Wealthy bidders from all over the world, including Ireland, gathered at the Bonhams New York auction on Tuesday for the 'Estate of Maureen O'Hara' sale - a vast collection of 240 items, including letters, scripts, clothing, jewellery and treasured religious artefacts.
A cache of secret love letters which were sent to the Quiet Man star by the movie's director John Ford proved the top attraction, selling for over £60,000.
Almost all of the intimate, never-before-seen letters -which infatuated Ford wrote in the months before filming of the award-winning picture began in Cong, Co Mayo in 1951 - were still in their original envelopes.
Dublin-born O'Hara, who had first met Ford on the set of the 1941 movie How Green Was My Valley, had planned to destroy the love letters upon her death, but in later years changed her mind.
Unsurprisingly, personal items associated with The Quiet Man, O'Hara's most celebrated picture in which she starred alongside John Wayne, attracted the most bids.
O'Hara's personal and heavily-annotated script from the 1952 movie sold for £40,000, while a tweed jacket worn by her character Mary Kate Danaher sold for just over £13,000.