Saturdays with the Stars: Maureen O'Hara

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we looked at the unusual career of British actress Margaret Lockwood.  This month, we'll venture into our first star this season that would be identifiable not just to cinephiles, but even the most casual of film lovers, an actress who did work (very) early on in her career with Alfred Hitchcock, but became far more well-known for her work with a different director who would come to dominate her career for the coming two decades.  This month, our star is Maureen O'Hara.

Born Maureen FitzSimons (she would be renamed by her frequent costar Charles Laughton before her big break in Hollywood), Maureen grew up in Dublin, the second of six children.  She was a high-spirited child, and was intent from a very young age to become an actress, eventually joining Irish theatre companies, and studying music in London.  It was during her time in one of these touring companies that O'Hara did a screen test, which would be noticed by none other than Hollywood film star Charles Laughton, who signed her to a contract for his new production company, Mayflower Pictures, and which would lead to quick stardom when she starred opposite Laughton in 1939's Jamaica Inn and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

While O'Hara definitely became a star as a result of Hitchcock's film, more than any other actress that we're going to profile this year, O'Hara's work with Hitchcock is not considered supremely important to a very, very long career, and she poses a genuine challenge to me, to the point where I almost didn't include her.  After all, if I was going to limit the films of Maureen O'Hara to 4 or 5 Saturdays, I wouldn't include Jamaica Inn.  It launched her career, sure, but it was her later films with John Ford that really got her noticed & are considered the most important of her career; even with me excluding How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Quiet Man (her three most well-known pictures, all of which I've seen & thus are "ineligible" for this series), Jamaica Inn wasn't as big of a film for her.  However, O'Hara represents the first time that Hitchcock would work with a truly legendary actress, someone who would be known for films outside of his purview for much of her career (even though he wouldn't have known that at the time), and so I think it'll be fascinating to watch O'Hara work here with both Hitchcock and Ford (we'll watch one of her pictures with Ford in a few weeks), to see how she matures as a performer from two very early pictures in her career and then two more from when she was a very well-established star.  I hope you enjoy this little twist on our Saturdays with the Stars series as we look at the work of Maureen O'Hara this April.