LOS ANGELES- It's beginning to look a lot like a Maureen O'Hara Christmas, which is only fitting for the star of the 1947 Yuletide classic "Miracle on 34th Street."
Miss O'Hara, her Irish beauty and flaming hair ever impressive at 78, appears in a quirky movie, "Cab to Canada," Sunday on CBS. Based on a real event, it tells the story of a feisty Pasadena, Calif...septuagenarian who decides after attending an old friend's funeral to embark on an adventure.
She engages a reluctant cabbie (Jason Beghe) to drive her up the coast. After several adventures, they end up in Vancouver, B.C. In keeping with the holiday spirit, the finale features a Christmas dinner with the two travelers, his girlfriend (Catherine Bell of "JAG") and an abandoned boy (Haley Joel Osment).
CBS is also offering "The Christmas Box," the third time arund for the ratings winner based on Richard Paul Evans' best selling book. Starring Miss O'Hara and Richard Thomas, the film rebroadcast is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 23.
Miss O'Hara recently spent a few weeks in Los Angeles camping in a Brentwood house, one of her four homes. She also has an apartment in New York City, a house in West Cork, Ireland, and a showplace in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. The latter is her perennial headache.
"We've been hit by three hurricanes Hugo, Marilyn and Georges," she lamented. "Hugo took the roofs off. This time I'm going to fix the house up, sell it and get a condo. You reach a certain period when all the kids are married, they all have their own children, and their children and their wives or husbands come first.
"So you don't get anyone to go with you. And I'm not going to stay in that house all by myself."
The actress had settled in St. Croix after her 1968 marriage to Brig. Gen. Charles Blair, who operated an airline in the islands. She stayed on to oversee the airline after his death in a plane crash in 1978.
In 1991, she returned to acting as John Candy's mother in "Only the Lonely," her first film since "Big Jake" with John Wayne 18 years before. Three years ago, she was lured back for "The Christmas Box."
Although "Cab to Canada" seems like a scenic tour of the Pacific coast, Miss O'Hara confided, "Most of it was shot around L.A. When they cut away and you wouldn't be in it, then it was the real thing." A second unit captured the scenery.
"Wasn't the little boy good?" she remarked of young Osment. "Of course, I love working with kids. In "Spencer's Mountain' I had nine. Kids are awful easy to work with. All you have to do is tickle their imagination.
I've had over 40 children in films, all good. I'll tell you who had the most wonderful parents: Natalie Wood (her daughter in "Miracle on 34th Street"). Her mama was a wonderful lady." Having made her second television movie, Miss O'Hara has become acquainted with frantic working conditions, after being schooled in the slow, big-studio tradition. Following her early training at Dublin's Abbey Theater and doing films in London, she was brought to Hollywood in 1939 by Charles Laughton to appear as Esmeralda in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
Her stardom was confirmed with John Ford's 1940 Academy Award- winning "How Green Was My Valley." She note sadly that since Roddy McDowall's death, she and Anna Lee are the only cast members left.
Her rare beauty and Irish spunk made her the ideal leading lady for such stars as Tyrone Power ("The Black Swan," "The Long Gray Line"), John Wayne ("The Quiet Man," "The Wings of Eagles") and James Stewart ("Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation," "The Rare Breed".