Greer Garson Movies
Irish-born actress Greer Garson graduated with honors from the University of London and finished her post-grad work at the University of Grenoble in France. For many years, she worked efficiently as supervisor of an advertising firm, spending her spare time working in community theater. By age 24, Garson decided to take a risk and try a full-time acting career. She was accepted by the Birmingham Repertory, making her first stage appearance as an American Jewish tenement girl in Street Scene. Her London debut came in 1934 in The Tempest, after which she headlined several stage plays and musicals. While vacationing in London, MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer happened to see Garson in Old Music; entranced by her elegant manner and flaming red hair, Mayer signed the actress to an MGM contract, showcasing her in the Anglo-American film production Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).Garson became MGM's resident aristocrat, appearing most often as co-star of fellow contractee Walter Pidgeon. It was with Pidgeon that she appeared in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a profitable wartime morale-booster which won Oscars for Garson, for supporting actress Teresa Wright, and for the picture itself. Legend has it that Garson's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony rambled on for 45 minutes; in fact, it wasn't any more than five or six minutes, but the speech compelled the Academy to limit the time any actor could spend in accepting the award. Though not overly fond of being so insufferably ladylike in her films, Garson stayed at MGM until her contract expired in 1954; it was surprising but at the same time refreshing to see her let her hair down in the 1956 Western Strange Lady in Town. In 1960, Garson received her seventh Oscar nomination for her astonishingly accurate portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. After that, Garson was given precious few opportunities to shine in films, though she was permitted to exhibit her still-vibrant singing voice in her last picture, 1967's The Happiest Millionaire.
Following her marriage to Texas oil baron Colonel EE. "Buddy" Fogelson, Garson retired to a ranch in Santa Fe, NM, where she involved herself with various charities. Occasionally Garson returned to make guest appearances on television in ventures ranging from Hollywood Squares, to The Crown Matrimonial, a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. She had to give up even these performances in the early '80s due to chronic heart problems. In 1988, Garson underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. She died of heart failure in Dallas on April 6, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning performance in the title role often comes off as artificial, especially when she nobly tends her rose garden while her stalwart husband (Walter Pidgeon) participates in the evacuation at Dunkirk. However, even if the film has lost a good portion of its ability to move and inspire audiences, it is easy to see why it was so popular in 1942-and why Winston Churchill was moved to comment that its propaganda value was worth a dozen battleships. Everyone in the audience-even English audiences, closer to the events depicted in the film than American filmgoers-liked to believe that he or she was capable of behaving with as much grace under pressure as the Miniver family. The film's setpieces-the Minivers huddling in their bomb shelter during a Luftwaffe attack, Mrs. Miniver confronting a downed Nazi paratrooper in her kitchen, an annual flower show being staged despite the exigencies of bombing raids, cleric Henry Wilcoxon's climactic call to arms from the pulpit of his ruined church-are masterfully staged and acted, allowing one to ever so briefly forget that this is, after all, slick propagandizing. In addition to Best Picture and Best Actress, Mrs. Miniver garnered Oscars for best supporting actress (Teresa Wright), best director (William Wyler), best script (Arthur Wimperis, George Froschel, James Hilton, Claudine West), best cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg) and best producer (Sidney Franklin). Sidebar: Richard Ney, who plays Greer Garson's son, later married the actress-and still later became a successful Wall Street financier. Mrs. Miniver was followed by a 1951 sequel, The Miniver Story, but without the wartime setting the bloom was off the rose. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, (more)
At the close of World War I, shell-shocked amnesia victim Ronald Colman is sequestered in a London sanitarium; with no identity and no next of kin, he has nowhere else to go. Unable to stand the loneliness, Colman wanders into the streets, then stumbles into a music hall, where he is befriended by good-natured entertainer Greer Garson. That Colman and Garson fall in love and marry should surprise no one; what is surprising, at least to Colman, is that he discovers that he has a talent for writing. Three years pass: while in Liverpool to sell one of his stories, Colman is struck down by a speeding car. When he comes to, he has gained full memory of his true identity; alas, he has completely forgotten both Garson and their child. Returning to his well-to-do relatives, Colman takes over the family business. Having lost her child, the distraught Garson seeks out the missing Colman. Psychiatrist Philip Dorn helps Garson, advising her that to reveal her identity may prove a fatal shock for her husband. To stay near him all the same, Garson takes a job as Colman's secretary. "Strangely" attracted to Garson, Colman falls in love with her all over again. Will there be yet another memory lapse? Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't believe a minute of Random Harvest, but the magic spell woven by the stars and by author James Hilton (Lost Horizon, Goodbye Mr. Chips etc.) transforms the wildly incredible into the wholly credible (just one quibble: isn't Colman a bit long in tooth as a "young" World War I veteran?) The film was one of MGM's biggest hits in 1942--indeed, one of the biggest in the studio's history. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, (more)
