This week the John Wayne estate celebrates the 71st anniversary of The Quiet Man’s release in the US. John Ford’s sexiest movie set in 1920s Ireland was Duke’s third of five collaborations with leading lady co-star Maureen O’Hara.
Although the 1952 classic became an Oscar winner, the actors suffered at the hands of director John Ford, who was notorious for baiting his stars into getting better performances out of them.
What made matters worse for O’Hara was that Wayne accidentally broke her hand in the scene where his character Sean tries to kiss her Mary Kate for the first time. During that moment, her character slaps him across the face, yet Duke’s block proved too powerful causing the breakage.
Since The Quiet Man was filmed in chronological order, poor O’Hara had to suffer without a cast to rest the bone for the rest of principal photography.On top of this, she had to deal with Ford’s constant berating which included enraging Victor McLaglen prior to his closing fight scene. However, she wasn’t going to put up with the director and exploded back at him during one fiery confrontation.
When filming the scene where Wayne’s Sean finds Mary Kate in his cottage, it was so windy that O’Hara’s hair kept getting in her face and making her squint. Ford yelled at his leading lady to open her eyes, to which she fired right back: “What would a bald-headed son of a bitch know about hair lashing across his eyeballs?!”
Nevertheless, the director did manage to convince her to whisper something so shocking and unscripted to Wayne to get a reaction from him during the final scene. Whatever it was though, the three took to their graves.