Dave’s Top 5: Maureen O’Hara

1991's Only The Lonely was Maureen O'Hara's last film appearance. Written and directed by Chris Columbus, who directed a couple Harry Potter films, the first two Home Alone films and Mrs. Doubtfire, the film is almost an updating of the classic Marty, that starred Ernest Borgnine (who?) O'Hara plays crusty Rose Muldoon, the late John Candy's mother. Candy is a Chicago cop, who meets and falls in love with Ally Sheedy, a mortician. O'Hara's Rose is one of the challenges the couple faces on their way to a happily ever after. It's set in Chicago, my favorite city, and gets a 62% score at Rotten Tomatoes.

She made five films with John Wayne. A few of them seem to follow them through the years as an on-screen couple. You can start with 1952's The Quiet Man and see the pair meet, court and enjoy their honeymoon together. John Wayne made a lot of Westerns, but here he's an American boxer that retires to his native Ireland and the country. He falls in love with O'Hara's Mary Kate and must overcome her brother to reach their happily ever after. The Quiet Man is a classic, with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score.

1963's McLintock! is a loose, Western version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. I usually watch The Quiet Man and then McLintock! O'Hara plays Katherine McLintock. The story is about her coming back to town after a misunderstanding to take their daughter, played by Stephanie Powers back East, where there is more culture and civilization. The real story is the misunderstanding between Wayne's George Washington McLintock and O'Hara's Katherine. The moral of the movie is that you can spank a woman, and she might end up liking it...

Wayne and O'Hara had a really awesome chemistry together. In 1971, they made Big Jake. They were both older more mature. O'Hara plays the McCandles matriarch, Martha. She and Wayne's Jacob "Big Jake" are divorced. After a gang rampages across the homestead and kidnaps Little Jake, Martha summons Big Jake to bring him back. The pair hatch a plot that they keep from everyone else, including the kidnappers until the very last second. Big Jake never reveals his own identity to the kidnappers until the very end. Big Jake earns an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Miracle on 34th Street is the real deal. A holiday classic right up there with A Christmas Carol, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Christmas Story and It's A Wonderful Life. It's a multiple Academy Award winning film. O'Hara did not win an Oscar for her performance, but she should have. She plays Doris Walker, a single, working mom - in 1947. She's the event director at Macy's - in 1947. Her Santa is drunk at the Thanksgiving Day Parade and Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn's Kris Kringle fills in for him. He sticks around for the holiday season to convince O'Hara and her daughter, played by Natalie Wood that there really is a Santa Claus. Kringle helps her find love with her neighbor, played by John Payne, and a house in the suburbs. The film earns a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, even though the cynicism is softened a little by a heaping spoonful of sugary sentimentality. It's full of random acts of kindness.