From Publishers Weekly
Film legend O'Hara (b. 1920) and her collaborator, Nicoletti, have assembled a delightful anecdotal autobiography. She calls it "the tale of the toughest Irish lass who ever took on Hollywood and became a major leading lady of the silver screen." Born in a Dublin suburb, Maureen FitzSimons was a child radio actress, joined the Abbey Theater at age 14 and was cast in two major films before she was 19. After Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) came The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), launching her career of 60 films. Many were top productions, yet O'Hara never received an Oscar nomination: "Hollywood would never allow my talent to triumph over my face." She recalls highlights and hurdles, including confrontations with stars and directors, commenting, "I have acted, punched, swashbuckled, and shot my way through an absurdly masculine profession during the most extraordinary of times." With her hazel-green eyes and red hair, O'Hara was dubbed "Queen of Technicolor," but yearned for more than "decorative roles." During her lengthy friendships with John Wayne and director John Ford, she saw "the darker side of John Ford, the mean and abusive side." In concluding chapters, she writes about her TV appearances as a vocalist, the mysteries surrounding the death of her husband, Brig. Gen. Charles F. Blair and her life in the Virgin Islands, where she ran an airline (Antilles Air Boats) and became publisher of Virgin Islander magazine. Hollywood's heyday returns to life in this revealing, insightful memoir. O'Hara treats readers like close friends, and her powerful personality is evident throughout. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The true leading lady has been gone from movie screens long enough that we can now ask ourselves if we miss her. So let's start by seeing how much we've missed Maureen O'Hara, a case study in second billing -- an immaculately lovely actress who could be tough or yielding as the occasion required but who was rarely required to carry the occasion. She was instead carried (sometimes literally) by square-jawed, square-framed leading men (John Wayne, most often) who could admire her pluck and sass without ceding any male prerogative. Maureen O'Hara was the woman who said she wouldn't be waiting when they got back -- and always was.So let's put O'Hara front and center for a change, and let's pick her up when she's still Maureen FitzSimons, an ambitious young Dublin girl from a proud, attention-hungry family. The lassie is all set to embark on a career with the Abbey Theatre when the movies come calling, in the portly form of Charles Laughton. He can't stand her screen test, but he's taken by her dauntless hazel-green eyes, and so, still in her teens, she becomes his co-star in "Jamaica Inn" (1938), and then she's Esmeralda to his Quasimodo, and he's all set to cast her in another film when the war intervenes.Marooned in Hollywood, she takes whatever flotsam comes her way, and before long, another man comes to her rescue: the irascible and already legendary director John Ford. He's an almighty mess and a self-proclaimed Irish republican, but he drops her into the sentimentalized Wales of "How Green Was My Valley," and, soon enough, she's helping him enact masculine myths of the West ("Rio Grande") and the U.S. Army ("The Long Gray Line") and, of course, Ireland ("The Quiet Man"). And even when he's brutalizing her on and off the set, she's careful not to protest too much. Or maybe it's just because she's too eaten alive by that husband of hers, the alcoholic nut job who lives off her and cheats on her and punches her in the stomach when she's pregnant with his child. But she gets a divorce and a new lover, and then, just as her career is tapering off, she finds marital bliss with Charlie Blair, an aviation pioneer who gets himself killed in a plane crash that is never satisfactorily explained. And then her best friend, John Wayne, dies, and what is there to live for? But she keeps on going because, by heaven, she's "a tough Irishwoman" who's never lost her faith in God and never will.It's a movie, all right, but is it a book? Maybe, but not this book. 'Tis Herself is everything you'd expect from a film-star memoir, and less: clock-punch prose, self-serving anecdotes, absurdly perfunctory allusions to world events ("Vietnam was over. Watergate had come and gone, and a gentle peanut farmer was poised to become president") and liberal heapings of dirt on the safely dead. If anything, the gossip in 'Tis Herself, coming from someone who prides herself on her piety, has a more rancid aftertaste than usual. O'Hara reminds you of that angel-faced Catholic schoolgirl in the back row who waits for Sister's head to turn and then shanghais the nearest ear. (Lana Turner lied about her age! Peter Lawford and Richard Boone got caught in a male brothel!) Amid all this settling of scores and posing for statues, a reader's only recourse is to pick up the threads that the memoirist, in her haste, has dropped. And so we note the curious way in which O'Hara's life and career have overlapped with gay or bisexual men: Laughton, to begin with; and second husband Will Price, who in addition to being a wife-beating lush, reportedly dabbled with men; and in the one plot twist that took me by surprise, John Ford, who is caught by O'Hara in a major liplock with "one of the most famous leading men in the picture business." (Oh, wouldn't you like to know? So would I.) Ford's lowering presence nicely illustrates the book's other unspoken theme: the degree to which O'Hara, a self-styled man's woman, let herself be man's punching bag. She was, by her own account, coerced into marrying Husband No. 1, coerced out of her money by Husband No. 2 and coerced by Husband No. 3 into giving up her career. And in between husbands, there was always "Pappy" Ford, a labyrinth of "secrecy, lies, and