The Irish Queen of Hollywood who did it her way
Maureen O’Hara, Ireland’s first Hollywood superstar, was years ahead of her time, refusing to kowtow to the studios, taking on the tabloids and championing women’s rights, says film-maker
HER most famous film was The Quiet Man, but Maureen O’Hara was anything but quiet. She was a feisty, colourful, energetic, talented, no-nonsense woman who mesmerised Hollywood and made her own rules.
I have always been a huge fan of Maureen and as a teenager on a visit to Glengarriff in Cork, I happened to be in a pub when in she walked. She was with a group of American friends and the barman told me not to bother her. However, I could not resist the opportunity to say hello and tell her how big a fan I was.
I approached her, and told her how much I admired her work. She was incredulous that a young lad would know anything about her —at that stage she was around 70 — so I sat down and began to discuss her movies and career.
We ended up talking for three hours and it was an amazing experience. She was enthralling and that meeting stayed with me for many years. As I found out later, it also remained etched on O’Hara’s memory. This despite the fact that she worked with every star of her day.
She enthralled and enchanted every director and leading actor with whom she ever worked, including some of the most famous actors of all time. John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power… endless stars had their movies stolen from under them by the screen power of O’Hara.
She made over 60 movies in a career that spanned eight decades, including classics such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle On 34 th Street (1947) and Rio Grande (1950), and she received an honorary Oscar in 2014.
But Maureen O’Hara was more than just a brilliant actress. She was also a singer, a businesswoman and a champion of women’s rights. She was the first Irish person to retain Irish citizenship after becoming an American citizen. She was one of the first actresses to bring a libel action against a tabloid, and she was the first to win. She was the first woman to be a president and CEO of a scheduled airline in the US. And she was the first Irish Hollywood superstar.
She was a survivor in a difficult world where the casting couch prevailed and powerful men made all the decisions. Maureen would not submit to their demands. She was the spiritual leader of the #MeToo movement. If she were alive today, she’d be on the front line, offering incendiary soundbites and kicking the establishment in the behind.
As the 100th anniversary of her birth approaches, what better subject for a documentary than an Irish woman who was ahead of her time and a force to be reckoned with on the world stage?
That was my plan. The first thing I decided to do was get in touch with her family to ask if they would participate. Her grandson Conor FitzSimons is the keeper of the Maureen O’Hara flame. He has worked hard to have her remarkable achievements recognised and to ensure her legacy is maintained. It was important to me to have him in the film.
When I finally got talking to Conor, I mentioned I had met his grandmother when I was a kid and proceeded to tell him the story of the Glengarriff pub.
There was silence on the phone for a moment before he said “You’re that guy!”
He seemed shocked and I couldn’t understand why. Then, he explained. It turned out Maureen had told him about our encounter many times down through the years. He knew every detail as he had listened to her retell the story over and over at dinner parties. Turns out that encounter had amused Maureen as much as it had thrilled me.
So, there we were on the phone 30 years later — and here’s that kid telling Conor about his plans to make a documentary about his grandmother. He was blown away by the sheer serendipity of the situation and agreed to shoot an interview and now I’m right in the middle of making a film about the life and career of one of my heroes over 30 years after I bugged her for an entire evening.
And what a life and career it was. She was born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, one of six children. All of the family were involved in the arts, with the exception of one sister who became a nun. Her brothers had successful careers as character actors in Hollywood, while two sisters worked in the British film industry.
Maureen was greatly influenced by her parents, particularly her father. Charles FitzSimons was in the clothing business, and he had an interest in Shamrock Rovers, leading Maureen to become a lifelong supporter. As a child, she never missed a match and even worked in the grounds as a cleaner. Later, she was instrumental in bringing Shamrock Rovers to Hollywood in 1967, where they participated in a US soccer season.
Maureen was equally obsessed with acting and singing. She had a beautiful singing voice, which she inherited from her mother Marguerite, a former operatic contralto. She joined the Rathmines Theatre Company at the age of 10 and started appearing in amateur productions. She was good and soon managed to get an audition for the Abbey. She landed a part in The Merchant of Venice at only 15 years of age and began to be noticed by the critics. Maureen spent a couple of years at the Abbey before a visiting American actor/singer by the name of Harry Richman saw her and invited her to accompany him to England, where he was headed for a screen test.
Her mother agreed to allow her go on condition that she came too. So Maureen and Marguerite appeared at Elstree Studios, where Maureen shot a disastrous screen test for actor Charles Laughton. He had just established his own production company and was looking for fresh talent. Although the screen test had not gone well and Maureen was determined to return to Ireland, Laughton saw something in her and asked her to read for him again. She refused because she was unprepared, and this attitude impressed Laughton so much that he offered her a seven-year contract.
