Maureen O'Hara

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Maureen O'Hara at RKO Studios in Hollywood , October 1942

Maureen O'Hara , actually Maureen FitzSimons (born August 17, 1920 in Ranelagh , Dublin , † October 24, 2015 in Boise , Idaho ), was an Irish - American film actress and singer . She became famous for her long-standing collaboration with director John Ford and actor John Wayne . Because she was regularly cast in the then still rare Technicolor films, she was nicknamed "Queen of Technicolor". She was often used in the role of the spirited and resolute heroine. In 2014 she received an honorary Oscar for her life's work.

Life

Childhood and youth

Maureen O'Hara was born in 1920 in Ranelagh, a suburb of the Irish capital Dublin, as Maureen FitzSimons into a Catholic family. She remained connected to the Catholic Church until her death. Her father Charles Stewart Parnell FitzSimons ran a clothing store, in which O'Hara's mother Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons - a former alto  - also worked. She was the second oldest of six children. Her father owned shares in the football club Shamrock Rovers , which O'Hara also supported since childhood. In school she was particularly successful as an athlete. Like most of her siblings, she attended the Abbey Theater and the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution in Dublin. Many of her siblings later made careers in the film industry, but not nearly as successfully as O'Hara. Having previously played in amateur groups, she made her professional debut as an actress at the Abbey Theater at the age of 14. Because her father saw the acting business as too insecure, O'Hara had to train as an accountant and typist in addition to her acting career.

Acting career

After O'Hara had achieved initial success at the Abbey Theater, she was invited to test recordings in London at the age of 17 . Since she was reluctant to take such a trip, she first had to be persuaded to do so. The casting was not very satisfactory and O'Hara, whose appearance had been changed a lot for the shoot, said: “If the film business is going like this, I don't want anything to do with him.” When the famous actor Charles Laughton saw the test shots, he still took a liking to O'Hara, especially her expressive green eyes. While O'Hara was returning to Ireland, Laughton persuaded his business partner Erich Pommer to give her a seven-year film contract. In 1938 O'Hara played her first two, relatively small roles in the now almost forgotten films Kicking The Moon Around and My Irish Molly . Her first big film was Riff Pirates (1939), in which she discovers a gang of beach robbers  - the leader of the beach pirates was played by Laughton - under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock .

Laughton was extremely pleased with O'Hara's performance and took her to Hollywood . He cast her in the classic film The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the leading female role of Esmeralda. He himself played the bell ringer. This film gave her the breakthrough. When World War II began, Charles Laughton realized he could no longer film in England and sold O'Hara and her seven-year contract to RKO Pictures . At first she only starred in second-rate films until director John Ford hired her for his film drama Schlagende Wetter (1941). O'Hara played the female lead Angharad, the daughter of a Welsh miner, who has to marry the rich but arrogant and boring mine owner. When she fled from him, she was cast out by the village community. The film won five Oscars and was the beginning of a long, five-film collaboration between O'Hara and Ford. The relationship between the two was tumultuous, wavering between love and hate.

Mostly O'Hara was cast in the role of the spirited, passionate heroine with integrity, which is why she found her home mainly in westerns and adventure films such as The Pirate and Sinbad the Seafarer . She often starred in Technicolor color films, which were still rare at the time , mainly because, in contrast to black and white films, this was able to bring out her fiery red hair. Because of her many roles in Technicolor films, she was nicknamed "Queen of Technicolor" ("Queen of Technicolor"). In 1947 she starred as the mother of Susan Walker ( Natalie Wood ) in the Christmas classic The Miracle of Manhattan . In the role of a cynical businesswoman, she meets Santa Claus ( Edmund Gwenn ) in the course of the film and undergoes a transformation of her character. 1950 saw the second collaboration with John Ford with the Western Rio Grande , the third and final part of Ford's famous cavalry trilogy . O'Hara and John Wayne play a 15-year separated couple who meet again when their son joins Wayne's Colonel.

