Born to Charles Stewart Parnell FitzSimons (a Catholic) and Marguerite Lilburn (a Protestant) in Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland not long before partition, the famously red-headed beauty was noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne.
Her father was part owner of Ireland's leading football club the Shamrock Rovers.
Maureen was the second of six children. Her siblings were Mary Margaret (Peggy), the oldest, and younger Charles, Florrie, Margot, and James. Peggy dedicated her life to a religious order, the Irish Sisters of Charity.
Charles B. FitzSimons (b. 8 May 1924 in Ranelagh, County Dublin - d. 14 February 2001 in Los Angeles, California from liver failure, aged 76) was an actor in Ireland before immigrating to the USA. He became a Hollywood film actor and later a supervising production executive before becoming a producer himself. He also served as Executive Director of the Producers Guild for almost 20 years (1981-1999).
She was fluent in Irish and used this in her films The Long Gray Line, The Quiet Man and Only the Lonely.
Beginnings
Maureen loved playing rough athletic games as a child and excelled in sports. She combined this interest with an equally natural gift for performing. She came from a theatrical family and was accepted at the age of 14 to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin (Ireland's National Theatre). She attended the Ena Mary Burke School of Elocution and was an honor student at the London School of Music. At her father's insistence, Maureen also studied secretarial and bookkeeping courses, and she has used these considerable skills throughout her life.
At the age of 18, she was briefly married to George Hanley Brown, who would become the father of British journalist Tina Brown. The marriage was annulled on September 15, 1941. On December 29, 1941 she married an Englishman, William "Will" Price, who fathered her only child, Bronwyn Brigid Price, born June 30, 1944. Bronwyn later appeared in the film Spencer's Mountain. Will Price served during World War II, making Maureen a war wife. The marriage to Price, however, ultimately ended in divorce on August 11, 1953 due to his alcoholism and physical abuse of his wife.
In 1939, she was offered a screen test in London. Initially reluctant, she was persuaded to attend. Famed actor Charles Laughton attended the screen test. She performed poorly in the test and returned to Ireland. However, Charles Laughton believed she had "something." Laughton looked at the test again, and while he thought it was awful, he couldn't forget her eyes. He told his business partner Erich Pommer he was signing her and sent him the test film. When Pommer saw the film, he was furious as he believed it was a poor choice. However, Pommer came around when he too found he couldn't forget her eyes. As a result, she was offered an initial seven-year contract. Laughton and Pommer changed her name to "Maureen O'Hara" - a better fit for a marquee. Her first major film was Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939).
Also in 1939, she and Laughton went to the U.S. to appear in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This film contains one of her most famous roles, playing Esmeralda alongside Laughton's Quasimodo.
In 1941, O'Hara gave a haunting performance as the Welsh daughter of a mining family in the drama How Green Was My Valley, which marked her first collaboration with legendary director John Ford. The film triumphed at the Oscars, winning top honors in five categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.
While fulfilling contract commitments with both RKO Studios and 20th Century-Fox, O'Hara was billed alongside Hollywood's leading men in a slew of swashbuckling features. Among the most notable were 1942's The Black Swan (with Tyrone Power), 1947's Sinbad the Sailor (with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) and 1949's Bagdad (with Vincent Price). In between action films, O'Hara was assigned a role in the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street, in which she played a single working mother whose strong rational beliefs are challenged by Santa Claus.
During the 1940s and 1950s, O'Hara was repeatedly cast as the heroine in elaborate Technicolor features. Her strong-willed characters, which were complimented by her fiery red hair, green eyes, and peaches and cream complexion, earned her the nicknames "The Queen of Technicolor" and "The Pirate Queen of the Screen." O'Hara gave saucy performances in adventures like Buffalo Bill (1944), The Spanish Main (1945), The Flame of Araby (1951), and The Redhead From Wyoming (1952).