She immediately appeared in a lowbudget musical called My Irish Molly (1938). Laughton then secured her first leading role, in Jamaica Inn (1939), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton co-starred with her in that movie and insisted she change her surname, as nobody would spell FitzSimons correctly. Maureen fought with him, but eventually conceded and agreed to his suggestion that she change it to O’Hara, and the screen legend was born. Jamaica Inn was not well received by critics, but Maureen was singled out for praise.
When Laughton then offered her the part of Esmeralda in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939), she jumped at the opportunity and never looked back. Just before leaving for Hollywood, she secretly married British producer George H Brown, whom she met on the set of Jamaica Inn. He stayed behind in London; the marriage was annulled the following year.
She travelled to Hollywood with her mother and started working for RKO Pictures on Hunchback. Again, she received amazing reviews. However, Laughton then sold her contract to RKO.
‘She was a lifelong fan of Shamrock Rovers — and as a child she never missed a match’
She felt abandoned as she began making mediocre movies which did not interest her. She was about to give up on Hollywood, break her contract and return to the Abbey when John Ford cast her in How Green Was My Valley (1941) and her career changed forever. It began a long and turbulent relationship with the director that would see her act in five of his movies. Again, she received superb reviews, which encouraged her to stay on in Hollywood. During this period she met and married the director Will Price. He was a chronic alcoholic and their marriage was deeply unhappy, although she did have a daughter, her only child, Bronwyn. Maureen and Price divorced after 10 years.
Nevertheless, her film career began to soar. Throughout the 1940s, she appeared in a string of hit movies and worked with some of the greatest directors and leading men of all time, developing a particularly enduring collaboration with John Wayne. She became renowned for her beauty and fiery temper and was dubbed The Queen of Technicolor, which Maureen hated as she felt it demeaned her acting abilities and focused only on her looks.
Her career continued to go from strength to strength and by 1946, she decided to become a naturalised citizen of the United States. However, there was a problem. After passing through the process, she was asked to forswear her allegiance to Great Britain. She refused with the words: “I am Irish. I will not forswear allegiance to Great Britain because I owe no allegiance to Great Britain. I was born in Dublin, Ireland. I am Irish and my allegiance is to Ireland.”
However, the US government saw it differently and refused her citizenship unless she did as instructed. Maureen refused to comply and took the case before a judge, where she won the right to be recognised as an Irish citizen.
In 1950, Maureen appeared in her first Western with Ford and Wayne, Rio Grande. This began a period where she appeared in a number of Westerns and adventure films. She was a Tunisian princess in Flame Of Araby (1951) and the daughter of the musketeer Athos in At Sword’s Point (1952). That year she returned to Ireland for her most beloved and famous film, The Quiet Man (1952).
She would go on to work with Ford only once more, in The Wings Of Eagles in 1957. That was a difficult year for
Maureen as she took another stand by going up against the tabloids. She had started dating Mexican lawyer Enrique Parra Hernandez, and Confidential magazine — the National Enquirer of its day — ran a sensational story about them. An enraged Maureen sued them for libel. The case was eventually settled out of court, with Maureen vindicated.
As the 1950s wore on, she became increasingly frustrated with the roles she was being offered. She began to concentrate on her singing and released two albums. She also appeared on variety shows and on Broadway, only making occasional movies. She would go on to make one final film with Wayne, in 1971, after which she announced her retirement from the movies, aged 51. It would be 20 years before she made another film.
In 1968, she married for the third time, to the renowned aviator Charles F Blair. They moved to the Virgin Islands, where Blair established an airline. However, he died in a plane crash in 1978 and Maureen took over his role, becoming CEO and president of the airline.
Maureen had bought a holiday home in Glengarriff with Blair and following his death, she began to spend more time there. During the 1980s and 1990s, she was an active member of the charity community and was heavily involved in golf tournaments, fashion shows and her beloved Foynes Flying Boat Museum, which she opened in memory of her husband, who had flown planes into Foynes.
In 1991, director Chris Columbus offered her a leading role in his new comedy Only the Lonely opposite John Candy. She accepted. The movie was a success and it led to more offers. She made some TV movies, and after the appropriately named The Last Dance in 2000, she called it a day and never acted again.
She retired to Glengarriff but as age took its toll, she returned to the States, where she lived with Conor in Boise, Idaho. She passed away in 2015 at the age of 95, one of the last remaining stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Brian Reddin’s documentary on Maureen O’Hara will air on TG4 over Christmas, supported by the BAI. On August 17, the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes will honour Maureen O’Hara’s memory with a special event. There will also be a presentation with models from the Holman Lee Agency showcasing clothing, shoes, hats, and jewellery from the museum’s vast collection of Maureen O’Hara memorabilia — including her Oscar. Live streamed on Facebook. Instagram: @foynesmuseum Twitter: @FoynesMuseum or see www.foynesflyingboatmuseum.com