SCREEN LEGEND Maureen O’Hara yesterday celebrated her 90th birthday with family and friends in Co Cork.
Despite the passage of time, she still looks the Hollywood star with the facial expressions, eyes and a voice that first impressed the actor Charles Laughton who first “discovered” her as a feisty 19-year-old with captivating good looks.
One of a family of six children, she was born Maureen FitzSimons, in Ranelagh, Dublin, on August 17th, 1920, and has lived in Glengarriff, in west Cork, for almost 40 years.
Her birthday celebrations started at the weekend with a recital by pianist David Syme at Ahabeg Vista, near Castletownbere, Co Cork.
Up to 70 guests attended including her stepson, Chris Blair, son of her late husband Charles . Blair jnr, and friends Ramone de Santiago and Carolyn Murphy.
Whilst the thrice-married O'Hara made up to 60 films, some of her birthday guests felt compelled to ask her to recall her memories of making the John Ford-directed The Quiet Man, also starring John Wayne, in Cong, Co Mayo, in 1952.
Her father, Charles FitzSimons, was a businessman and part-owner of Shamrock Rovers Football Club and she still speaks affectionately of the club. Her mother, Marguerite, was a talented contralto.
“I have been acting since I took my first steps,” she said.
“I came from a talented acting family. We grew in that environment and we used to put on plays in the back garden and for our parents. By seven, I was already receiving acting instructions.”
She changed her name to O’Hara on the advice of Laughton, in the late 1930s, probably prompted by the success of Gone With The Wind (1939) and the resonance with Scarlett O’Hara, the character played by Vivien Leigh.
The actor with the flaming red hair once described herself as “the toughest Irish lass who ever took on Hollywood” and enjoyed a career spanning six decades.