For the actors John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, who are friends in private life, Rio Grande was the first collaboration of four others. Wayne commented on O'Hara that she was the only woman in his life he could call a true friend and called her his best leading lady . 1952 both had their most famous joint appearance in John Ford's comedy Der Sieger . In the film, which is set in an Irish village, O'Hara played Wayne's fiancée. In the 1950s, O'Hara's career continued with other adventure films and westerns, most of which, however, fell into oblivion. The actress also made some appearances on US television and played the title role in the 1960 television film Mrs. Miniver , a remake of the film hit of the same name from 1942. From the 1960s, she increasingly played in comedies, for example in The Marriage of Her Parents known (1961), an Americanized adaptation of the Erich Kästner novel Das doppelte Lottchen , and as the wife of James Stewart in Mr. Hobbs goes on holiday (1962).

Retirement, short comeback and personal life

Maureen O'Hara at the TCM Film Festival in April 2014

After retiring from the acting business in 1971, O'Hara returned in 1991 to appear as John Candy's dominant mother in Chris Columbus ' comedy Mama, Me and the Two of Us . In the following years she starred in several other television films, in 2000 she finally made her last film. Her autobiography Tis Herself , published in 2004 , became a bestseller.

O'Hara lived a long time on the south-west coast of Ireland in Glengarriff , where the local pub has their regular table. For health reasons, she moved to live with her grandson in the US state of Idaho in 2012 .

Maureen O'Hara married the British film producer George H. Brown in 1939 , who produced two of the Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford , among other things . The marriage was annulled in 1941, and in the same year she married the director Will Price (1913–1962). In 1944 their daughter Bronwyn FitzSimons was born, who also worked briefly as an actress in the early 1960s. In 1946, O'Hara became a US citizen. After divorcing Price in 1948, O'Hara married the writer, former brigadier general and pilot Charles F. Blair (1909-1978), whom she first met in 1947 on a flight to Ireland . In 1978 Blair was flying a Grumman G-21 in the Caribbean Sea when the engines failed and the plane crashed. Blair and three of his passengers were killed and seven others seriously injured. After the death of her husband, she became president of his airline, Antilles Airboats , which made her the first woman president of an airline in the United States. She later sold the company.

On November 8, 2014, the actress received the honorary Oscar for her life's work. The following year, she died on October 24th at the age of 95 in her home town of Boise, Idaho.

Filmography

Discography (selection)

Maureen O'Hara receives the Oscar of Honor (2014)
  • 1960: Christine ( Musical ), Original Broadway Cast Album

Awards

Web links

Commons : Maureen O'Hara  - Collection of Images
Wikiquote: Maureen O'Hara  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Althen: Maureen O'Hara on the Ninetieth - The Queen of Technicolor. In: faz.net . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 17, 2010, accessed on October 25, 2015.
  2. ↑ Larry Putt: Maureen O'Hara and John Ford. ( Memento from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: suite.io , January 15, 2011, accessed on October 25, 2015 (English).
  3. ↑ Larry Putt: Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne. ( Memento of August 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: suite.io , January 11, 2011, accessed on October 25, 2015 (English).
  4. ^ Conor Ryan, O'Hara's former aide fears for star's wellbeing. In: irishexaminer.com . Irish Examiner , September 21, 2012, accessed October 25, 2015.
  5. ↑ Maureen O'Hara - Biography. In: filmreference.com . Retrieved October 25, 2015.
  6. ↑ Acceptance speech by Maureen O'Hara at the Honorary Oscar on YouTube (video, English).
  7. ↑ Jessica Chastain: Actor Maureen O'Hara dies aged 95. In: irishtimes.com . The Irish Times , October 24, 2015, accessed October 25, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME O'Hara, Maureen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES FitzSimons, Maureen (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-American actress
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Ranelagh , County Dublin , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 2015
Place of death Boise , Idaho , United States