page_title: Maureen O'Hara
section_title: Personal life and death
hierarchical_section_title: Maureen O'Hara / Personal life and death
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Maureen O’Hara’s dress shop in Tarzana, Los Angeles, from Modern Screen magazine.
context_page_description: Maureen O'Hara was an Irish actress and singer. She was a famous redhead who was known for playing passionate, but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. On numerous occasions, she worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne. O'Hara was one of the longest-lived stars from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood.
  O'Hara grew up in Dublin in a Catholic family and aspired to become an actress from a very young age. She trained with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She was given a screen test, which was deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton saw potential and arranged for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moved to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquired the nickname "The Queen of Technicolor".
context_section_description: In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant and occasional scriptwriter whom she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn. They married at St Paul's Church in Station Road, Harrow on 13 June, shortly before she left for Hollywood. Brown stayed behind in England to shoot a film with Paul Robeson. Brown announced that he and O’Hara had kept the marriage a secret and that they would have a full marriage ceremony in October 1939, but O'Hara never returned. The marriage was annulled in 1941.
  In December 1941, O'Hara married American film director William Houston Price who was the dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She lost her virginity to Price on her wedding night and immediately regretted it, and recalled thinking to herself "What the hell have I done now". Soon after the honeymoon O'Hara realized Price was an alcoholic. The couple had one child, a daughter, Bronwyn Bridget Price, born 30 June 1944. O'Hara's marriage to Price steadily declined throughout the 1940s due to his alcohol abuse, and she often wanted to file for divorce but felt guilty due to her Catholic beliefs. Price eventually realized the marriage was over and filed for divorce in July 1951 on the grounds of "incompatibility". Price left the house they shared in Bel Air, Los Angeles on 29 December 1951, on their 10th wedding anniversary.
  O'Hara always denied having any extramarital affairs, but in his autobiography, frequent collaborator Anthony Quinn claimed to have fallen in love with her on the set of Sinbad the Sailor. He commented that she was "dazzling, and the most understanding woman on this earth" who "brought out the Gaelic in him", being half Irish. Quinn implied that they had been involved in an affair, adding that "after a while we both tired of the deceit".
  From 1953 to 1967, O'Hara had a relationship with Enrique Parra, a wealthy Mexican politician and banker. She met him at a restaurant during a trip to Mexico in 1951. O'Hara stated that Parra "saved me from the darkness of an abusive marriage and brought me back into the warm light of life again. Leaving him was one of the most painful things I have ever had to do." As her relationship with Parra progressed, she began to learn Spanish and even enrolled her daughter in a Mexican school. She moved in 1953 to a smaller property at 10677 Somma Way in Bel Air, amid frequent visits to Mexico City, where she and Parra were very well-known celebrities. She hired a detective to follow Parra in Mexico and found that he was being fully honest about the relationship with his ex-wife and that she could trust him. John Ford intensely disliked Parra, and it affected her relationship with Ford in the 1950s as he often interfered in her affairs and frowned upon the demise of her marriage to Price, being a devout Catholic like O'Hara. Price also continued to harass O'Hara for dating Parra and filed a case against her on 20 June 1955, seeking custody of Bronwyn and accusing her of immorality. O'Hara filed a countersuit, charging him with contempt of court for refusing to pay $50 a month in child support and a $7 a month alimony. During the publicity stage of The Long Gray Line in 1955, Ford insulted O'Hara and her brother Charles when he remarked to Charles, "if that whore sister of yours can pull herself away from that Mexican long enough to do a little publicity for us, the film might have a chance at some decent returns".
  On 9 July 1957, O'Hara filed a $5 million lawsuit against Confidential magazine over allegations it made over her being engaged in sexual activity with Parra during a screening of a film at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. One of the allegations was "Maureen had entered Grauman's wearing a white silk blouse neatly buttoned. Now it wasn't", and that when the usher shone a flashlight towards them she was forced to sit up and play innocent. O'Hara proved her innocence by presenting a passport showing that she was in Spain shooting Fire Over Africa at the time. She claimed in her autobiography that she 
caption: O'Hara's boutique in Tarzana, Los Angeles in 1947
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