aggression" who sent her mash notes and undermined her career, made nice with her family and humiliated her in public, treated her as a muse and then sicced law enforcement on her. Ever the good battered wife, she excuses his malice as a perverted form of love and coos to his departed spirit: "I love you too, Pappy." This recurrent pattern of submission sits bizarrely on a woman who insists she "always gave as good as I got" and was "only on her knees before God." But the same dichotomies play out in her films. For all the beauty of her complexion and the purity of her John Singer Sargent profile, she was reduced, time after time, to the shrew waiting to be tamed. And tamed she was: defanged by Errol Flynn in "Against All Flags," publicly spanked by John Wayne in "McLintock!" (with a hand shovel), hauled by Wayne from glen to glen in "The Quiet Man" (rupturing one of her disks in the process). Did it ever occur to her, while her good friend Duke was dragging her facedown through a field of sheep dung and good Pappy Ford was looking on with an approving smile, that there was a cost to being a man's woman, that being a leading lady doesn't necessarily lead anywhere? If it crossed her mind, she's not telling. Reviewed by Louis BayardCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
John Wayne called her the "greatest guy he ever knew." She matched wits with Errol Flynn and traded barbs with Rex Harrison. Now 83, O'Hara looks back on her lengthy and legendary career in a captivating chronicle of Hollywood's heyday. O'Hara was known for her shimmering red hair and smoldering green eyes, and by looks and talents coincided with the advent of Technicolor movies, yet from Rio Grande to The Quiet Man, the roles she played on screen often mirrored her off-stage persona: tough, courageous women trying to survive in, as she puts it, an "absurdly masculine" world. Highly principled and high-spirited, O'Hara would go toe-to-toe with the tabloids and knock heads with studio brass. Throughout it all, she remained a woman of both physical and moral strength and integrity. In an open and sincere look back at a tumultuous career that spanned more than six decades, from London's Abbey Theatre to the Great White Way, O'Hara tells her own story as only she can: honestly, frankly, and unapologetically. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
"You are about to read the tale of the toughest Irish lass who ever took on Hollywood and became a major leading lady....In a career that has lasted more than sixty years, I have acted, punched, swashbuckled, and shot my way through an absurdly masculine profession....As a woman, I'm proud to say that I stood toe-to-toe with the best of them and made my mark on my own terms. I'm Maureen O'Hara and this is my life story." -- From Chapter One of 'Tis Herself In language that is blunt, straightforward, and totally lacking in artifice, Maureen O'Hara, one of the greatest and most enduring stars of Hollywood's "Golden Era," for the first time tells the story of how she succeeded in the world's most competitive business. Known for her remarkable beauty and her fiery screen persona, Maureen O'Hara came to Hollywood when she was still a teenager, taken there by her mentor, the great actor Charles Laughton. Almost immediately she clashed with the men who ran the movie business -- the moguls who treated actors like chattel, the directors who viewed every actress as a potential bedmate. Determined to hold her own and to remain true to herself, she fought for roles that she wanted and resisted the advances of some of Hollywood's most powerful and attractive men. It was in the great director John Ford that she first found someone willing to give her a chance to prove herself as an important actress. Beginning with the Academy Award-winning How Green Was My Valley, she went on to make five films with Ford and through him first met the great John Wayne, with whom she also made five films. In O'Hara, Ford had found his ideal Irish heroine, a role that achieved its greatest realization in The Quiet Man. And in O'Hara, John Wayne found his ideal leading lady, for she was perhaps the only actress who could hold her own when on screen with "The Duke." Ford, however, was not without his quirks, and his relationship with his favorite actress became more and more complex and ultimately deeply troubled. The on-screen relationship between Wayne and O'Hara, on the other hand, was transformed into a close friendship built on mutual respect, creating a bond that endured until his death. Writing with complete frankness, O'Hara talks for the first time about these remarkable men, about their great strengths and their very human failings. She writes as well about many of the other actors and actresses -- Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, John Candy, Natalie Wood, to name a few -- with whom she worked, but ultimately it is about herself that she is most revealing. With great candor and a mixture of pride and regret, she reflects on just how this young girl from Ireland made it to America and onto movie screens all around the world. There were missteps, of course -- a troubled and deeply destructive marriage, a willingness to trust too readily in others -- but there were triumphs and great happiness as well, including her marriage to the aviation pioneer Brigadier General Charles F. Blair, who tragically died in a mysterious plane crash ten years after their marriage. Throughout, 'Tis Herself is informed by the warmth and charm and intelligence that defined Maureen O'Hara's performances in some sixty films, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Miracle on 34th Street to The Parent Trap to McLintock! to Only the Lonely. 'Tis Herself is Maureen O'Hara's story as only she can tell it, the tale of an Irish lass who believed in herself with the strength and determination to make her own dreams come true.