In 1950, O'Hara entered a new phase of her career when she was cast as John Wayne's estranged wife in John Ford's romantic Western Rio Grande. O'Hara shared great screen chemistry with Wayne and served as his leading lady in a succession of films over the next few years. Also under Ford's direction, Wayne and O'Hara starred in the lyrical drama The Quiet Man (1952) and in the critically panned The Wings of Eagles (1957).
O'Hara's mother was an accomplished contralto and she aspired to a singing career. She sang briefly in How Green Was My Valley and again in The Quiet Man. 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. Throughout the 1960s, she was a sought after guest on musical variety shows appearing with Perry Como, Andy Williams, Betty Grable and Ernie Ford. In 1973, she appeared on Tennessee Ernie Ford's Fabulous Fordies TV special.
She was one of the most beloved of Hollywood's Golden Age icons, in the company of such screen luminaries as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and Elizabeth Taylor. Many of her films are considered all-time classics and are traditionally shown on television during the holidays. Once named one of the world's most beautiful women, O'Hara's beautiful face and thick red hair blowing in the wind as she waves from a gate in the Academy Award-winning film How Green Was My Valley will remain one of the most iconic images ever preserved on film.
Marriage, retirement and comeback
Maureen married her third husband, Charles F. Blair, on March 11, 1968. Blair was a pioneer of transatlantic aviation, a former Brigadier General of the U.S. Air Force and a former Senior Pilot at Pan Am. A few years after her marriage to Blair, O'Hara retired from acting. According to O'Hara, one day she was with Blair and John Wayne when she was asked if she didn't think it was time for her to stop working and stay at home. Instead of getting into the argument she thought Blair and Wayne were expecting, she agreed that it was time to stop. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, The Virgin Islander, writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says." Blair later died on September 2, 1978 when the engine of a Grumman Goose he was flying from St. Croix to St. Thomas exploded. Though completely devastated, Maureen, 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, Maureen sold the airline with the permission of the shareholders.
Fortunately for fans, she was coaxed out of retirement several times: once in 1991 to star with John Candy in Only the Lonely and again, in 1995, in a made-for-TV movie, The Christmas Box on CBS. In the spring of 1998, Maureen accepted the second of what would be three projects for Polson Productions and CBS: Cab to Canada (1998) and The Last Dance (2000).
Achievements
For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Maureen O'Hara has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7004 Hollywood Blvd. O'Hara received the Heritage Award by the Ireland-American Fund in 1991. In 1993, she was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was also awarded the Golden Boot Award.
In March 1999, Maureen was selected to be the Grand Marshal of the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade after previously being de-selected because she was a divorcée.
In 2004 Maureen O'Hara released her autobiography 'Tis Herself
, published by Simon and Schuster. In the same year she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Irish Film and Television Academy in her native Dublin, Ireland.O'Hara was named Irish America 's "Irish American of the Year" in 2005, with festivities held at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
In 2006, Maureen O' Hara Blair 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 Blair.
In 2011, O'Hara was formally inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame at an event in New Ross, County Wexford. She was also named president of the Universal Film and Festival Organization (UFFO) which promotes a code of conduct for film festivals and the film industry. In June 2011, she participated at the Maureen O'Hara Film Festival in Glengarriff, County Cork.
In May 2012, O'Hara's family contacted social workers regarding claims that O'Hara, who had short-term memory loss, was a victim of elder abuse. In September 2012, O'Hara flew to the U.S. after receiving doctor's permission to fly. She lived with her grandson, Conor Beau FitzSimons, in Boise, Idaho.
On May 24-25, 2013, O'Hara made a public appearance at the 2013 John Wayne Birthday "Tribute to Maureen O'Hara" celebration in Winterset, Iowa. The occasion was the ground breaking for the new John Wayne Birthplace Museum; the festivities included an official proclamation from Iowa Governor Terry Branstad declaring May 25, 2013, as "Maureen O'Hara Day" in Iowa. The appearance included a performance by the Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band, who traveled from Chicago for the event. About Wayne, O'Hara said; "I was tough. I was tall. I was strong. I didn't take any nonsense from anybody. He was tough, he was tall, he was strong and he didn't take any nonsense from anybody. As a man and a human being, I adored him."
Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Idaho from natural causes on October 24, 2015. She was 95 years old.
Awards
1960 - Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - Motion Picture at 7004 Hollywood Blvd.
1991 - Golden Boot Award
1993 - British Film Institute Awards - Won BFI Fellowship
2002 - Seattle Film Critics Awards - Won Living Treasure Award.
2004 - Irish Film and Television Awards - Won Lifetime Achievement Award.
2011 - CinEuphoria Awards - Won Career - Honorary Award
2015 - Academy Awards - Won Honorary Award
Trivia
Height: 5'8"
Crack typist who typed some of her own scripts/rewrites.
Measurements: 36 1/2 C-25-36 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Did many of her own stunts in her films.
Starred with John Wayne in five movies: Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), McLintock! (1963) and Big Jake (1971). In all five, Wayne and O'Hara played husband and wife, and in all five, they were estranged at least briefly. The first three were directed by John Ford.
Was the first choice to play "Anna" in the film version of The King and I (1956) but Richard Rodgers did not want the role played by a "pirate queen."
Was having lunch with actress Lucille Ball the moment Lucy first saw Cuban musician Desi Arnaz.
She became an American citizen on January 25, 1946 but retained her Irish citizenship. It was the first time in history that the United States government recognized an Irish citizen as Irish. This led to a change in process for all Irish immigrants.
John Wayne and O'Hara remained friends until his death. In her home on St. Croix, she had a wing she called the "John Wayne Wing" because he stayed there when visiting. It was badly damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, some ten years after Wayne's death.
She made headlines in 1997 by claiming that Brian Keith's suicide, while suffering from lung cancer and emphysema and mourning the suicide of his daughter, was an accident.
Quotes
"Speaking as an actress, I wish all actors would be more like Duke Wayne. And speaking as a person, it would be nice if all people could be honest and as genuine as he is. This is a real man."
"To the people throughout the world, John Wayne is not just an actor, and a very fine actor, John Wayne is the United States of America."
On John Wayne: "He was a wonderful man, a wonderful person. With us, it wasn't a man and a woman - it was two friends. He knew a lot of my secrets which nobody ever knew and nobody ever will. He might be telling the Good Lord but he's not going to tell anyone else."
Elsa Lanchester on Maureen: "She looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth-or anywhere else."
"She is like the emerald shower which succeeds the initial explosion of a skyrocket." --Film Critic Bosley Crowther about Maureen O'Hara.
Maureen O'Hara on the Radio
"How Green Was My Valley" on Lux Radio Theatre: September 21, 1942 - Walter Pidgeon, Donald Crisp, Maureen O'Hara, Roddy McDowall, Sara Allgood
"Heaven Can Wait" on Lux Radio Theatre: October 11, 1943 - Maureen O'Hara, Don Ameche
"The Fallen Sparrow" on Lux Radio Theatre: February 14, 1944 - Robert Young, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak
"Fallen Angel" on Lux Radio Theatre: June 17, 1946 - Maureen O'Hara, Linda Darnell, Mark Stevens
"Do You Love Me?" on Lux Radio Theatre: December 23, 1946 - Maureen O'Hara, Dick Haymes, Barry Sullivan
"Miracle on 34th Street" on Lux Radio Theatre: December 22, 1947 - Maureen O'Hara, Edmund Gwenn, John Payne, Natalie Wood
"The Foxes of Harrow" on Lux Radio Theatre: December 6, 1948 - Maureen O'Hara, John Hodiak
"Miracle on 34th Street" on Lux Radio Theatre: December 20, 1948 - Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn
"Slattery's Hurricane" on Lux Radio Theatre: March 6, 1950 - Maureen O'Hara, Richard Conte, Veronica Lake, William Conrad
"Father Was a Fullback" on Lux Radio Theatre: March 20, 1950 - Paul Douglas, Maureen O'Hara, Betty Lynn
"Together Again" on Lux Radio Theatre: May 10, 1955 - Maureen O'Hara
No comments:
Post a Comment