Steph Littlepage Beep/Bop/Boop 🇮🇱

John Ford punched her in the jaw in front of everyone. She didn't flinch. A tabloid fabricated a sex scandal to destroy her. She pulled out her passport and destroyed them instead. Hollywood called her "too difficult." Maureen FitzSimons was born on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh—a working-class suburb of Dublin, Ireland. Her mother, Marguerita, was an opera singer. Her father, Charles, owned part of the Shamrock Rovers football club and ran a business in Dublin. The family was musical, theatrical, and Irish Catholic. Maureen and her siblings—Peggy, Charles, Florrie, Margot, and James—all trained in drama and music. As a child, Maureen was a tomboy. Rough and athletic. They called her "baby elephant" because she played like the boys—football, swimming in the River Dodder, riding horses. She was also the only redhead in the family, which made her self-conscious. But when she performed—when she stood on a stage—everything changed. By age 10, she'd joined the Rathmines Theatre Company. By 14, she was accepted to the Abbey Theatre—one of the most prestigious theater companies in Ireland. Her dream was to be an opera singer like her mother. Or a classical stage actress. Then, at 16, she got a screen test at Elstree Studios in London. It was a disaster. Stiff, nervous, uncomfortable in the heavy makeup and elaborate costume. But a man named Charles Laughton saw the test. He saw past the nerves. He saw her expressive eyes, her spirit, her raw presence. He cast her in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) opposite him. There was one condition: she had to change her name. "FitzSimons" was too long, too complicated. She became Maureen O'Hara. She didn't want to. But she was 18, in a foreign country, and Charles Laughton was an Oscar-winning movie star. So she agreed. Laughton then cast her as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). She was 19 years old, playing opposite one of Hollywood's biggest stars. She was starting at the top. Then World War II began. Laughton sold her contract to RKO Studios. Maureen felt abandoned. Alone in Hollywood. Homesick. Trapped in mediocre films with bad scripts. She begged her agent to get her into John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941). She got the part. The film won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. It beat Citizen Kane. Maureen O'Hara was now a star. But her relationship with John Ford was complicated. Ford nicknamed her "Rosebud." They became close friends. She visited him and his wife socially, spent time on his yacht. But Ford had darker feelings. He wrote her drunken love letters: "God, I long for you. I dream of you. Your face is constantly in my dreams." She didn't reciprocate. And Ford could be cruel. Vicious, even. One day, in front of cast and crew, he punched her in the jaw. Hard. She later said she only took it because she wanted to show him she could take a punch like a man. She refused to react. Refused to give him the satisfaction. Ford wasn't the only director who harassed her. John Farrow made "suggestive comments," followed her home, stalked her. When she made it clear she wasn't interested, he started bullying her on set. One day, she'd had enough. She punched him in the jaw. He left her alone after that. In 1950, Maureen made Rio Grande with John Wayne. It was the beginning of a legendary partnership. They'd make five films together: Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, McLintock!, and Big Jake. Wayne called her "a great guy." He said he preferred to work with men—"except for Maureen O'Hara; she's a great guy." In The Quiet Man (1952), filmed in Ireland, Maureen became an icon. Her character, Mary Kate Danaher, refuses to consummate her marriage until she gets her dowry—her furniture, her security, her autonomy. When John Wayne's character drags her through the countryside to force the issue, she fights him. Punches him. Refuses to yield. The film was shot in lush Technicolor. Maureen's red hair, green eyes, and porcelain skin looked as if Technicolor had been invented just to capture her. Wayne's character asks, "Is she real?" She was. And she was tougher than anyone expected. Maureen did her own stunts. Learned to sword fight. Earned the nickname "The Pirate Queen." People said she was a better swordsman than Errol Flynn. She was one of the first actresses to do her own stunts. But Hollywood didn't know what to do with a woman who wouldn't play by the rules. She refused to pose for scantily clad photos. "I come from a very strict family," she said. "My folks in Dublin would think I turned out bad." She was a teetotaler and non-smoker who rejected the Hollywood party lifestyle. She refused to be photographed in a bathing suit. "I don't think I looked like Lana Turner in a bathing suit, frankly." She wouldn't smoke or drink on screen for years—until she realized it would cost her jobs. Hollywood called her difficult. Prudish. Too controlling. Then, in 1957, Confidential magazine published a story that could have ended her career. The headline: "It Was the Hottest Show in Town When Maureen O'Hara Cuddled in Row 35." The tabloid claimed that an usher at Grauman's Chinese Theatre had caught Maureen and her boyfriend, Enrique Parra, in a compromising position during a movie screening. The article was graphic. Salacious. Humiliating. Maureen was furious. Other celebrities targeted by Confidential had settled out of court, afraid of more bad publicity. Not Maureen. She sued. And when the state of California launched a criminal trial against Confidential, she was the star witness. In court, the magazine's lawyers trotted out theater staff who swore the story was true. Then Maureen pulled out her passport. On the night Confidential claimed she was in Grauman's Theatre, she'd been in Spain, filming Fire Over Africa. The passport stamp proved it. The courtroom erupted. Maureen won. Confidential eventually went out of business. She'd taken on the most powerful tabloid in America—and destroyed it. In the 1960s, Maureen's career slowed. She starred in Disney's The Parent Trap (1961), then gradually stepped away from Hollywood. In 1968, she married Charles F. Blair Jr.—a former Air Force brigadier general, former chief pilot at Pan Am, founder of Antilles Air Boats airline in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She called him the love of her life. For the first time, she was truly happy. They ran the airline together. John Wayne was a regular visitor to their home. In 1978, Charles died in a plane crash. He was 69. Maureen became the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States. She came out of retirement briefly in 1991 for Only the Lonely, playing John Candy's Irish mother. In 2004, she published her memoir, 'Tis Herself. It became a New York Times bestseller and revealed decades of Hollywood sleaze, sexism, and scandal. She wrote: "Being an Irishwoman means many things to me. An Irishwoman is strong and feisty. She has guts and stands up for what she believes in… She's not above a sock in the jaw if you have it coming." In 2014, at age 94, Maureen was awarded an Honorary Oscar. She'd never been nominated—not once in her entire career. When she accepted the award from a wheelchair, she protested when they tried to cut her speech short. She died on October 24, 2015, in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho. She was 95. When she died, her family said she'd spent her final hours listening to music from The Quiet Man. Maureen O'Hara never yielded. Not to directors who harassed her. Not to studios who tried to sexualize her. Not to tabloids who tried to destroy her. She punched back. Literally and figuratively. And she won.