Maureen O’Hara is dead – the actress known as the “Queen of Technicolor” has died at 95. Maureen O’Hara is notably famous for the film ‘Miracle on 34th Street.’ She was blessed with fame in movies during the golden age of technicolor.
O’Hara passed away peacefully in her sleep in her Boise, Idaho home with her family by her side, her manager Johnny Nicoletti alerted the Associated Press. She died of natural causes. “She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life listening to music from her favorite movie, ‘The Quiet Man’,” her family said in a statement.
According to her biography on IMDB, she was born Maureen FitzSimons in Ranelagh, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin, where her mother was an accomplished contralto and her father ran a business and was part owner of a soccer team. She had five siblings. According to CNN, she made her debut in 1939 as Esmeralda with Charles Laughton in ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’
Maureen O’Hara went on to star in ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’ ‘Sinbad The Sailor’ and ‘Disney’s The Parent Trap.’ Thanks to her long-wavy red hair and spitfire temper, technicolor took her to big career heights. That is how she became the “Queen of Technicolor.”
Maureen O’Hara was a favorite of director John Ford who cast her in five of his films,’How Green Was My Valley,”Rio Grande,”The Quiet Man,”The Long Gray Line,’ and ‘The Wings of Eagles.’ She has had quite the list of leading men, but she has had many films with John Wayne as her co-star.
Through the decade of the nineties during the later part of Maureen O’Hara career she made her return to acting after a 20-year hiatus starring in ‘Only the Lonely’ (1991) and then she had worked on some television movies, including ‘The Christmas Box’ (1995) and ‘Cab to Canada’ (1998). Then in 2000, she starred in another television movie, ‘The Last Dance.’
O’Hara was never nominated for an Oscar though just last year she won an Honorary Oscar for her work, noted Biography. She won for her seven-decade career of onscreen roles that “glowed with passion, warmth and strength.”
Maureen O’Hara is survived by her daughter, Bronwyn FitzSimons of Glengarriff, Ireland; her grandson, Conor FitzSimons of Boise and two great-grandchildren.
