from television. O'Hara had a soprano voice and described singing as her first love, which she was able to access through television. She appeared on musical variety shows with Perry Como, Andy Williams, Betty Grable, and Tennessee Ernie Ford in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1960, O'Hara appeared in the musical Christine, which ran for 12 performances on Broadway. It was a difficult film, and director Jerome Chodorov was so dissatisfie with it that he demanded that his name be deleted from the credits. She found her Broadway experience to be a "major disappointment" and returned to Hollywood. Love Letters from Maureen O'Hara and Maurice Sings is one of her Favorite Irish Songs of the year. Given that Hollywood would not allow her to appear in a musical, Love Letters from Maureen O'Hara, a modest success, would be viewed as an act of revenge.

In the commercially lucrative Our Man in Havana, O'Hara returned to film in 1959, portraying as a secretary who is sent from London to Havana to help a British undercover agent (Alec Guinness). O'Hara replaced Lauren Bacall in the role because she was too occupied with other commitments. Despite the fact that the film was critically acclaimed, Crowther of The New York Times found that O'Hara and the daughter's characters may have been made "more funny and spirited than they are." O'Hara appeared in Mrs. Miniver, a CBS television film, but most believed the remake was ill-timed and that she could not top Greer Garson's appearance in the 1942 Oscar-winning film.

In 1961, O'Hara portrayed Kit Tilden in Sam Peckinpah's debut film The Deadly Companions. She plays a role in which women are vulnerable to rape and violence as the powerful, tough redhead. The plan calls for her and her teenage son to bury her young son next to his father in the desert together with an ex-Sergeant (Keith). Malone characterized her character in the film as "completely underdeveloped." Although O'Hara acknowledged that Peckinpah later "achieved celebrity as a great king of westerns," she said he was "just awful" and "one of the strangest and most annoying individuals she had ever worked with" and that she was "one of the most irritating people I had ever encountered." She appeared in The Parent Trap, one of her most well-known films, later in the year, opposite a young Hayley Mills. O'Hara praises Mills for the film's success, saying, "she really did bring two different girls to life in the film" and that "Sharon and Susan were so convincing that I'd often forget myself and search for the other one when Hayley and I were standing around the set." Malone claims that this was the film in which she "went from comely maiden to fashionable mother," one of her career's best critical accolades. O'Hara was then embroiled in a court fight with Walt Disney over billing for the film, which was backed by the Screen Actors Guild. She never worked for Disney again.

O'Hara starred in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation about a family holiday in a delapidated house on the beach for the next year. Peggy, Hobbs' token wife (Stewart), is a female protagonist with a strong family focus and talkative demeanor. Though O'Hara and Stewart became close friends, she confessed that she was not content with the on-screen dynamic, noting that "every scene revolves around Jimmy Stewart." I was never allowed to act out a single scene in the film. He was a brilliant performer but not a generous one. O'Hara felt that her career had been given a new lease on life following the success of The Parent Trap and Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. After 20 years to appear in Spencer's Mountain (1963), closely based on Earl Hamner Jr.'s novel. The film was shot on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the classic 1953 western Shane was shot. Olivia Spencer, Fonda's devout Christian wife who appears in Fonda's atheist role, performs a hymn at an outdoor funeral. Despite Malone's praise for her "commendable work," he feels she lacked chemistry with Fonda and acknowledges that the film came at a difficult time in his life, with the breakdown of his third marriage. At the time, the critics were unpopular, but the box office fared well. McLaglen's Technicolor comedic western, McLintock, starred Joan Wayne in 1963. In the film, O'Hara performed several of her own stunts, including one scene in which she fell backwards from a ladder into a trough.

O'Hara and Rossano Brazzi went to Italy in late 1964 to shoot The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965) with Rossano Brazzi. O'Hara portrayed a British woman who gave up her diplomat husband in England for an Italian pianist (Brazzi). She had a high hopes for the film but soon learned that Brazzi had been miscast. She was so dissatisfied with the finished film, which was a box office flop, that she cried. In the comedic western, The Rare Breed, O'Hara took her last picture with James Stewart the following year. Malone based her performance on Julie Andrews' "adopting a schoolmarmish voice and demeanor that would not be appropriate" and coming out with sarcastic remarks such as "cleanliness is next to godliness."

How Do I Love Thee, 1969, O'Hara appeared opposite Jackie Gleason. O'Hara was injured while filming in the summer of 1969 when he tripped on a Cyclone wire fence, putting her hand on the ground, but not sure what was missing on it. The injury was later discovered during orthopedic surgery, which required orthopedic surgery to fix it. Despite being a good match with Gleason, O'Hara remarked that it was a "terrible film." The script was bad, and the producer couldn't fix it." The film was poorly received critically by the Guardian, with The Guardian naming it "the most mawkish film of the year/decade/era." She shot on location in Durango, Mexico, in October of that year. She made her last film with Wayne in Big Jake (1971). O'Hara was played by director Budd Boetticher as he felt that she and Wayne had chemistry that was "head and shoulders" over those of other leading actresses at the time. O'Hara, Big Jake's son, has left the industry after retiring from the industry. She professed to be strongly disapproving of Hollywood's "creating dirty pictures" in 1972 and said she did not want to be involved in it. She was invited to address John Ford at the Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, but this was the last time she saw him before his death on August 31, 1973.

After a 20-year absence from film, O'Hara returned to the screen in 1991 to star opposite John Candy in the romantic comedy comedy Only the Lonely. Rose Muldoon was the domineering Irish mother of a Chicago cop (Candy), who has an indifference to Sicilians. The film brought her and Anthony Quinn, who plays her brief love interest, Nick the Greek. O'Hara wrote of her return: "Twenty years is a long time, but it was surprising how little has changed." The equipment is now lighter, and they work a little faster, but I don't seem to have been away." Candy was dubbed "one of my all-time favorite leading men" by her, but she was taken aback by his ability that she referred to as a "comedic genius" but also an actor with an extraordinary dramatic talent" who reminisces her of Charles Laughton. She continued to work in the years after being cast in several made-for-TV films, including The Christmas Box, Cab for Canada, and The Last Dance, the latter her last film in which she starred a retired teacher in the aftermath of a heart attack that was released on television in 2000.

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