50 Great War Films: Mrs. Miniver

Greer Garson

Greer Garson, not surprisingly, pleaded more than once for her films to be made in Technicolour. Judging by the above publicity shot, she was another auburn ('flame-haired') beauty who captivated audiences, on stage and screen, from the 1930s onwards. No wonder, she is in my Top Ten 'beauties' (see 27 December Blog), with two other Titian-haired actresses, Katharine Hepburn and Maureen O'Hara, joining my mother and my wife in that more select Pantheon!  With her fine, almost translucent, chiselled, looks; her polished, 'aristocratic' bearing; with a rather too precise diction at first; she was a 'hit' with her co-stars, if not always with her directors. As one biographer has written: Greer has a dash of the charming naughty Edwardian about her - elegant, stylish, humorously imperious... When she died, on 6th April 1996, two discrepancies in the official biographies were soon put right. She had been born in September 1904, not 1908 (how many other actresses 'lost' years off their lives!), and her birthplace was London not Ireland. Although Garson made several other films of merit, she was/is always known for the 1942 Mrs Miniver. I have a sizeable biography of her by Michael Troyan (1999), which is entitled A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson.

Walter Pidgeon, her co-star in Mrs. Miniver, was a six foot three Canadian actor, from a well-to-do family in New Brunswick. They first met in 1937/8 during a screen test at MGM. Born in 1897, he had a ten-year career and 33 undistinguished pictures behind him. Now aged 40,  he was to go on to make several successful (if not 'A' movies, at least 'B+' - such as How Green was my Valley in 1941; Madam Curie in 1943; Mrs Parkington in 1944; and The Miniver Story in 1950; the first with Maureen O'Hara and the last three with Greer Garson again), in a career  that lasted until 1978, six years before his death at the age of 87.  

Directed by William Wyler - M.G.M. 1942

What of the movie itself? Notwithstanding the overt propaganda elements - its raison d'être - and the occasional syrupy moments, with a rather chocolate-box village and flower show, the film 'worked' for me, with several quite moving scenes. The message of total war against tyranny is reinforced in a sombre but determined ending, when, to the background of the congregation and choirboys singing Onward Christian Soldiers, RAF planes are seen, through the roofless chancel of the bombed village church, flying overhead. The vicar of Belham delivers a powerful and defiant sermon - the actor Henry Wilcoxon had enlisted in the US Navy, but returned to reshoot a more honed script, which included the lines, ... this is not a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people - all the people - and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom...This is the people's war! It is our war! We are the fighters...And may God defend the right'. It is given added force by the fact that, in the bombing raid which hurriedly ends the successful village flower show, a choir boy is killed, as is Mr. Ballard (brilliantly played by the 68-year-old Henry Travers), the station-master who had won first prize for his 'Mrs. Miniver' rose.

Mr. Ballard shows Mrs. Miniver his rose

In addition, the grand-daughter of Lady Beldon (another part delivered with such realism by Dame May Whitty) and newly-wed daughter-in-law of the Minivers, Carol, has died from enemy aircraft fire whilst passenger in the car driven by Mrs. Miniver. 23 year-old Teresa Wright, who played Carol, was as always (who can forget her in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt) convincing in her role.

Greer Garson and Teresa Wright

There are so many moments of cinematic quality: the 'feudalism' of Lady Beldon in her 'palatial' drawing room; her pronunciation of Swastika as 'sweatsticker'; the National Anthem played at the end of the dance; the terrifying moments spent by the Minivers in their garden shelter; the little ships being gathered together for the Dunkirk evacuation; the tension between Mrs. Miniver and the wounded German flyer - where his outburst about the inevitable victory of the Third Reich is powerfully contrasted with Mrs. Miniver's steadiness of duty (apparently, the bombing of Pearl Harbor allowed Wyler to portray the Nazis for what they were); the return of Vin Minniver to see his dead wife. Wyler certainly delivered, even if there were outbreaks of tension on the set due to his many retakes.

Neither Garson nor Pidgeon initially wanted to play their roles: Pidgeon because he had heard of director Wyler's perfectionist filmmaking methods, Garson because she couldn't see how she could play the mother of a 20+ year-old son. She suggested adding wrinkles, graying hair, horn-rimmed glasses, padded hips and stomach; Wyler implied she looked the right age! The irony was, in real life, Garson married her 'son' Richard Ney! The wedding took place in July 1943, whilst Ney was on leave. Unfortunately, a mere four years later, in September 1947, she sued for, and gained, a divorce . In Court she complained that Ney had disparaged her work and taunted her about being finished as an actress.  She found love again, and the security she desperately wanted, in a marriage to 'Buddy' Fogelson from 1949 to his death in 1987; Greer dying just four years' later.

2004 DVD edition

1943 was dubbed 'the year of Greer'. At the Oscars Mrs. Miniver received nominations for Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Pidgeon), Supporting Actor (Henry Travers), Supporting Actress (both Dame May Whitty and Teresa Wright), Cinematography, Screenplay, Sound Recording, Film Editing and Special Effects.

Winners were: Garson; Wyler; Travers; Wright; Cinematography; Writing (Screenplay). The movie also won Outstanding Motion Picture of the Year.