Screen legend Maureen O’Hara has died aged 95 in Beverly Hills
Star of the likes of Miracle On 34th Street, and The Quiet Man, actress Maureen O'Hara has died in her sleep at her Beverly Hills home.
Often described as one of the last remaining members of the Golden Age Of Hollywood, Ms O'Hara, the second of six children, was born on Beachwood Ave in Ranelagh in Dublin.
She joined the Rathmines Theatre Club aged 10 and later trained with the Abbey Theatre.
Also a firm fan of Shamrock Rovers until her death, Maureen had homes in Bantry in Cork and St Croix in the US Virgin Islands.
Just last year she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by the Academy, and is especially fondly remembered for her half a dozen on-screen partnerships with John Wayne.
"Maureen was our loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend.
"She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life listening to music from her favourite movie, The Quiet Man," said a statement from her family earlier today.
Still a teenager, she arrived in Hollywood in 1939 to star in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, but found real fame with How Green Is My Valley two years later – a film which went on to win five Oscars.
Maureen also often starred in colourful pirate adventures such as The Black Swan with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main with Paul Henreid, and Sinbad The Sailor with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
One of her earliest movies was Alfred Hitchcock's maritime-tinged Jamaica Inn.
Indeed, she often spoke highly of the iconic director recalling that she "never experienced the strange feeling of detachment with Hitchcock that many other actors claimed to have felt while working with him".
We mourn the passing of Maureen O'Hara, star of 'Miracle on 34th Street', who made generations of us believe. pic.twitter.com/Wq3gMTBhpv
— 20th Century Fox (@20thcenturyfox) October 24, 2015
She is furthermore much-loved for her part in 1961's The Parent Trap alongside Hayley Mills. Her final performance was in The Last Dance, a 2000 TV movie.
Her manager said she had “a wicked sense of humour and never took her good fortunes for granted.” Johnny Nicoletti added: “She was a classy, warm, feisty, funny woman and she was always so proudly Irish.”
Ms O’Hara will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington DC, next to her husband, the US Navy pilot General Charles Blair who died in a plane crash in 1978.
She had been married twice before she met Charles, and had one child – a daughter, Bronwyn, whose father was the director William Houston Price.
She died without ever revealing, even to her closest friends and family, one of Hollywood’s most famous secrets: what she whispered in John Wayne’s ear at the end of The Quiet Man to elicit the shocked reaction that director John Ford had sought from the star.