About the Author
Maureen O'Hara has homes in St. Croix and Ireland.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: The Gypsy and the Two-Headed Beast My whole life was foretold to me. I peered out the crack of our door and found an old Romany Gypsy standing hunched on our porch in the hot afternoon sun. She smiled down at me and took my five-year-old hands in hers, then turned my palms upward and read my fortune. "You will leave Ireland one day and become a very famous woman known all around the world. You are going to make a fortune and be very, very rich." Then she held my hands in the light and cackled, "But it will all slip through your fingers one day." I pulled my hands away and answered with certainty, "I'll never leave Ireland." Then I closed the door. I thought the old girl was silly. I didn't need a Gypsy to tell me what my place in the world would be. I already knew. I believed from the time I was able to think that I was going to set the world on fire. You are about to read the tale of the toughest Irish lass who ever took on Hollywood and became a major leading lady of the silver screen. In a career that has lasted for over sixty years, I have acted, punched, swashbuckled, and shot my way through an absurdly masculine profession during the most extraordinary of times. As a woman, I'm proud to say that I stood toe-to-toe with the best of them and made my mark on my own terms. I'm Maureen O'Hara, and this is my life story. So did the old Gypsy get it right? And who is the real Maureen O'Hara anyway? I bet that's what you really want to know. Before I answer and we begin our journey together, I want to tell you why I've decided to write this book. For one thing, I do feel a sense of responsibility for sharing my thoughts and experiences about the most remarkable era in filmmaking history -- Hollywood's golden age. There aren't many of us left who can honestly look back and give you a taste of its delicious insanity and glamour. More important, though, I'm finally ready to confront my long life with open eyes. I'm ready to revisit those treacherous hills I once climbed, and eager to kill any fear deargs (pronounced "far darrigs") that may still be lurking in the shadows. I also want to set the record straight about my life in my own words before some self-serving writer pens a heap of rubbish about me after I'm gone from this earth. My favorite untrue story ever written about me is that I once lived in a magnificent Arabian palace with tall towers and a long swimming pool filled with waters of sapphire blue. Each night, I descended its marble steps and swam from one end to the other, cooling my naked body, while castrated slaves in white turbans and loincloths pointed flaming torches to light my way. What fabulous rubbish. You already know that I am an actress and movie star. Some see me as a former screen siren, while others remember me as the dame who gave as good as she got with Duke. To some I'm the first woman swashbuckler, while others think of me as a pirate queen. I've done as many tearjerkers as I have movies with crazy stunts. I was once called "Frozen Champagne" and "Window Dressing," which still annoys me. I much preferred "Big Red" or "the Queen of Technicolor." Many women have written to me over the years and said that I've been an inspiration to them, a woman who could hold her own against the world. That's lovely. The great director John Ford paid me my favorite compliment by saying I was the best "effin' " actress in Hollywood. Much of this story, though, is part of a public persona that was carefully sewn together, like a magnificent quilt, by the powerful Hollywood studio system. An entire publicity team had to see to it that at least one item about me was published every day. Many were total lies or studio publicity department inventions. Hollywood gossip queens like Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper then built on these myths in their daily columns, which were read as Gospel by millions. Of course, my loved ones know me in a far more intimate way. To them I'm just Mammy, Gran', or Auntie Maureen -- a lousy cook but one helluva cleaning lady. I am and have been all of these things throughout my personal and professional lives, but no one of them defines me. Above all else, deep in my soul, I'm a tough Irishwoman. 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 believes she is the best at whatever she does and proceeds through life with that knowledge. She can face any hazard that life throws her way and stay with it until she wins. She is loyal to her kinsmen and accepting of others. She's not above a sock in the jaw if you have it coming. She is only on her knees before God. Yes, I am most definitely an Irishwoman. My heritage has been my grounding, and it has brought me peace. Being tough and strong have always been my most dominant characteristics, like a fire that burns deep within me. I have always believed that I can do anything I set my mind to, as long as I'm willing to make the necessary sacrifices. I have called upon this fire to achieve my goals and survive whenever I felt my world come crashing down around me. In this way, I am like many of the women I've played on-screen. And yet you will soon read about two events in my life that caused me to stumble and do exactly the opposite of what you and I would expect Maureen O'Hara to do. They involve my first two marriages and may jolt you. One was a comedy of youth, but the other was a tragedy of inexperience. Still, if the events of