Oscar Profile #57: Greer Garson

Born September 29, 1904 in London, England, the daughter of a Scottish father and Irish mother, Greer Garson was educated at King’s College, London and the University of Grenoble in France. Intent on becoming a teacher, she instead went to work in an advertising agency and did some acting on the side, eventually turning to acting full time. She was acting on the London stage when discovered by Louis B. Mayer in 1937, who was scouting talent for MGM’s British unit. Cast opposite Robert Donat in 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, she was an immediate hit and brought to Hollywood to make her second film, Remember? opposite Robert Taylor.

Garson’s lovely Mrs. Chipping in Goodbye, Mr. Chips established her as the premier genteel classy lady of her generation, a role she never veered from either on screen or in her personal life. Although the role was basically a supporting one, the performance so dominated the film that she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar but lost to friend Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind.

Cast opposite Laurence Olivier, who had been her tutor in London, she gave another acclaimed performance in 1940’s Pride and Prejudice and won her second Oscar nomination for playing real life crusader Edna Gladney in 1941’s Blossoms in the Dust opposite Walter Pidgeon.

Garson and Pidgeon were such a hit together that they were immediately cast together again in 1942’s Mrs. Miniver, a huge hit that was nominated for twelve Oscars and won six including Best Picture and Best Actress for Garson. Later that same year she starred opposite Ronald Colman in the equally successful Random Harvest, which was itself nominated for seven Oscars.

She was so popular that even her marriage to Richard Ney, the more than a decade year younger actor who played her son in Mrs. Miniver, in an era when such things just weren’t done, failed to make a dent in her popularity.

Now far and away the most popular actress of her day, only the emerging popularity of Ingrid Bergman came anywhere close, she received three more Oscar nominations in the next three years as scientist Marie Curie Madame Curie and as the fictional Mrs. Parkington, both again opposite Walter Pidgeon and as the Irish servant girl in The Valley of Decision opposite Gregory Peck. Her six Oscar nominations in seven years tied the record set by Bette Davis a year earlier.

Divorced form Ney in 1947, she married Texas oil millionaire Buddy Fogelson in 1949. She became a nationalized U.S. citizen in 1951.

If in her first seven years in Hollywood, Garson could do no wrong; in the next twelve she could seemingly do no right. Her great lady persona no longer popular and her efforts to do other things – comedy, westerns, even Shakespeare – failing to connect with the public, it took the release of her old films to TV and a return to the stage to bring her back to pre-eminence.

Garson received rave notices when she replaced Rosalind Russell in Broadway’s Auntie Mame in 1958 and even better notices for her Eleanor Roosevelt in her 1960 return to films in Sunrise at Campobello, for which she received her seventh Oscar nomination.

Garson only made two films after that, her Mother Superior in 1966’s The Singing Nun drawing attention for her obvious and obviously out-of-place false eyelashes and her Mother in The Happiest Millionaire, a brief enough role to begin with, in which her best scene was cut after the film’s road show engagement. Restored for DVD, Garson’s Christmas song duet with Fred MacMurray proves to be one the most charming things she’d ever done.

She was last seen in a role of any importance as Aunt March in the 1978 TV mini-series version of Little Women. A very rich woman, Garson gave millions away, largely in endowments to the arts. Active to the end, she had an office in Dallas she would drive to almost every day until her death in 1996 at 92.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939), directed by Sam Wood

James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, which was filmed two years earlier had made the British writer a household name, but his novel about the beloved headmaster has proven his most durable work. Filmed four times thus far, none of the various versions of Goodbye, Mr. Chips have topped the original with Robert Donat’s immortal portrayal of the idealistic, but shy and stodgy schoolteacher who, with the help of his adoring wife, grows into a beloved institution at his school over a sixty-three period. Greer Garson as Kathie, the woman he meets and marries after a whirlwind courtship, defines the word luminous in her first film. Only on screen for a brief period of time, her character and her performance linger in viewers’ minds as they do in the widowed Chips after what is still one of the most unforgettable death scenes in screen history.

MRS. MINIVER (1942), directed by William Wyler

Made by MGM at the urging of President Roosevelt, this film was credited by Winston Churchill as a primary spur in fomenting American support for the War in Europe. A huge hit in its day, Garson stars as an upper middle-class British housewife whose bucolic life is put on hold by the early days of the war. Walter Pidgeon as her husband, Richard Ney as their eldest son, Dame May Whitty as the town matriarch, Teresa Wright as her spirited grand-daughter, Henry Travers as the local train station man and Helmut Dantine as a downed Nazi flyer are all outstanding. Garson and Wright won Oscars for their performances, while Pidgeon, Travers and Whitty were all nominated. There are many memorable scenes in the film, but the final one between Garson and Wright is the most memorable and likely the one that got them both Oscars.

RANDOM HARVEST (1942), directed by Mervyn LeRoy

James Hilton narrated this, the third blockbuster made from one of his novels. Ronald Colman, who starred in the film version of Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Garson, who became a star in the film version of his Goodbye, Mr. Chips play the amnesiac and the showgirl who loves him. Garson is at her radiant best getting to sing and dance for the first time on screen as well as provide deep emotional support for Colman’s character, who after he regains his earlier memory forgets his life with Garson. The second part of the film, which could have deteriorated into pure soap opera, remains equally compelling thanks to the performances of the two stars. Collman was nominated for an Oscar and had Garson not won that year for Mrs. Miniver would surely have won for this. Have a box of tissues handy for the well-earned joyous ending.

THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945), directed by Tay Garnett

Marcia Davenport’s bestseller cried out for MGM’s glossy treatment backed by an all-star cast and got it. Garson starred as the poor Irish daughter of steelworkers’ union boss Lionel Barrymore, who takes a job as maid in the home of mine owner Donald Crisp. She falls in love with the family scion, played by rising star Gregory Peck, but their romance is thwarted when Barrymore kills Crisp in a bitter showdown. Gladys Cooper as Peck’s mother; Marsha Hunt, Dan Duryea and Marshall Thompson as his siblings; Preston Foster as Barrymore’s assistant; Jessica Tandy as the bitter woman Peck marries on the rebound and Dean Stockwell as their son all turn in memorable performances. The eleventh hour scene between Garson and Cooper is a lesson in peerless acting from both women.

SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO (1960), directed by Vincent J. Donehue

Ralph Bellamy brilliantly repeats his Tony award-winning role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his diagnosis with polio in 1921 to his triumphant presentation of Presidential nominee Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic Convention. Garson may seem at first glance like an odd choice for his wife Eleanor, but she nails the part, even getting Mrs. Roosevelt’s hesitant, squeaky, tremulous voice just right. Garson won numerous awards for her performance including the National Board of Review and Golden Globe awards for Best Actress, as well as her seventh Oscar nomination and the approval of Mrs. Roosevelt herself.