Maureen O'Hara - The Man Who Changed Her Life

AFTER TWO FAILED MARRIAGES, THE IRISH-AMERICAN ACTRESS FOUND TRUE LOVE WITH A HANDSOME PILOT

- LOUISE A. BARILE

In July 1969, Maureen O’Hara left the set of How Do I Love Thee? for a whirlwind flight around the world with her husband, Capt. Charles F. Blair. The trip, Charlie’s last before he retired as a senior pilot for Pan Am, would take them from New York to Germany, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. “I got to live the adventures I’d only acted out on the Fox and Universal lots,” she gushed.

Until she fell in love with Charlie, Maureen had put all her passion into her work. “My first ambition was to be the No. 1 actress in the world,” confessed the Dublin-born performer, who became a star going toe-to-toe with Hollywood heavyweights Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Wayne, her five-time costar. Unlike most of her female contemporaries, Maureen did her own stunts. “I was proficient with the sword. I was a fine talent with a bullwhip. I could take a cigarette out of your mouth and toss it in the air and catch it,” she boasted.

But when it came to affairs of the heart, the flame-haired, green-eyed beauty had rotten luck — until Charlie changed her everything. They would have only a decade together, and his death under mysterious circumstances would haunt Maureen, but she called their marriage “the best time of my life.”

The pair met on the London set of The Forbidden Street in 1947 but didn’t get together romantically until two decades later when Maureen’s brother set them up on a friendly dinner date in Los Angeles. “We talked about our lives. His children…were going to school with my daughter,” Maureen remembers about that night. Afterward, “he started calling me every time he came into town.”

HEARTBREAK & HEALING