If screen-legend Maureen O'Hara seems perfect for the part she plays in the CBS movie "Cab to Canada," there's a good reason -- it was written especially for her.
"After I got to be friends with Maureen, I really designed this character for her," said Emmy-winning writer/producer Beth Polson. "It's the part of Maureen that I love -- the kind of full-of-adventure-and-life part. It really was designed to capture Maureen."And O'Hara, who hasn't made many movies since she retired back in the early 1970s, won't take just any role in any movie.
"It has to be an awfully good part," she said in a recent interview. "And I admit I would never play a small bit. I just couldn't do it. This sounds terrible but it's true -- I've been No. 1 all of my life and I would never be happy being No. 2. And so why make yourself miserable?"
Coming from someone else, that might indeed sound terrible. But when it's Maureen O'Hara, speaking with a sparkle in her eye and the wonderful Irish lilt in her voice, it's pure charm.
And O'Hara still has the same charisma -- even captivating a handful of cynical TV critics on hand to interview her.
"Cab to Canada" marks the second time Polson and O'Hara have teamed up for CBS. Their first collaboration, "The Christmas Box," was a big success and something O'Hara remains proud of.
"Each time it was shown, we were No. 1 in our time slot for three years in a row, which was quite wonderful," she said. "And Beth said, 'I'm going to find another story for you.' Then she called me one day and said, 'I have it.' "
"It" turned out to be "Cab to Canada," which airs tonight at 8 on CBS/Ch. 2. It's a charming tale of an older woman who realizes she's been living her life a bit too safe and sets out on a grand adventure -- from Pasadena, Calif., to Canada. And she sort of co-opts a cabbie (Jason Beghe) into becoming her traveling companion as they visit various cities along the way and gradually become the best of friends.
Believe it or not, "Cab" is actually based on a true-life incident.
"That was kind of the nugget of the story," Polson said "While the entire true story wasn't the drama that a two-hour movie might be, I thought it was a good opportunity to work with Maureen. Because it was a woman who had great wit in her life and great adventure and a great sense of joie de vivre, and yet a woman who had a lot of of heart and pathos. And so we tried to encompass all of that from the real character and adapt it for Maureen."
Polson did warn O'Hara that "Cab" wouldn't be a particularly easy TV movie to shoot. Although most of it was shot in the Los Angeles area, in a little over three weeks the cast and crew worked on 53 different locations.
"I was worried in the beginning about her because this was such a hard schedule," Polson said. "But about the third day I started to worry more about me than I did about her."
"I must say there were days when I could hardly get out of the cab," O'Hara said. "I had to lift my legs out I was so tired of sitting in the one position all the time."
But her co-star, Beghe ("To Have and to Hold") made it easier.
"He was always cracking jokes and everything else, so that helped a lot," O'Hara said. "I think he's wonderful. He's going to be a big, big star."
While some have speculated that O'Hara was somewhat ill-disposed toward the acting profession when she quit the business after making "Big Jake" in 1971, she said that's absolutely not the case. She'd always wanted to act. Well, almost always.
"Oh, I was about 5," O'Hara said when asked when the bug hit her. "I was always a ham. When we were kids, we used to sit in the garden -- my sister Peg and I -- and I'd say, 'I'm going to be the greatest actress in the world. And when the whole world falls down at my feet and admits it, I'll quit.
"It didn't happen."
But she did become a big success, starring in nearly 60 movies, including the 1939 version of "Hunchback of Notre Dame," "How Green Was My Valley," the original "Miracle on 34th Street," "Rio Grande," "The Quiet Man," the original "Parent Trap" and "McLintock." She left it all behind for love, however.
"I quit movies many, many years ago to marry Charlie Blair, which was the most intelligent and most wonderful thing that anybody could have ever done," O'Hara said. "I had a wonderful life with him. . . . And I would do it all over again."
(She married Blair -- the first pilot to fly solo over the North Pole -- in 1968. He was killed in a plane crash in 1978.)
And O'Hara said she never actually gave up acting.
"An actor is always prepared," she said. "You're born a ham and you remain a ham all of your life. So you're always ready to work, you're always ready to perform. Everything you do -- even getting on an airplane -- you're performing. You're showing off."
And she loved showing off in "Cab to Canada," a movie that's just her cup of tea. Just don't describe the TV movie as being loaded with sentimentality.
"Not sentimentality," she quickly corrected. "Don't use that word. It's sentiment."
And she makes no apologies for that.
"I like sentiment. I really do," O'Hara said. "I think it would be awful if we didn't have sentiment. What would we do with our hearts if we had no sentiment, no love, no kindness, no warmth? We'd be awful damn old and horrible things to be around."