John Wayne & Maureen O’Hara Made 5 Movies Together, But Never Topped Their 1952 Classic With 91% On Rotten Tomatoes

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara are two legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age who starred in 5 motion pictures collectively, probably the most acclaimed of which is John Ford’s 1952 traditional The Quiet Man. Wayne and Irish actor O’Hara first labored collectively in Ford’s Western romance Rio Grande two years earlier, when their on-screen chemistry rapidly grew to become obvious. However it was solely with follow-up collaboration The Quiet Man that their appearing partnership actually got here into its personal.

The movie includes a uncommon comedian flip from Wayne as Irish-American boxer “Trooper Thorn” Thornton, who strikes to rural Eire to handle his household’s homestead. O’Hara performs Thornton’s love curiosity, whose brother he should battle in considered one of John Wayne’s best fight scenes to win her hand in marriage. The Duke trades in his regular Stetson hat for a peasant’s flatcap, and his whiskey flask for “a kind of black beers,” as he calls them. In the meantime, O’Hara offers the one efficiency of her profession set in her native Eire.

The Quiet Man Was John Wayne & Maureen O’Hara’s Greatest Film Collectively

It Took Dangers Their Different Movies Did not

The parochial setting of The Quiet Man diverges from the sweeping depictions of the American West and up to date warfare with which John Ford is synonymous as a director. On the similar time, it invokes the small-town appeal of his 1941 Oscar-winner How Green Was My Valley, through which Maureen O’Hara additionally performed the feminine lead for her first main Hollywood function. It’s this setting, mixed with a efficiency from Wayne which reveals surprisingly versatile appearing chops, that units the film other than the 4 others starring the pair.

A rousing pub rendition of the Irish folks music “Wild Colonial Boy” typifies the movie’s genuine portrayal of Eire’s customs and traditions. This dedication to realism has earned The Quiet Man the one Rotten Tomatoes rating above 80% for any Wayne-O’Hara collaboration, in addition to Ford’s fourth Oscar for Best Director.

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara’s other movies observe extra risk-averse cinematic formulation, with Rio Grande successfully portray the romantic struggle western by numbers and 1971’s Massive Jake leaning closely into Wayne’s long-established curmudgeonly cowboy. Elsewhere, The Wings of Eagles greater than earns its parodic reference within the satirical Coen Brothers movie Hail, Caesar!, and the 1963 crowdpleaser McLintock! in the end serves to reveal that Wayne and O’Hara weren’t actually minimize out for exploitation cinema.

Why John Wayne & Maureen O’Hara Had been Such A Nice Onscreen Pairing

O’Hara Might Deal with the Duke’s Massive-Display Charisma

However, there’s a motive why John Ford’s two favourite lead actors straddled three a long time and 4 genres collectively on the large display screen. O’Hara might match Wayne’s on-screen charisma like few different feminine actors on the time, whereas their compatibility for bodily comedy is especially evident in The Quiet Man.

Likewise, in relation to romance, the pair provide up a simple mixture of pressure and repartee that belies Wayne’s legacy as a gun-toting hardman of Western adventure stories. “Who gave you allow to be kissing me?” O’Hara’s heroine Mary Kate Danaher calls for of him in The Quiet Man. For as soon as, the Duke defers to a lady’s self-control, and O’Hara, in flip, opens up a young aspect to him seldom seen throughout his half-century in cinema.