Maureen FitzSimons, better known as Maureen O’Hara, was born on this day in 1920 in Dublin, Ireland. She always wanted to be an actor and started her theater training when she was ten. In 1939 she was discovered by Charles Laughton and cast against him in Alfred Hitchcock’s (underrated IMHO) Jamaica Inn. Laughton insisted that she change her name to O’Hara, a decision that she was not happy about. According to one story Laughton gathered the rest of the cast around him before shooting started and told them that since they had an inexperienced young performer in a lead role they should all do their best to support her and make her look good on screen. A few days later Laughton gathered the cast again and exclaimed, “It’s every man for himself; she’s stealing every scene she’s in!” That same year O’Hara and Laughton appeared together again in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
O’Hara, dubbed “The Queen of Technicolor” because a lot of her films were shot in color to show off her gorgeous red hair, went on stealing scenes and became a big star. Her films include The Quiet Man; Rio Grande (both with John Wayne, they appeared together several times and had such good chemistry that people often assumed they were in a relationship); How Green Was My Valley; The Parent Trap, and my all time favorite Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street, in which she does a pretty good American accent but charmingly pronounces the holiday as “Tanksgiving.”
O’Hara retired from acting in 1971 but returned to the big screen once, to portray John Candy’s mother in 1991’s Only the Lonely. On a sad note that demonstrates once again how much we lost when John Candy died so young, O’Hara said that Candy was a very good actor and that she was surprised at how much dramatic talent he had.
Despite (somehow) never receiving an Academy Award nomination, Maureen O’Hara was given a richly deserved lifetime achievement award from the Academy in 2014.
Maureen O’Hara passed away in 2015 at the ripe old age of 95. Her film legacy will live on forever.