O'Hara, Mary (1885–1980)

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O'Hara, Mary (1885–1980)

American author of the bestselling My Friend Flicka. Name variations: Mary O'Hara Alsop; Mary Sture-Vasa; Mary O'Hara Alsop Sture-Vasa. Born Mary Alsop on July 10, 1885, in Cape May Point, New Jersey; died of arteriosclerosis on October 14, 1980, in Chevy Chase, Maryland; daughter of Reese Fell Alsop (an Episcopal cleric) and Mary Lee (Spring) Alsop; educated at Ingleside in New Milford, Connecticut, and at the Packer Institute in Brooklyn; studied music and languages in Europe; married Kent Parrot, in 1905 (divorced); married Helge Sture-Vasa, in 1922 (divorced 1947); children (first marriage): Mary O'Hara; Kent, Jr.

Selected works:

Let Us Say Grace (1930); My Friend Flicka (1941); Thunderhead (1943); Green Grass of Wyoming (1946); The Son of Adam Wyngate (1952, reissued as The Devil Enters by a North Window , 1990); Novel-in-the-Making (1954); Wyoming Summer (1963); The Catch Colt (play, 1964); A Musical in the Making (1966); The Catch Colt (novella, 1979); Flicka's Friend: The Autobiography of Mary O'Hara (1982).

Mary O'Hara, the future author of the beloved My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead, was born at Cape May Point, New Jersey, in

1885, and grew up in non-rural Brooklyn Heights, New York, dreaming of owning a horse. The daughter of an Episcopal minister and a descendant of William Penn and of Gardiner Spring, after whom Spring Street in New York City was named, she was writing before she turned ten. O'Hara attended Ingleside, a finishing school in Connecticut, and the Packer Institute in Brooklyn. She also spent two years in Europe studying music and languages, and would later compose music as well as write.

With her husband Kent Parrot, whom she married in 1905, O'Hara moved to California, where she chanced into a job as a screenwriter's assistant. After ascending the ranks in short order she became, at his request, a staff writer for acclaimed director Rex Ingram (who had risen to prominence directing June Mathis ' The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, released in 1921). In that capacity, O'Hara wrote the adaptations and continuities of such films as Toilers of the Sea (1923), Black Oxen (1924), and Turn to the Right (1927).

After her first marriage ended in divorce, in 1922 O'Hara married her second husband Helge Sture-Vasa. In 1930, they moved from Hollywood to Wyoming, where they lived on a dairy ranch that O'Hara also ran. This became the setting for her most enduring novel, My Friend Flicka (1941), which lovingly details the relationship between a young boy named Ken and his wild colt, Flicka. The story was widely praised and hugely popular upon its publication, and has since gone on to be ranked as a children's classic and translated into numerous languages. Although some reviewers criticized the book for its sentimental tone and melodrama, most lauded its emotional power and simplicity. One reviewer compared it to other classic "boy-and-his-horse" stories, writing, "[It] has the quality of The Yearling, but it is tougher and wilder…. It has the intensity of Lincoln Steffens' memorable little tale of his own Christmas pony, and has the strength of John Steinbeck's stories of Joady and his red pony." The movie version of the book, released in color in 1943 with child star Roddy McDowall as Ken, was also well received and has remained a popular children's movie. (A television series based on the book aired on ABC-TV in the 1957 season.)

O'Hara's sequel to My Friend Flicka was so highly anticipated that the publisher received 50,000 orders before its publication in 1943. The story of Thunderhead, the name of Flicka's first foal, chronicles Ken's relationship with that fierce, independent horse, and the book proved as successful as its predecessor. Writing in The New York Times, Orville Prescott commented, "It is that rare achievement, a sequel to a great and richly deserved success that in no way disappoints or falls short of its distinguished predecessor…. In Miss O'Hara, I believe, we have one of the most important and most enduring novelists now writing in America." Roddy McDowall again starred in the movie adaptation, 1945's Thunderhead—Son of Flicka.

O'Hara, who moved back to the East Coast after her second divorce in 1947, continued to write stories of ranch life, although they did not achieve the stunning success of her first two novels. Her later works include Green Grass of Wyoming (1946), which was also made into a movie, The Son of Adam Wyngate (1952), and Wyoming Summer (1963), based on a diary she had kept while living in the state. A number of her musical compositions were also published, and in the early 1960s she wrote The Catch Colt, a "folk musical" that was produced in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and at The Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Flicka's Friend: The Autobiography of Mary O'Hara was published in 1982, two years after her death from arteriosclerosis in Chevy Chase, Maryland.