Maureen O'Hara: The Biography

10. Love in the Air

159 10 Love in the air after the box-office success of The Parent Trap and Mr. Hobbs, O’Hara felt she was back on the winning trail, but then she received the worst news possible: her mother had cancer, and the doctors didn’t hold out much hope. She contacted Father aloysius, a Spanish priest living in Los angeles who’d been credited with giving sight to a little boy who’d been blind from birth. after her mother went to the priest, her tumor shrank to the size of a pea. O’Hara saw this as nothing short of a miracle. Her spirits buoyed, she returned to work, appearing on two TV shows, Spellbound and Ed Sullivan. But her mother’s cancer soon returned, and she eventually died from the disease. O’Hara found John Ford to be an unlikely comforter at this time. in 1962 she made Spencer’s Mountain, a family drama costarring Henry Fonda and directed by Delmer Daves. Shortly after filming began, Daves came to her trailer with the news that Will price had died of a heart attack. (She would later learn he’d committed suicide.) She experienced little sorrow at the revelation, particularly so soon after her mother’s death. in fact, all she felt was relief. “This is the happiest day of my life,” she gushed to Daves.1 Bronwyn was safe now. O’Hara had always feared he might harm her in some way, either during a drink-fueled attack or in some more insidious manner.2 Later that year, Bronwyn went to court to have her name changed from price to FitzSimons. O’Hara gave her written permission for the change.3 Bronwyn also had a small part in Spencer’s Mountain, playing a college secretary. The film was shot at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the location for the majestic Shane. Sadly, that’s the only thing that reminds one of george Stevens ’s classic western. Fonda and O’Hara are Clay and Olivia Spencer, the parents of nine children. The eldest, Clayboy (James Mcarthur), wants to 160 Maureen O’Hara attend college, but they question whether they can afford it. Clay is gifted at odd jobs, but he only earns peanuts. He wants to build a new house for himself and his family. Can he use Clayboy as collateral if the boy lands a scholarship? This is one of the unexciting central themes of this eminently unexciting film. Like Clayboy, Clay is from a family of nine, so Clayboy and his siblings have eight tall uncles. The Spencer family is so big, in fact, it has a mountain named after it (hence the title of the movie). Clayboy dallies with Cloris (Mimsy Farmer), a spirited lass who wants him to get physical, but this terrifies him. Or is it just that he would prefer to be studying his textbooks? Cloris specializes in looking up “dirty” words in unexpurgated dictionaries. (That’s as outrageous as things get in Jackson Hole.) She tells Clayboy she used to think “friction” was a dirty word. Clayboy says he did too. “Will you friction me?” she asks him. He looks too frightened to refuse. O’Hara, using her usual part–Quiet Man, part–Noo yawk accent, is an unlikely mother of nine with that fabulous face and figure. She doesn’t mind Clayboy having a kiss and a cuddle with Cloris, as long as he doesn’t go any further. She’s whipped all her kids into shape with old-fashioned family values. The only person in the house who seems to be stepping out of line is Clay, who likes to cuss and drink. “i learned to swear before i learned to walk,” he informs us. Clay doesn’t go to church. His idea of heaven, we learn, is “a fish pole and a riverbank.” One day while out fishing with the new pastor, he gets drunk. More to the point, he gets the pastor drunk as well. This is a very inauspicious start for the latter’s ministry, and nobody turns up for his first service. This angers Clay, so he tells everyone that if they don’t attend the pastor’s next service, he’ll charge them all the “back money” for the plethora of odd jobs he’s done for free over the years. (This is rich, coming from a nonchurchgoer.) Spencer’s Mountain was written for the screen by earl Hamner Jr. and became the template for the long...