Maureen O’Hara Protested Hollywood Sexual Harassment — in 1945

An article published in The Mirror seventy-two years ago

Title: Star’s Love Strike

Irish film star Maureen O’Hara to-day charged Hollywood producers and directors with calling her “A cold potato without sex appeal” because she refuses to let them make love to her, says the Mirror New York correspondent.

“I am so upset with it that I am ready to quit Hollywood,” Maureen says. “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 around town that I am not a woman — that I am a cold piece of marble statuary. 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, who died in 2015, is best known for starring in How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and The Quiet Man (1952).