In the late spring of 1951, John Ford and his repertory company decamped from Monument Valley and Hollywood and took passage — paid for by B-Western house Republic Pictures — to The Old Country, the Eire of John Ford’s imagination. A great director of Westerns, famous for iconic tales, with even the most serious told with wit and sentiment, the man born John Martin Feeney was adapting a Maurice Walsh story for a film unique in his canon, “The Quiet Man.”

He was to serve up a screen romance that crosses into romantic comedy.

It would star Ford’s muse, John Wayne, and the only actress tall enough and Irish enough to go toe to toe with the Duke — Maureen O’Hara.

And while Ford made greater films — “Stagecoach,” “Young Mr. Lincoln,” “My Darling Clementine” and “The Searchers” — every St. Patrick’s Day proves the “It’s a Wonderful Life”…