Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara, born Maureen FitzSimons on 17 August 1920 in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh, was an Irish and American actress whose career spanned Hollywood films, television, and the Broadway stage. She died on 24 October 2015. Raised in a Catholic family in Dublin, she was the second eldest of six children born to Charles and Marguerite FitzSimons. Her father was involved in the clothing business and held a stake in Shamrock Rovers Football Club. Her mother, a former operatic contralto, passed her singing voice on to O'Hara, who would later draw on that musical ability throughout her career.

O'Hara began her performing training at an exceptionally young age. She started dancing at five and began formal instruction in drama, music, and dance at the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution in Dublin alongside her siblings. At ten she joined the Rathmines Theatre Company, working in amateur theatre productions in the evenings. By fourteen she had moved on to the Abbey Theatre, where playwright Lennox Robinson served as a mentor. In 1935, at fifteen, she won the first Dramatic Prize at the Dublin Feis Award for her portrayal of Portia in The Merchant of Venice. In 1936 she became the youngest pupil at the time to graduate from the Guildhall School of Music.

Her transition to film came through a chance connection with actor Charles Laughton, who saw potential in a screen test that the studio had deemed unsatisfactory. Laughton arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939, and insisted, against her wishes, that she adopt the surname O'Hara in place of FitzSimons. That same year she relocated to Hollywood to appear alongside Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and was signed to a contract by RKO Pictures. Her natural red hair and screen presence earned her the nickname "the Queen of Technicolor."

Over the following decades O'Hara built one of Hollywood's most recognizable careers, appearing in How Green Was My Valley in 1941, her first collaboration with director John Ford, as well as The Black Swan with Tyrone Power in 1942, The Spanish Main in 1945, Sinbad the Sailor in 1947, and the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street in 1947, opposite John Payne and Natalie Wood. She became particularly associated with actor John Wayne, first appearing with him in Rio Grande in 1950. That partnership continued through The Quiet Man in 1952, The Wings of Eagles in 1957, McLintock! in 1963, and Big Jake in 1971. As the 1960s progressed, O'Hara took on more maternal roles in films including The Deadly Companions, The Parent Trap, both in 1961, and The Rare Breed in 1966. She retired from the industry in 1971 before returning two decades later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely in 1991.

Alongside her film work, O'Hara appeared on Broadway in 1960 in the musical Christine, marking her presence on the New York stage. In the late 1970s she helped manage her third husband Charles F. Blair Jr.'s aviation business in Saint Croix in the United States Virgin Islands and edited a magazine, before selling both enterprises to spend more time in Glengarriff, Ireland. She was married three times and had one daughter, Bronwyn, with her second husband. Her autobiography, Tis Herself, published in 2004, reached the New York Times bestseller list.

O'Hara received significant recognition later in her life. In November 2014 she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award bearing the inscription acknowledging her as one of Hollywood's brightest stars. In 2009 The Guardian had named her among the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination, and in 2020 The Irish Times ranked her first on its list of Ireland's greatest film actors.