Maureen O’Hara, the red-headed Hollywood icon, may not have won any Oscars when she was still acting. But on Saturday, November 8, she will be getting an honorary Oscar for her work. She will be receiving the award alongside Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Claude Carriere, and Harry Belafonte. O’Hara is known for her work with filmmaker John Ford, especially the films Rio Grande and The Quiet Man, both of which also starred her longtime friend John Wayne.
“It’s just absolutely wonderful. I keep thinking, ‘Oh, this is a league of baloney. They’re not telling me the truth,’” she said in a recent interview. One of her films with John Ford, How Green Was My Valley, received the best picture award in the Oscars back in 1941.
Honorary Oscars awarded to Belafonte, O’Hara, animator Miyazaki, screenwriter Carriere http://t.co/5mPhBS0Aqj pic.twitter.com/YN0DEpPZJ5
— CBS Entertainment (@CBSShowbiz) November 9, 2014
O’Hara also gave a phone interview with Los Angeles Magazine. In it, she spoke at length about her excitement. “How do you explain the reaction to something you wished you had won? It was wonderful. I was thrilled every time I won a prize in life for acting,” she told the interviewer.
She also reveals in the interview that out of all her films, The Quiet Man remains her favorite. The film centers on an Irish-American played by John Wayne, who returns to his hometown in Ireland. O’Hara played the role of Mary Kate Danaher, Wayne’s love interest in the film.
John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara made five films together. “He was a great friend. He would do anything for you. He was a family man. He was a real man’s man and it was wonderful to have him in this world with us and be sent here to do whatever God wanted him to do,” O’Hara said when she was asked about Wayne.
Her final film was Only the Lonely, which came out in 1991 and also starred the late comedian John Candy.