Maureen O’Hara, whose green eyes, porcelain skin and flaming red hair made her the reigning queen of the Technicolor costume dramas of Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died at age 95.
Discovered while playing Esmeralda in the 1939 version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” she would go on to be one of the staples of Hollywood.
She was living proof beauty and goodness could go hand in hand, and she was just as capable playing attractive mothers of a certain age in such box-office hits as “The Parent Trap” (1961) with Haley Mills and Brian Keith, and in “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation” (1962) with James Stewart, and with Henry Fonda in “Spencer’s Mountain” (1963).
In her final feature film “Only the Lonely” (1991), the actress played the Irish battle-ax mother of funnyman John Candy.
On Saturday the Irish arts minister, Heather Humphreys, said O’Hara was “the quintessential Irish success story”.
“Maureen O’Hara left Ireland to carve a successful life in America,” Humphreys said, “but in the hearts and minds of every Irish person Maureen was the quintessential Irish success story. She went on to become one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the height of her career.”
Humphreys said O’Hara would be “best remembered for her fiercely passionate roles in classic films and in particular the films she made with her great friend John Wayne”.
Wayne once famously said he preferred to work with men, “except for Maureen O’Hara. She’s a great guy”. In 1991, O’Hara said of Wayne: “We met through Ford, and we hit it right off. I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.”
O’Hara, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, enchanted generations of fans and received a long overdue honorary Academy award in 2014.