- 1941
Strange Skirts is the TV title of the 1941 MGM film When Ladies Meet. The film was a remake of a 1933 production of the same name, which starred Ann Harding, Myrna Loy and Spring Byington; their roles were taken over in the remake by Greer Garson, Joan Crawford and Spring Byington. Both films are based on a Rachel Crothers play about a lady novelist who falls in love with a married publisher. The novelist (Crawford) meets the publisher's wife (Garson) at the home of a chatterbox society matron (Byington). The fact that the 1941 version was forced to undergo the censor's scissors to a greater extent than the 1933 film was compensated by the later version's lusher production values, which earned an Academy Award nomination for MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and Randall Duell. Under both its original title When Ladies Meet and its TV-dictated cognomen Strange Skirts, this dated but enjoyable film has become a "standard" on the various cable TV services of Ted Turner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, (more)
Greer Garson is dignity and integrity personified in the role of the real-life Edna Gladney. After several life experiences which rival daytime drama for unrelenting misery and melodrama, Edna marries flour-mill owner Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a baby, who dies shortly after Edna discovers that she can never have any other children. To give her life some meaning, Edna sets up the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society, which specializes in caring for illegitimate children and offering them for adoption. After her husband's death, Edna becomes a powerful political figure, succeeding in removing the stigma of illegitimacy by having that word stricken from all future Texas birth certificates; in this way, she honors the memory of her own half sister, who had killed herself upon discovering she was born out of wedlock. MGM thought enough of Blossoms in the Dust to film the production in Technicolor, a luxury usually reserved in 1941 for musicals or Westerns. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, (more)
Long before 19th-century novelist Jane Austen became a hot property in Hollywood, MGM produced this opulent and entertaining adaptation of one of Austen's best-known novels. The elegant and slyly satirical comedy of manners gets under way when socially conscious Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland), with the begrudging assistance of her husband (Edmund Gwenn), begins seeking out suitable (and suitably wealthy) husbands for her five daughters: Elizabeth (Greer Garson), Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan), Lydia (Ann Rutherford), Kitty (Heather Angel), and Mary (Marsha Hunt). One of the least likely matrimonial prospects is Mr. Darcy (Laurence Olivier), a rich, handsome, but cynical and boorish young man. Naturally, Elizabeth Bennet, the strongest-willed of the Bennet girls, is immediately fascinated by him, and she sets out to land him -- but only on her own terms, and only after she has exacted a bit of genteel revenge for his calculated indifference to her. Though Austen's novel was set in 1813, the year of its publication, the film version takes place in 1835, reportedly so as to take advantage of the more attractive costume designs of that period. Not surprisingly, a few changes had to be made to mollify the Hollywood censors (eager to find offense in the most innocent of material): the most notable is the character of Mr. Collins (Melville Cooper), transformed from the book's hypocritical clergyman to the film's standard-issue opportunist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, (more)
- 1939
In this off-beat love story, wealthy socialite Linda Bronson (Greer Garson) is about to marry Sky Ames (Lou Ayres) but then falls in love with handsome Jeff Holland (Robert Taylor). They become engaged. Unfortunately, Jeff is obsessed with work and has no time for an elaborate wedding. Instead they visit the justice-of-the-peace. The honeymoon ends quickly because Jeff spends so much time working that he completely ignores Linda. Fed up, she files for divorce. Good old Sky, who was so gentlemanly when she dumped him, sees that Linda is about to make a grave mistake and so comes up with a creative way to bring her and Jeff back together: he will slip them a memory-loss drug and then reintroduce them in hopes that they will once again fall in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, (more)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips, based on James Hilton's novel, is a melodrama about a shy British teacher named Mr. Chipping (Robert Donat) who devotes his life to teaching "his boys" after the death of his lovely, energetic American wife Katherine (Greer Garson). Told via flashbacks, the film features an aged Mr. Chipping looking back nostalgically at his long career, taking note of the people who've touched his life over the years. Donat was the recipient of a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the title character, and the film features the debut performance of a young Garson. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Donat, Greer Garson, (more)
