IT IS HARD to believe that it has already been two years since the death of silver screen legend Maureen O’Hara.
O’Hara’s legacy lives on in many ways. This weekend, the Ranelagh native is being remembered for something other than her brilliant acting and glamour.
A 1945 interview with the actress from The Mirror New York has emerged, and it shows that sexual harassment and assault have been huge problems in Hollywood for at least three-quarters of a decade.
At the time of the interview, O’Hara would have been 25-years-old. She complained that producers and directors had been calling her “A cold potato without sex appeal” because she was unwilling to “let them make love to her”.
I am so upset with it that I am ready to quit Hollywood. It’s got so bad I hate to come to work in the morning. I’m a helpless victim of a Hollywood whispering campaign.
Because I don’t let the producer and director kiss me every morning or let them paw me, they have spread word around town that I am not a woman – that I am a cold piece of marble statuary.
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She continued:
I guess Hollywood won’t consider me as anything except a cold hunk of marble until I divorce my husband, give my baby away and get my name and photograph in all the newspapers. If that’s Hollywood’s idea of being a woman, I’m ready to quit now.
O’Hara is being widely praised for having the courage to speak out about the behaviour of directors and producers 72 years ago.
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Others shared stories of how their grandmothers fared in Hollywood.
One woman wrote that in 1945, her mother was invited to Hollywood for a screen test, but left shaking, crying and traumatised.
Of course it’s no surprise to hear that this may have been going on for an entire century. However, it’s amazing to see how courageous O’Hara was in speaking out just a few years into her career in Hollywood. If only she had been taken seriously.
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