our youth shape us into who we become, then one incident in particular had the greatest impact on me. It happened when I was a young schoolgirl at the Irish Sisters of Charity school in Milltown. There were two old biddies there who just couldn't stand me. I never knew why they disliked me so, but they jeered at and ridiculed me every day. Miss O'Meara taught English in room 8 and Miss Cook taught math in room 7. But I never saw them as two old teachers. To me they were one, a large and ugly beast joined at the side like Siamese twins, with two heads that shared one small brain and an even smaller heart. (Allow me just a smidgeon of lat-itude here. I've waited seventy years for this!) One day I was sent to school wearing a brand-new sweater. My mother always dressed me and my sisters in matching outfits when we were growing up, but each of us had our own special color and mine was red. I was walking down the hall with my older sister and she looked marvelous in her new blue sweater. At fourteen, Peggy already had a figure, but, at twelve, I was still an awkward girl -- big, tall, and freckled. As Peggy and I made our way to class, we came upon the two old biddies in the hallway. "Peggy," purred Miss O'Meara, "that sweater looks beautiful on you." Miss Cook followed her lead. "Yes it does. Just beautiful." But as I scurried behind Peggy, the two old biddies quickly transformed into the two-headed beast and lashed out at me. "And, Maureen," Miss O'Meara's head went on snidely. "Whatever are you hiding under your sweater? A football?" I tried to ignore her and kept walking with my head down in anger while Miss Cook's head burst into laughter. Their shrill cackles followed me down that hallway. I was angry, and worst of all, I was hiding. My first class of the day was English, with Miss O'Meara. Should I go or should I run? I wondered. I felt the fire inside me. It told me that I couldn't run. So I turned the doorknob and entered. Miss O'Meara was standing in front of her desk, before the class, holding the morning edition of the local newspaper, the Irish Independent. Over the previous weekend, I had entered a very prominent acting festival and had won the top prize. It was such a big competition that the Irish Independent placed the story, with my picture, on the front page of the paper. Miss O'Meara's eyes were fixed on the article, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a smirk. As the door closed behind me, she turned her attention to me with intensity. "And here she is at last," Miss O'Meara began, sarcasm dripping from her mouth. "The newest star of Dublin theater, Miss Maureen FitzSimons." I moved quickly across the room to my seat, not saying a word. "Maureen, I was just sharing with the class your triumphant victory at this weekend's festival." Her eyes narrowed on me as she continued. "However did you do it? How could you win such an important acting competition?" The class began to giggle and I felt the heat of the spotlight burning my body. I remained silent, my head down, as Miss O'Meara continued. "Perhaps you could give the class just a taste of your extraordinary talent. Come up and show us what you did to win the competition." She followed her challenge with laughter and the entire class joined her. As the sound of it covered me, I felt that fire burning in my belly. It grew in intensity and extended throughout my body. It lifted me, and I knew at that moment that I would never surrender to anyone's jeers. I wouldn't go up there to save my life. I wouldn't give that old biddy the satisfaction. I folded my arms across my chest and locked eyes with her, freezing them. Then I stuck my lower lip out at her defiantly and held it there. I had never been openly defiant, not ever, and it caught her by surprise. The smile washed from her face. "No? You won't share with the class? I see. Then come with me." She moved toward the door and opened it. We moved down the hall, and Miss O'Meara opened the door that led into room 7, holding it for me to enter. Miss Cook looked up with surprise as Miss O'Meara and I joined her at the head of the class. They melded together again, transforming into the two-headed beast. O'Meara's head spoke first. "Miss Cook, I thought you would like to share the good news with your class. Our Maureen has made the newspapers for her acting." Cook's head joined in. "Yes, I heard that she had," she said coldly. "How wonderful for you." O'Meara's head continued. "I've been trying to coax Maureen to share what she did to win." Cook's head picked up fast on where this was going. "Yeeeees. Wouldn't that be fun? Please, Maureen, do perform for the class. We would all love to see what you did to win." I remained silent, unwilling to give an inch. As far as I was concerned, this was a battle between good and evil. "Just give us a little sample," Cook's head went on, "of that enormous talent you must have." O'Meara's head began to laugh and Cook's soon followed. Then the entire class joined in. I stood there in front of the class with my arms folded, lower lip sticking out, looking at them all with defiant eyes. I was deeply, deeply hurt by their behavior but determined not to show it. Instead, I made a promise to myself. I swore that those two old biddies, that two-headed beast, would never beat me. I would win. I would stand up straight and take it all on the chin. I wouldn't let them or anyone else ever knock me down again. Just you wait, I promised them in my head. I'm going to become the most famous actress in the world and one day you both are going to boast to everyone you know that I was in your class. Then I'm going to tell the entire world how deeply you hurt me. That day, I swore I'd keep my promise. If need be, I'd lick the world. And what a big world it proved to be. Copyright © 2004 by Maureen O1Hara and John Nicoletti

