In the late 1970s, O'Hara helped run her third husband Charles F. Blair Jr.'s flying business in Saint Croix in the United States Virgin Islands, and edited a magazine, but later sold them to spend more time in Glengarriff in Ireland.

[2] In November 2014, she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription "To Maureen O'Hara, one of Hollywood's brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength".

[19] During the screen test, the studio adorned her in a "gold lamé dress with flapping sleeves like wings"[20] and heavy makeup with an ornate hair style, which was deemed to be far from satisfactory.

Malone added that though the lot was "ham-fisted", it is a "quaint film which O'Hara scholars should view if only to see early evidence of her natural instinct for dramatic timing and scene interpretation".

When she returned to Ireland briefly after the film was completed it dawned on her that life would never be the same again, and she was hurt when she attempted to make pleasant conversation to some local girls and they rejected her advances, considering her to be very arrogant.

[34] As the new face of RKO, she garnered much attention from the Hollywood press and society before the film was even released, something that made her uncomfortable, as she felt that she was being viewed as a "novelty" and "people were making a fuss over me because of something I hadn't yet done, something they just thought I might do".

One critic thought that was the strength of the film, writing: "The contrast between Laughton as the pathetic hunchback and O'Hara as the fresh-faced, tenderly solicitous gypsy girl is Hollywood teaming at its most inspired".

[39] After the completion of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, World War II began, and Laughton, realizing his company could no longer film in London, sold O'Hara's contract to RKO.

Ida Zeitlin wrote that O'Hara had "reached a pitch of despair where she was about ready to throw in the towel, to break her contract, to collapse against the stone wall of indifference and howl like a baby wolf".

[65] O'Hara next played an unconventional role as a timid socialite who joins the army as a cook in Henry Hathaway's Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942), which tells the fictional story of the first class of the United States Military Academy in the early 19th century.

[67] Later that year, O'Hara starred opposite Tyrone Power, George Sanders, Laird Cregar and Anthony Quinn in Henry King's swashbuckler The Black Swan.

O'Hara recalled that it was "everything you could want in a lavish pirate picture: a magnificent ship with thundering cannons; a dashing hero battling menacing villains ... sword fights; fabulous costumes ...".

[77] "Ms. O'Hara was called the Queen of Technicolor, because when that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendor better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion.

One critic attacked O'Hara as "just another one of those precious Hollywood juvenile products who in workday life would benefit from a good hiding", while Bosley Crowther dismissed the film as a "compound of hackneyed situations, maudlin dialogue and preposterously bad acting".

[93] O'Hara was offered roles in The Razor's Edge (1946), which went to Tierney, John Wayne's film Tycoon (1947), which went to Laraine Day,[94] and Bob Hope's The Paleface, which went to Jane Russell.

[97] After a role as the Bostonian love interest of Cornel Wilde in Humberstone's The Homestretch (1947),[98] O'Hara had grown frustrated with Hollywood and took a considerable break to return to her native Ireland, where people thought she did not look well, having lost a lot of weight.

[107] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised O'Hara and Young as husband and wife, remarking that they were "delightfully clever", acting with "elaborate indignation, alternating with good-natured despair".

[110] She next had a role as a wealthy widow who falls in love with an alcoholic artist (Dana Andrews) in the Victorian melodrama The Forbidden Street,[111] which was shot at Shepperton Studios in London.

[112] After the poorly received comedy Father Was a Fullback,[113] dismissed by Picturegoer magazine as an "unhappy mixture of Freud and football",[114] she starred in her first film with Universal Pictures,[115] the escapist adventure, Bagdad, portraying Princess Marjan.

[115] Malone wrote that she sings, dances, fights, and loves in a tale of derring-do that ticks all the requisite boxes for an opulent history lesson", adding that "when it came to dexterity in action, O'Hara was a nonpareil".

[117] In the 1950 Technicolor Western, Comanche Territory, O'Hara played an unusual role as the lead character of Katie Howards, a fiery saloon owner who dresses, behaves and fights like a man, with hair tied back.

[118] She "mastered the American bullwhip" during the filming,[115] in a role which Crowther believed was "more significant than a setting sun" in that she "tackles her assignment with so much relish that the rest of the cast, even the Indians, are completely subdued.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Maureen O'Hara looks very handsome in Technicolor but her expressions are limited—mostly to disgust at shooting smugglers or pulling knives from dying men".

[173] The relationship between O'Hara and Ford grew increasingly bitter, and that year he referred to her as a "greedy bitch" to director Joseph McBride, who had shown an interest in casting her for The Rising of the Moon.

O'Hara credits Mills for the success of the film, remarking that "she really did bring two different girls to life in the movie" and wrote that "Sharon and Susan were so believable that I'd sometimes forget myself and look for the other one when Hayley and I were standing around the set".

Malone thought that she modeled her performance on Julie Andrews, "adopting a schoolmarmish voice and demeanor that ill befit her", and coming out with pious statements like "cleanliness is next to godliness".

[223] She was friends with Zanuck and Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia Pictures, who was notorious for being the "nastiest man in Hollywood",[224] Film executives respected the fact that she was bold and completely honest towards them.

O'Hara declared that she had "never had a temperamental fit in my life",[225] but did admit to walking off the set in disgust at George Montgomery nearly choking her to death with a kiss during the filming of Ten Gentleman from West Point.

[233] In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant and occasional scriptwriter whom she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn.

[221] On 9 July 1957,[252] O'Hara filed a $5 million lawsuit against Confidential magazine over allegations it made over her being engaged in sexual activity with Parra during a screening of a film at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.