Energetic O’Hara ready to take centre stage again
NO one could ever accuse Maureen O’Hara of resting on her laurels. At 90, the star of some of the greatest Hollywood movies of the 20th century should by rights be enjoying her retirement. Instead she is lending her time and energy to the foundation named in her honour, promoting the classic film festival in Glengarriff this weekend.
The foundation is also at work on a far more ambitious project, the creation of an €8.6 million legacy centre, film academy and auditorium in the west Cork town that O’Hara insists will be running in 2013.
The centre will house the film star’s collection of movie memorabilia, which stretches back over eight decades. O’Hara first come to public notice in Jamaica Inn, which Alfred Hitchcock directed in 1939. “I made one film before that,” she says. “It wasn’t very good, but it brought me to the attention of the actor Charles Laughton, who signed me to a seven-year contract. Making Jamaica Inn was an excellent experience. I found Hitchcock very pleasant to work with.”
As a young woman O’Hara starred in a number of pirate movies, including The Black Swan, which will also be screened in Glengarriff. “That was with Tyrone Power,” she remembers. “Pirate films were hard work, let me tell you, what with the fencing, and the stunt work. And you could hurt yourself, so you had to be very careful. But they were fun to make, and after, they were fun to look at as well.”
O’Hara worked with all the great leading men of the 1940s and 1950s, including Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Henry Fonda, but won’t be drawn on who was most dashing. “The thing was, were they a good actor? Did they perform properly? And did they know their lines? I’m afraid I never paid attention to whether they were handsome or not. Handsome is as handsome does. It’s more important to be proficient at your job.”
John ‘the Duke’ Wayne was her favourite co-star. “We made five films together. He was great to work with,” she says. The movie they will always be remembered for is John Ford’s The Quiet Man, in which she starred as the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, with Wayne as the former boxer Seán Thornton.
Ford was a mercurial figure, she says. “It’s not that he was difficult — that’s some-one who’s unreasonable — but he was tough, and he was strong, and he was a hard master. But every day, when you’d finished work, you’d be proud of what you’d done during the day. And thrilled that he’d paid you the compliment of asking you to be in the film.”
There’s a famous scene at the end of The Quiet Man, when Seán has finally won Mary Kate’s respect by trouncing her bullying brother Red in a fist fight, and she’s about to take him home. That was the point at which Ford had O’Hara whisper something in Wayne’s ear, something that caused him to look both shocked and delighted.
O’Hara has been asked many times to reveal what it was she said. But she ain’t telling.
“The only ones who ever knew that were John Wayne, John Ford and myself. John Ford insisted that I say what he wanted me to say, and obviously he wanted a certain reaction from the Duke. And if you look at that particular part of the film ever again, watch Duke. John Ford got just the reaction he wanted. But when John told me what it was I had to say, I said I can’t, I won’t. But I was told I had to, and there’d be no choice. And I said it was on one condition, that it’d never be revealed. So we made a deal, and it has never been revealed. And it never will be, ever.”
At 129 minutes, The Quiet Man was initially deemed too long by cinema owners, who insisted that Ford should cut it after the big fight sequence. But Ford refused, saying he would sooner scrap the film. In this, as in so much else, he got his way. “Oh my God, he could do anything he wanted,” says O’Hara with pride. “John Ford was the boss.”
O’Hara bought her house in Glengarriff in 1968, and she considers it home. She is delighted to be involved in establishing the film academy in the town. The project was, she says, inspired by “the great interest of young people all around west Cork in movies and theatre and acting.”
Cork County Council has donated a site for the academy, fund-raising has begun in earnest, and it is intended that, from 2013, it will take on between 75 to 100 students from all over the world and train them in all aspects of film-making. “And hopefully we will get permission to give them a degree. All of that is in the works. We’re all very pleased with how things are progressing; we plan on having one of the most important film schools in the world.”
The Maureen O’Hara Classic Film Festival runs in Glengarriff from June 17-26
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