Maureen O'Hara: The Biography

Notes

215 Notes Introduction 1. Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1959. 2. ibid. 3. Maureen O’Hara with John Nicoletti, ’Tis Herself: A Memoir (Dublin: Town House and Country House, 2004), 177. 4. Films in Review, May 1990. 5. Photoplay, December 1952. 6. Films in Review, May 1990. 7. ruth Barton, Acting Irish in Hollywood (Dublin: irish academic press, 2006), 91. 8. Screenland, February 1943. 9. Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1966. 10. Silver Screen, March 1940. 1. Young Girl in a Hurry 1. O’Hara, ’Tis Herself, 7–8. 2. Nationwide, rTe 1, august 16, 2004. 3. Independent, September 26, 2004. 4. Silver Screen, June 1945. 5. Photoplay, april 1943. 6. Irish Independent, June 12, 1991. 7. ibid. 8. Irish Tatler, November 2010. 9. Stardom, april 1944. 10. Modern Screen, February 1948. 11. ibid. 12. Silver Screen, March 1940. 13. ibid. 14. ’Tis Herself, 19. Her reminiscence in this regard contrasts sharply with an interview she gave to the Sunday Press on September 1, 1991. in that interview she recalled: “When i was at school in Milltown we would save pennies so we could go see Charles Laughton, Laurel and Hardy and ginger rogers and Fred astaire. We used to go to ‘The prinner’—the princess Theater in rathmines—every Saturday. it was three pence admission and you sat on a 216 notes to Pages 10–13 wooden bench. The other cinema was the Stella which was much swankier. The prinner was more our style.” 15. eoghan rice, We Are Rovers: An Oral History of Shamrock Rovers Football Club (gloucestershire: Nonsuch publishing, 2005), 21. 16. ibid., 21–22. 17. Boyd Magers and Michael g. Fitzgerald, Westerns Women: Interviews with 50 Leading Ladies of Movie and Television Westerns from the 1930s to the 1960s (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 171. 18. Modern Screen, February 1948. 19. James robert parish, The RKO Gals (London: ian allen, 1974), 645. O’Hara exhibited a theatrical element in many of her performances, particularly when she played irish or irish american parts for John Ford, as in The Quiet Man and The Long Gray Line. She met many abbey alumni on the set of The Quiet Man and other Ford films. He had struck up an acquaintance with the abbey players when they toured the United States in 1935, later recruiting many of them to his celluloid fold. For an in-depth treatment of this theme, see adrian Frazier, Hollywood Irish: John Ford, Abbey Actors and the Irish Revival in Hollywood (Dublin: Lilliput press, 2011). 20. She didn’t mention this in her autobiography, perhaps feeling it would give the wrong message to her fans about how she came to be in the public eye. Like many beauties, she always believed her natural endowments prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. in 1941 she told Ben Maddox, “it’s so funny, my being pushed into the beauty category. i was never ranked that way until i reached California . . . the neighborhood gang cheered me up with announcements that i had skin like hide and hair like straw” (Silver Screen, November 1941). 21. Silver Screen, November 1941. 22. These skills came in handy when she took dictation years later for John Ford, who made her transcribe the script of The Quiet Man on his yacht. Her proficiency with shorthand was also useful on film sets, as she told Larry King when he asked her how she prepared for roles: “you start writing notes to yourself. you remember in scene so-and-so you’re going to do so-and-so. every page of your script is full of little notes. i used to do mine in shorthand so nobody would know what i was up to” (Larry King, October 29, 2000). 23. parish, RKO Gals, 645, says that the venue for their meeting was a “civic reception.” although this is a fine account of O’Hara’s life and career, parish is inaccurate in some details, including calling Lennox robinson “Lenox roberts” (644). 24. ibid., 645. 25. Irish Independent, June 12, 1991. 26. She would later exclaim extravagantly, “i owe my whole career to Mr. pommer.” See Ursula Hardt, From Caligari to California (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996), 1. 217 notes to Pages 13–19 27. Silver Screen, March 1940. 28. Irish Tatler, November 2010. 29. Screenland, February 1942. 30. Nicola Depuis, Mnánah Éireann: The Women Who Shaped Ireland (Cork: Mercier press, 2009), 219. 31...