Mary O'Hara

Mary O'Hara Alsop (July 10, 1885 – October 14, 1980) was an American author, screenwriter, pianist, and composer. She was a Hollywood screenwriter for silent films that includes The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), Braveheart (1925), and Framed (1927). In 1961, she performed her folk musical composing, The Catch Colt, at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. She was the author of several books including Let Us Say Grace (1930), My Friend Flicka (1941), and Novel-in-the-Making (1954). She died from arteriosclerosis on October 14, 1980, in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Biography Mary O'Hara Alsop was born July 10, 1885, in Cape May Point, New Jersey, the third child of the Reverend Dr. Reese Fell Alsop and Mary Lee Spring. O'Hara, who was named after her maternal grandmother, Mary O'Hara Spring (née Denny), grew up in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Her siblings included an older sister, the writer Gulielma ("Elma") Fell; an older brother, Reese; and a younger sister, Elizabeth ("Bess"). She was a descendant of William Penn. She married her third cousin, Kent Kane Parrot, in 1905 against her father's wishes. They had a daughter, O'Hara Parrot, born in 1908, who died of skin cancer in her early teens, and a son, Kay (Ken) Parrot (born in 1910).