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Known for her remarkable beauty and her fiery screen persona, Maureen O'Hara came to Hollywood when she was a still a teenager, taken there by her mentor, the great actor Charles Laughton. Almost immediately she clashed with the men who ran the movie business - the moguls who treated actors like chattel, the directors who viewed every actress as a potential bedmate." "Determined to hold her own and to remain true to herself, she fought for roles that she wanted and resisted the advances of some of Hollywood's most powerful and attractive men. It was in the great director John Ford that she first found someone willing to give her a chance to prove herself as an important actress. Beginning with the Academy Award-winning How Green Was My Valley, she went on to make five films with Ford and through him first met the great John Wayne, with whom she also made five films." "In O'Hara, Ford had found his ideal Irish heroine, a role that achieved its greatest realization in The Quiet Man. And in O'Hara, John Wayne found his ideal leading lady, for she was perhaps the only actress who could hold her own when on screen with "The Duke." Ford, however, was not without his quirks, and his relationship with his favorite actress became more and more complex and ultimately deeply troubled. The on-screen relationship between Wayne and O'Hara, on the other hand, was transformed into a close friendship built on mutual respect, creating a bond that endured until his death." "Writing with complete frankness, O'Hara talks for the first time about these remarkable men, about their great strengths and their very human failings. She writes as well about many of the other actors and actresses - Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, John Candy, Natalie Wood, to name a few - with whom she worked, but ultimately it is about herself that she is most revealing. With great candor and a mixture of pride and regret, she reflects on just how this young girl from Ireland made it to America an

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Film legend O'Hara (b. 1920) and her collaborator, Nicoletti, have assembled a delightful anecdotal autobiography. She calls it "the tale of the toughest Irish lass who ever took on Hollywood and became a major leading lady of the silver screen." Born in a Dublin suburb, Maureen FitzSimons was a child radio actress, joined the Abbey Theater at age 14 and was cast in two major films before she was 19. After Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) came The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), launching her career of 60 films. Many were top productions, yet O'Hara never received an Oscar nomination: "Hollywood would never allow my talent to triumph over my face." She recalls highlights and hurdles, including confrontations with stars and directors, commenting, "I have acted, punched, swashbuckled, and shot my way through an absurdly masculine profession during the most extraordinary of times." With her hazel-green eyes and red hair, O'Hara was dubbed "Queen of Technicolor," but yearned for more than "decorative roles." During her lengthy friendships with John Wayne and director John Ford, she saw "the darker side of John Ford, the mean and abusive side." In concluding chapters, she writes about her TV appearances as a vocalist, the mysteries surrounding the death of her husband, Brig. Gen. Charles F. Blair and her life in the Virgin Islands, where she ran an airline (Antilles Air Boats) and became publisher of Virgin Islander magazine. Hollywood's heyday returns to life in this revealing, insightful memoir. O'Hara treats readers like close friends, and her powerful personality is evident throughout. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Mitchell Waters. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Dubbed "The Queen of Technicolor" owing to her red hair and green eyes, Maureen O'Hara defined the strong, determined woman in such classics as How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man. But she was never given credit for her acting abilities, and in her memoir, the eightyish actress means to set the record straight. Fact: she was a member of the renowned Abbey Theater in Dublin, Ireland, when actor Charles Laughton discovered her (later, she was cast at his request in The Hunchback of Notre Dame). In a no-nonsense tone, O'Hara candidly shares tales of her costars (e.g., Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Tyrone Power) and of her personal life-which was marked by a na vet that went against her screen persona. She married two men whom she didn't mean to marry and doesn't know why; she also asserts that director John Ford didn't really love her despite her evidence to the contrary-and she believes that her third husband was a secret CIA operative. Celebrity mavens will lap up this engrossing addition to the autobiography genre; little has been written about O'Hara, one of the last surviving members of Old Hollywood. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/03.]-Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Libs., Salinas, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews