John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara are two legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age who starred in five movies together, the most acclaimed of which is John Ford’s 1952 classic The Quiet Man. Wayne and Irish actor O’Hara first worked together in Ford’s Western romance Rio Grande two years earlier, when their on-screen chemistry quickly became apparent. But it was only with follow-up collaboration The Quiet Man that their acting partnership really came into its own.

The film features a rare comic turn from Wayne as Irish-American boxer “Trooper Thorn” Thornton, who moves to rural Ireland to manage his family’s homestead. O'Hara plays Thornton's love interest, whose brother he must fight in one of John Wayne's best fight scenes to win her hand in marriage. The Duke trades in his usual Stetson hat for a peasant’s flatcap, and his whiskey flask for “one of those black beers,...