Maureen O'hara
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Maureen O’Hara MAUREEN O’HARA ~ THE BIOGRAPHY AUBREY MALONE Copyright © 2013 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dillon-Malone, A. (Aubrey) Maureen O’Hara : the biography / Aubrey Malone. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-4238-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8131-4239-5 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8131-4240-1 (pdf) 1. O’Hara, Maureen, 1920- 2. Motion picture actors and actresses— United States—Biography. I. Title. PN2287.O33M35 2013 791.4302’8092—dc23 [B] 2013022751 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses Contents Introduction 1 1. Young Girl in a Hurry 7 2. Maiden Voyage 21 3. The Old Son of a Bitch 29 4. Saluting Uncle Sam 45 5. Civvy Street 71 6. Sojourn in Cong 95 7. Back to Bread and Butter 111 8. Keeping Things Confidential 135 9. Reality Bites 145 10. Love in the Air 159 11. A Streetcar Named Retire 175 12. Ready for Her Close-ups 185 13. Grande Dame 203 Acknowledgments 211 Filmography 213 Notes 215 Bibliography 235 Index 249 Illustrations follow page 138 Introduction They’ve built a statue to her in Kells. Her website receives 250,000 hits a day. Every Christmas Day somebody in the world is watching Miracle on 34th Street, and every St. Patrick’s Day somebody is watching The Quiet Man. Maureen O’Hara (née FitzSimons) occupies an unusual place in the film pantheon, in that she was never nominated for an Oscar, yet she’s the only Irish actress to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She also worked with all the greats, both in front of the camera (Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, among others) and behind it (Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Jean Renoir, Nicholas Ray, Sam Peckinpah). She always said that working with top-flight stars helped her to get the best out of herself. O’Hara’s belle époque was the 1940s and 1950s, when she occupied the front ranks of female action roles. The films she appeared in had an old-world simplicity, but that made them no less entertaining. She cantered across burning sands in a yashmak as a harem heroine and clambered up a ship’s rigging in hoopskirts as a love goddess–cum–pirate queen. “There was always a fight in them between me and someone else,” the rapier-slashing star told Joe Hyams in a 1959 Los Angeles Times interview, “usually another girl. That made up for the bad script.” In all these roles she leavened the exotic superstructures with a large dose of Irish common sense. “Black is black and white is white,” she declared, “I never stand on middle ground.”1 She was good at taking her punishment in such ventures. She endured so many on-set injuries during her career that her colleagues joked she should have been awarded a Purple Heart. The payoff was that she was rarely out of work. “I’ve never been without a contract,” was a frequent boast during her prime, “not for a split second. It’s better that way because 1 2 Maureen O’Hara I’ve always hated being in competition with other actresses for roles.” She also hated being idle, so she often settled for material that was unworthy of her. “Show me the actress who didn’t,” she challenged.2 Was O’Hara willing to diversify to secure better roles? Grace Kelly was another Irish ice queen from Hollywood’s golden age, but she forsook makeup to render herself suitably dowdy for The Country Girl and won an Oscar for her performance. Would O’Hara have been willing to do likewise? (Her famous hair remained a radiant red, even into her nineties.) Her critics accused her of having a limited range, but O’Hara begged to disagree. She seemed to struggle in comedic roles but proved her mettle in films that called on her to take charge of situations or find courage in the face of adversity. An indomitable coper with an iron will and an innate sense of the polarities of whatever conundrum she found herself in, she comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. The Quiet Man became the insignia of her career, but she appeared in many other noteworthy roles, especially in the early years. Films such as Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and How Green Was My Valley established her credentials and her captivating beauty. Other early highlights included the profound dramas The Fallen Sparrow and This Land Is Mine and, in the 1950s, two other John Ford offerings, The Long Gray Line and Wings of Eagles. She writes in her autobiography, “One critic, the bloody bastard, [said] that it took the likes of John Ford to drag a good performance out of me.”3 Although O’Hara worked well with other directors, the only Oscar-nominated films she appeared in were by Ford. In the 1960s and 1970s she expanded her range to play “mature” women and also appeared in acclaimed TV films such as Mrs. Miniver and The Red Pony, when the dreaded “black box” ate into cinema profits and threatened to torpedo the genre. Versatility was one of her proudest traits. “I played every kind of role,” she declared. “I was never petite or cute so there was never anything about me that would go out of style.” But she never laid claim to genius. “I worked hard and always knew my lines.” She had no time for Method act- ing, which she dismissed as so much “tommyrot.”4 Acting should be acting, in her view, not “becoming” the role. She placed a high value on punctual- ity and was always perfectly coiffed and made up before the cameras rolled. She was loved for her naturalness, her lack of a diva quality. She didn’t Introduction 3 make an entrance, like Marlene Dietrich or Joan Crawford; she simply en- tered. Acting was the shy woman’s revenge for her. In Cong in 1951 people chatted to her as if she were one of the extras on The Quiet Man, instead of its female lead. She mixed with kings but never lost the common touch. Another accusation was that she “made nice” with the studio bosses to gain better parts and more money. This she also hotly disputed, claiming it was never the FitzSimons way to be meek or sweet and that money was never a priority for her. Nonetheless, Darryl F. Zanuck liked to advertise the fact that O’Hara was the highest paid actress on his lot, at $5,000 a week. If she was friendly with Zanuck and Harry Cohn and others, it was because of her naturally cordial disposition rather than any ulterior motive. She always told the executives what she thought of them, she insisted, but what she thought was usually complimentary. Despite the aforementioned temper, she was blessed with a balanced personality. “I’ve never walked off a set,” she boasted. “I’ve never had a temperamental fit in my life. I think I cooperate too much.”5 In fact, she did vacate the set on one occasion—while making Ten Gentlemen from West Point with the lascivious George Montgomery—but she wasn’t be- ing a diva. Montgomery had made a pass at her, and she was righteously indignant. O’Hara was always more heroine than rebel. If you scratched the firebrand, you found the conformist. This was probably the result of her upbringing; domestic stability was the keynote, and an ideal evening was one spent singing and listening to classical airs. Religion was also a huge ele- ment in her life. She rarely missed Mass and was a God-fearing woman. On film sets, though, a different personality emerged. “I enjoyed tough direc- tors,” she claimed, “who didn’t waste time with politeness and that sort of nonsense. We got right down to work.”6 When they did, she gave as good as she got, parlaying her natural vim and vinegar into innumerable set pieces. As she made clear in her most talismanic role, “I’m not a woman to be honked at and come running. We Danahers are a fightin’ family.” She objected to the clichéd depiction of redheaded women as spitfires, despite the fact that she was one herself. She liked opinionated people, even those with a tinge of nastiness and temper—all the things women aren’t supposed to be. As regards her bossy image, she admitted it was true but claimed she didn’t always get her way. 4 Maureen O’Hara Her ambition wasn’t to change the world; she wanted career stability and a boatload of kids. Like most ambitions, O’Hara’s were realized only in part. She had one child and a stop-and-go career characterized by iden- tikit action films and some thought-provoking dramas.