In the early 1950s the prevailing image of Maureen O’Hara, who has died aged 95, was one of a feisty heroine, red hair blazing, who was more than a match for her male co-stars. Big John “Duke” Wayne, whom she partnered in five films, said of her: “I’ve had many male friends in my life except for one, O’Hara; and she’s a great guy.” The great director John Ford, with whom she also worked so often, referred to her as “a man’s kind of woman”.
In The Quiet Man (1952), Ford’s Irish pastoral-romantic-comedy, the blue-bloused, scarlet-skirted, bare-footed O’Hara, as Mary Kate Danaher, is first seen by Wayne as she tends her sheep. “Hey, is that real?” he asks. “She couldn’t be.” At their second meeting Wayne tries to kiss her, and she tries to sock him. “Watch that scene, and you’ll see Duke put his hand up,” O’Hara once said. “He deflects my blow because he knew me so well. He knew I was for real. I was hitting him.”
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