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21 Aug 2009
As Pantibar customers will know, all our pizzas are called
after great Irish women, like….
Maureen O’Hara
She was born Maureen FitzSimons in 1920 in Ranelagh, to the
rather significantly named Charles Stuart Parnell FitzSimons and his wife
Marguerita. Her father was a businessman and part owner of Shamrock Rovers
football club, which suddenly makes Shamrock Rovers a lot more glamorous in my
trannie book! According to my gay Buzz, who’s obsessed with Rovers, she used to
sell programmes at the games in Milltown.
She trained at the Abbey theatre, and landed her first big
movie when she was 19 - Hitchcock’s Jamaica
Inn. It was her performance in that movie that persuaded Charles Laughton
to cast her as Esmerelda opposite him in The
Hunchback Of Notre Dame. The movie was to be filmed in Hollywood, and only
hours before she was to set sail for the US, she ran off and married a young
fella from the studio. When her mother and Laughton found out they freaked out
and grabbed her before the newlyweds had a chance to consummate the marriage
(Boo!) and bundled her back onto the ship. The marriage was annulled two years
later at the insistence of her parents. (How very Britney Spears!)
Of course Hunchback was
a huge hit and Maureen never looked back. She is probably best remembered for
the movies she did with director John Ford, and with her great friend, John
Wayne. She often played fiery, head-strong red-heads, and is probably best
loved – in this country anyway – for one such role” Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man. That movie loomed large
in my childhood because it was shot in Cong Co. Mayo, only three miles form my
hometown of Ballinrobe. As kids we would watch it on the telly and wait for our
big moment, when during the famous fight scene in the village, the policeman
would pick up the phone, wind the handle, and shout “Get me the the Ballinrobe
police!”. We thought we were famous!
She starred in over fifty movies, including The Quiet Man, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Rio
Grande, The Parent Trap (the
original one!), Miracle on 34th Street (the original one. Sheesh! Do you kids know nothing?!), Buffalo Bill, and Lady Godiva Of Coventry, which I’ve never seen but must seek out
after seeing this amazing picture…
pizza girls
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