This Day in Film History (Birth of Maureen O'Hara, ‘Queen of Technicolor’)

Aug. 17, 1920— Maureen FitzSimons—better known to movie fans as Maureen O'Hara, nicknamed “The Queen of Technicolor” for the flaming red hair that made her a natural for this film process—was born in Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland.

Even the most casual movie fans are likely to catch an O’Hara performance at least twice a year: on St. Patrick’s Day, in The Quiet Man (1952), and at Christmastime, in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). But her other thirtysomething films—with the great bulk made between 1939, when she initially signed with RKO, and 1968, when she began her third and happiest marriage—are worth seeing throughout the year.

In 2014, less than a year before her death, the beloved star was finally awarded a special "Lifetime Achievement" Oscar. As tends to happen with this special honor, the award was less a recognition than an atonement.

Not only was O’Hara never nominated for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress, but her longtime studio, 20th Century-Fox, steered her towards roles that capitalized on her stunning beauty and athleticism (her equestrian and fencing skills led to her casting in westerns and swashbucklers, respectively), not the intensive, wide-ranging training in classical theater and operatic singing she had in her youth in Ireland.

But given the right role, O’Hara invariably measured up to the challenge. In this, she resembled her friend and frequent Fox co-star Tyrone Power. Their talent and comfort with each other might be seen to best advantage in The Long Gray Line, John Ford’s twin valentine to the U.S. military and his Irish-American heritage, in a true account of an emigrant who became a longtime athletic trainer at West Point.

She may have chafed at the narrow range of her roles, particularly how her studio contract restricted any possibility of working with European directors who could have better brought out her versatility. 

But, if she never got to be a “chameleon actor” who could change radically depending on the role, O’Hara was indisputably a “personality star” who left her imprint on each picture she graced.

Her roles invariably reflected her forthright, fearless nature as a self-described “tough Irish lass”—a woman no easy match for the men who came into her orbit but eminently worth the wooing.

Powerful males in the Hollywood community could come away burned by encounters with her:

*Director John Farrow (Mia’s father) was almost punched in front of an entire film set when he made a pass at the starlet;

*Walt Disney, forced by O'Hara to honor a contract, referred to her as “that bitch” (telling this years later, O’Hara said she’d rather be called that than “that wimp”); and

*The scandal sheet “Confidential” (The “National Enquirer” of its time), forced to settle after O’Hara sued it for libel for reporting that she had been spotted cuddling with a Latino in Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. (At trial, O’Hara produced her passport, which showed she was shooting on location abroad at the time of the alleged incident.)

The one figure she was careful in dealing with was John Ford, with whom she made five films. At one point, the director found a way to abuse every single one of the actors who formed a de facto stock company on his films, and O’Hara was no exception. 

“That devil,” as O’Hara called him, actually struck her once, and she claimed she could still smell the field filled with dung where he filmed her for a scene in The Quiet Man. (Perhaps the only time she responded in kind was when, after he unmercifully cursed her for squinting when hair repeatedly blew in her face in one windy scene, she answered, "What would a bald-headed son of a bitch know about hair lashing across his eyeballs?")

Why did she tolerate such abuse? It could not have been simply because she recognized he was in the grip of alcoholism. (That realization did not stop her from divorcing her second husband, screenwriter Will Price, who was guilty of violence, fraud and adultery during their 12-year marriage.)

Part of it may have involved her understanding that he actually displayed what she called “a schoolboy crush” on her. This may have climaxed when the married Ford sent her a Valentine’s Day card, expressing his love and thanking her for the five months they had just spent filming together. (The undated message appears to have been sent during production of The Quiet Man.) If her great friend (and most frequent co-star) John Wayne was Ford’s ideal of a tough, strapping male, then O’Hara was his ideal woman.

But O’Hara undoubtedly also realized that Ford’s genius was capable of translating that love into high art. Two memorable scenes, filmed roughly a decade apart, make the point.

The first, from How Green Was My Valley (1941), shows the wind playing with O'Hara's hair as her character, Angharad, leaves the church after her wedding, with the veil forming a circle around her head.

The second, from The Quiet Man, depicts the moment that Wayne’s “Yank,” Sean Thornton, first lays eyes on O’Hara’s Mary Kate Dannaher. He stops, transfixed—and so is the viewer, momentarily forgetful of the beautiful countryside because of the redheaded dazzler spotted in the middle of it.