John Wayne broke Maureen O’Hara’s hand on enraging The Quiet Man set

It was 71 years in the past at the moment that The Quiet Man hit UK cinemas. John Wayne teamed up with director collaborator John Ford as soon as once more for the Oscar-winning basic.

Considered by the filmmaker to be his sexist film, the plot noticed Duke’s retired boxer Sean Thornton making a pilgrimage to his house village in Ireland to say his household property throughout the Twenties.

In Ireland, Wayne’s character met his match with Maureen O’Hara’s Mary Kate Danaher and her troublesome brother Red, performed by Victor McLaglen.Shot in County Mayo and County Galway, the main woman had a troublesome time on set after filming the scene the place Duke’s Sean kisses her for the primary time.

In that second, her character slaps him throughout the face, however the Western star’s block proved so highly effective that he unintentionally broke her hand.

The Quiet Man was shot in chronological order, so the poor actress and to take care of the ache and not using a solid to reset the bone for the remainder of principal images. If that wasn’t sufficient, O’Hara was having to place up with Ford’s infamous rudeness and baiting of his actors. He’d enraged McLaglen on objective for The Quiet Man’s closing combat scene, however she wasn’t going to place up with it.

When filming the scene the place Wayne’s Sean finds her Mary Kate in his cottage, it was so windy that her hair stored getting in her face and making her squint. Ford yelled at his main woman to open her eyes, to which she fired proper again: “What would a bald-headed son of a bitch know about hair lashing across his eyeballs?!”

When it got here to taking pictures The Quiet Man’s remaining scene, Wayne was completely shocked by O’Hara’s unscripted line insisted on by Ford. The scene in query noticed the couple waving goodbye earlier than Mary Kate whispered one thing to Sean that resulted in an actual double take for the Western legend. Initially, she refused to say the thriller phrases, writing in her memoir years later, “I couldn’t possibly say that to Duke!”However, Ford insisted that she do it, to get a genuinely shocked response from her co-star, which completely labored.

Only these three knew what the road was and took it to their graves. Given that the director thought-about The Quiet Man to be his steamiest image, presumably, it was one thing thought-about risqué within the early Nineteen Fifties.