Maureen O'Hara, Star of `The Quiet Man' and `The Parent Trap,' Dies at 95   
       
   Associated Press   
       
   October 24, 2015   
       
   Maureen O'Hara, the flame-haired Irish movie star who appeared in classics   
   ranging from the grim How Green Was My Valley to the uplifting Miracle on 34th   
   Street and bantered unforgettably with John Wayne in several films has died.   
   She was 95.   
       
   O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho, said Johnny Nicoletti,   
   her longtime manager.   
       
   "She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her   
   life listening to music from her favorite movie, The Quiet Man," said a   
   statement from her family.   
       
   "As an actress, Maureen O'Hara brought unyielding strength and sudden   
   sensitivity to every role she played. Her characters were feisty and fearless,   
   just as she was in real life. She was also proudly Irish and spent her entire   
   lifetime sharing her heritage and the wonderful culture of the Emerald Isle   
   with the world," said a family biography.   
       
   O'Hara came to Hollywood to star in the 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame and   
   went on to a long career.   
       
   During her movie heyday, she became known as the Queen of Technicolor because   
   of the camera's love affair with her vivid hair, pale complexion and fiery   
   nature.   
       
   After her start in Hollywood with Hunchback and some minor films at RKO, she   
   was borrowed by 20th Century Fox to play the beautiful young daughter in the   
   1941 saga of a coal-mining family, How Green Was My Valley.   
       
   Maureen O'Hara accepts her Honorary Oscar onstage in 2014, accompanied by   
   presenters Clint Eastwood, center, and Liam Neeson (Photo: Associated Press)   
       
   How Green Was My Valley went on to win five Oscars including best picture and   
   best director for John Ford, beating out Orson Welles and Citizen Kane among   
   others. It was the first of several films she made under the direction of   
   Ford, whose grouchy nature seemed to melt in her presence.   
       
   The popularity of How Green Was My Valley confirmed O'Hara's status as a   
   Hollywood star. RKO and Fox shared her contract, and her most successful films   
   were made at Fox.   
       
   They included Miracle on 34th Street, the classic 1947 Christmas story in   
   which O'Hara was little Natalie Wood's skeptical mother and among those   
   charmed by Edmund Gwenn as a man who believed he was Santa Claus.   
       
   Other films included the costume drama The Foxes of Harrow (Rex Harrison,   
   1947); the comedy Sitting Pretty (Clifton Webb, 1948); and the sports comedy   
   Father Was a Fullback (Fred MacMurray, 1949).   
       
   Often she sailed the high seas in colorful pirate adventures such as The Black   
   Swan with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main with Paul Henreid, Sinbad the Sailor   
   with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Against All Flags with Errol Flynn.   
       
   With Ford's Rio Grande in 1950, O'Hara became Wayne's favorite leading lady.   
   The most successful of their five films was 1952's The Quiet Man, also   
   directed by Ford, in which she matched Wayne blow for blow in a classic   
   donnybrook.   
       
   With her Irish spunk, she could stand up to the rugged Duke, both on and off   
   screen. She was proud when he remarked in an interview that he preferred to   
   work with men - "except for Maureen O'Hara; she's a great guy."   
       
   "We met through Ford, and we hit it right off," she remarked in 1991. "I   
   adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever."   
       
   O'Hara's other movies with Wayne were The Wings of Eagles (1957), McClintock!   
   (1963) and Big Jake (1971).   
       
   After her studio contracts ended, she remained busy. She played the mother of   
   twins, both played by Hayley Mills, who conspire to reunite their divorced   
   parents in the 1961 Disney comedy The Parent Trap.   
       
   She was also in Spencer's Mountain with Henry Fonda (1963), a precursor to   
   TV's The Waltons; and a Western, The Rare Breed, with James Stewart (1966).   
       
   In 1968, she married her third husband, Brig. Gen. Charles Blair. After Big   
   Jake, she quit movies to live with him in the Virgin Islands, where he   
   operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and she took over   
   management of the airline before eventually selling it.   
       
   "Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him,   
   believe me, was enough for any woman," she said in a 1995 Associated Press   
   interview. "It was the best time of my life."   
       
   She returned to movies in 1991 for a role that writer-director Chris Columbus   
   had written especially for her, as John Candy's feisty mother in a sentimental   
   drama, Only the Lonely. It was not a box-office success.   
       
   Over the following decade, she did three TV movies: The Christmas Box,based on   
   a best-selling book, a perennial holiday attraction; Cab to Canada, a road   
   picture; and The Last Dance.   
       
   While making The Christmas Box in 1995, she admitted that roles for someone   
   her age (75) were scarce: "The older a man gets, the younger the parts that he   
   plays. The older a woman gets, you've got to find parts that are believable.   
   Since I'm not a frail character, it's not that easy."   
       
   Maureen FitzSimons (pronounced Fitz-SYM-ons) was born in 1920 near Dublin,   
   Ireland. Her mother was a well-known opera singer, and her father owned a   
   string of soccer teams. Through her father, she learned to love sports;   
   through her mother, she and her five siblings were exposed to the theater.   
       
   "My first ambition was to be the No. 1 actress in the world," she recalled in   
   1999. "And when the whole world bowed at my feet, I would retire in glory and   
   never do anything again."   
       
   Maureen was admitted to the training program at Dublin's famed Abbey Theater,   
   where she was a prize student. When word of the beautiful Irish teen reached   
   London, she was offered a screen test, and a friend convinced her reluctant   
   parents to allow it.   
       
   Maureen considered the test a failure, but it led to a few small roles in   
   English films. The great actor Charles Laughton, who was producing and   
   starring in films made in England, saw the test and was intrigued by her   
   dancing eyes. At 17 she co-starred opposite him in a pirate yarn, Jamaica Inn,   
   directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton gave her a more manageable name: O'Hara.   
       
   With the onslaught of World War II, filmmaking virtually halted in England.   
   Laughton moved to RKO in Hollywood and starred as Quasimodo in The Hunchback   
   of Notre Dame, with O'Hara as the beautiful gypsy girl, Esmeralda.   
       
   Her first husband was director George Hanley Brown, whom she met while making   
   Jamaica Inn. When she moved to Hollywood, he remained in England and the   
   marriage was annulled.   
       
   In 1941, she married a tall, handsome director, Will Price, and they had a   
   daughter, Bronwyn, in 1944.   
       
   "The marriage was a terrible mistake, and we divorced in 1952," she said. She   
   remained unmarried until the wedding to Blair in 1968.   
       
   O'Hara's career was threatened by a manufactured scandal in 1957, when   
   Confidential magazine claimed she and a lover engaged in "the hottest show in   
   town" in a back row in Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theater.   
       
   But at the time, she told AP, "I was making a movie in Spain, and I had the   
   passport to prove it." She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel   
   trial and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine   
   eventually went out of business.   
       
   On the screen, O'Hara always played strong, willful women. In a 1991   
   interview, she was asked if she was the same woman she appeared in movies.   
       
   "I do like to get my own way," she said. "But don't think I'm not acting when   
   I'm up there. And don't think I always get my own way. There have been   
   crushing disappointments. But when that happens, I say, `Find another hill to   
   climb.'"   
       
   She is survived by her daughter, Bronwyn FitzSimons of Glengarriff, Ireland;   
   her grandson, Conor FitzSimons of Boise and two great-grandchildren.   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- DB 3.99 + Windows 10   
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