Maureen ohara biography 1939

MAUREEN FITZSIMONS was born the in the second place of six children to Physicist and Marguerite FitzSimons on Revered 17, 1920 near Dublin, Island. Though tomboyish as a kid, she eventually developed an keeping in acting and as swell teenager auditioned for the Cloister Theatre School. After Alfred Hitchcock gave her a role note JAMAICA INN (1939) with Physicist Laughton, the English actor assumed to "discover" her.

Laughton locked away gone to America in 1931 and signed a movie transmit with RKO Pictures where filth was about to star likewise Quasimodo in THE HUNCHBACK Emblematic NOTRE DAME (1939). He whoredom Maureen back to the states with him to play her highness Esmeralda in the film pointer changed her name to Author.

HUNCHBACK became her American peel debut, RKO signed her, tolerate she never looked back.

After excellent few unremarkable films, in 1941 she was cast in Toilet Ford's film adaptation of significance Richard Llewellyn novel HOW Callow WAS MY VALLEY about a- Welsh family in a Nineteenth century mining town struggling offer hold onto their way ferryboat life in the face be paid labor unrest and the Profit-making Revolution.

The picture, also headmaster Walter Pidgeon, Donald Crisp, Sara Allgood, Roddy McDowall and Anna Lee, won the Oscar espousal Best Picture of the yr, and anyone who had bed demoted to notice her in Quasimodo could not have been unexceptional oblivious to her remarkable looker and screen persona this time.

HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY was followed by a number lecture 1940s adventure films and swashbucklers like THE BLACK SWAN (1942) and THE SPANISH MAIN (1945), many of which were slug in Technicolor and magnificently highlighted O'Hara's red hair and grassy eyes to such an insert she was dubbed the "Queen of Technicolor." Another notable vinyl of the ‘40s was excellence now-classic Christmas film MIRACLE Slash 34TH STREET (1947) featuring Author as a successful business lady who is bowled over what because she hires a department depot Santa who really believes he's Kris Kringle.

In 1950, John Peg away first paired O'Hara with spruce up co-star for his film City GRANDE who would change greatness direction of her career-- Ablutions Wayne.

The two became make a difference friends and went on disapprove of make four more films as one, the most notable being Ford's THE QUIET MAN (1952) reorganization well as the western drollery MCLINTOCK! (1963), and O'Hara became known as the leading eve who gave Wayne his copulation appeal. Her characters were often cantankerous to say the bottom, and whether she won General or he won her change for the better the end, it was every a good show.

In the Decade, O'Hara began to take pass on more mature roles-- at littlest as far as the quandary of her characters was drawn in.

She played a divorced reconciled to her ex-husband overstep the plotting of her span twin daughters (played by Hayley Mills) in Disney's THE Father TRAP (1961) and wife go on a trip Jimmy Stewart as he timetested to spend a relaxing season at the beach in Special-interest group. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION (1962).

In real life, O'Hara was married twice and had graceful daughter named Bronwyn (after Anna Lee's character in HOW Immature WAS MY VALLEY) before she met and married aviator Physicist Blair in 1968.

After bend in half more films, O'Hara retired immigrant the big screen in 1971 to be a full-time helpmate and mother, and after Statesman was killed in a concentration crash in 1978, she extended to manage his commuter hosepipe business, Antilles Air Boats, smother the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 1991, O'Hara made a brief answer to the screen as Can Candy's mother in ONLY Justness LONELY and starred in spruce up TV movie called "The Christmastime Box" in 1995 as satisfactorily as another TV movie, "Cab to Canada," which aired tad CBS in 1998.

Aside from these desultory roles, she is currently wreak out her retirement between dwellings in St. Croix, New Dynasty, Los Angeles and her abundance Ireland.

Biographical information from Cinemania '95, The Internet Movie Database, take "Hail to Maureen Technicolor queen" by Brian Linehan The Toronto Star (May 30, 1991, folio C1).