Maureen O'Hara

Maureen FitzSimons, born 17 August 1920, and died 24 October 2015), was an Irish actress from Ireland. She was a popular actress in Hollywood from the 1940s to the 1960s. She was a natural redhead and was well-known for her fiery but shrewd heroines, especially in Westerns and adventure films. Charles Laughton, an actor who was the first to see her star-making potential, brought her to Hollywood. There were numerous times, she also worked with John Ford, longtime friend John Wayne and John Ford. O'Hara was born in Dublin, Ireland and was raised Catholic. She aspired from an early age to become an actor. She began her training with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10, and then at the Abbey Theatre at the age of 14. A screen test was administered to her, but it was not a success. Charles Laughton, however, saw potential and made arrangements for her to star with him in Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939). RKO Pictures offered her a contract. The actress also moved to Hollywood that year to perform alongside him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She enjoyed a lengthy, highly successful career and was known as "the Queen of Technicolor". Her movies comprise How Green Was My Valley (1941), her first film with John Ford, The Black Swan (1942), The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (47) and the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947) as well as Comanche Territory (1950). She first appeared in Rio Grande (1950), along with John Wayne (the actor with whom she is most associated). The Quiet Man (1952) The Wings of Eagles(57), McLintock were the subsequent films. (1963), Big Jake (1971). Wayne was so strong at chemistry with O'Hara that many believed that they were in a marriage. She became more motherly as she got older, appearing in films like The Deadly Companions (1961) as well as The Parent Trap(61) and The Rare Breed (1966). She resigned from the business in 1971, but returned twenty years later to make an appearance with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991).