The Quiet Man was one of five movies O’Hara made with John Wayne, a close and devoted friend. “I was the only leading lady big enough and tough enough for John Wayne,” she wrote in her 2004 memoir, ’Tis Herself. “Duke’s presence was so strong that when audiences saw him finally meet a woman of equal hell and fire, it was exciting and thrilling.” O’Hara also included in her memoir Wayne’s admiring appraisal of her: “She’s big, lusty, absolutely marvelous — definitely my kind of woman. I’ve had many friends, and I prefer the company of men. Except for Maureen O’Hara.” Among their on-screen collaborations, McLintock! often has been cited as a particular favorite by fans of both superstars. Aptly described by film critic and historian Leonard Maltin as “slapstick variation of The Taming of the Shrew set in the Old West,” the 1963 comedy-drama is a hand-tooled star vehicle showcasing Wayne as G.W. McLintock, a swaggering man’s man who’s rich enough to accurately claim he owns “everything in this county from here to there,” and ill-behaved enough to drive his well-bred wife, Katherine (O’Hara), to establish residency back East. Two years after his wife’s departure — she suspected her husband of infidelity, and he never really denied it — Katherine returns to the territory, and to McClintock’s opulent home, to claim their Eastern-educated daughter, Becky (Stefanie Powers), and to start divorce proceedings. But Becky is in no hurry to leave after she discovers her father’s new ranch hand (Patrick Wayne, The Duke’s son) is appreciably more attractive than her Harvard-educated fiancé (Jerry Van Dyke). And Katherine reconsiders her options after falling in love with “G.W.” all over again — after he chases her through town during the movie’s climactic sequence, and none-too-playfully spanks her. The screenplay, written by Wayne favorite James Edward Grant (who also directed The Duke in Angel and the Badman), has something to do with McLintock’s attempts to help his longtime Comanche buddies in their battles against paternalistic government officials — including an officious but inept Indian agent played by Strother Martin — and something else to do with the cattle baron’s defiant efforts to demonstrate that the passing of time has done little to diminish his virility or authority. But for most viewers, then and now, the scenario serves simply as a welcome excuse for the re-teaming of Wayne with O’Hara, who had previously co-starred with The Duke in Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Wings of Eagles (1957) — she would later appear with him in Big Jake (1971) — and was praised by Patrick Wayne as “the only one who could stand up to my father, and stand toe-to-toe with my father, and match him in everything.” “When I read the script,” O’Hara recalled in a documentary produced for the DVD release of McLintock!, “I was thrilled. I thought: By God, they wrote this for the two of us.” “They had worked so frequently and so well together,” marveled co-star Stefanie Powers, “that they had their own sort of language. He’d say, ‘You’ll zig and I’ll zag, OK?’ They each knew immediately what the other was going to do, and how that would work, what would happen. And they were both very physical.”
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