Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Wyler
Screenplay by	Arthur Wimperis George Froeschel James Hilton Claudine West
Based on	Mrs. Miniver 1939 book (from newspaper column Mrs. Miniver) by Jan Struther
Produced by	Sidney Franklin
Starring	Greer Garson Walter Pidgeon Teresa Wright Dame May Whitty Reginald Owen Henry Travers Richard Ney Henry Wilcoxon
Cinematography	Joseph Ruttenberg
Edited by	Harold F. Kress
Music by	Herbert Stothart Daniele Amfitheatrof (uncredited)
Production company	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by	Loew's Inc.
Release date	June 4, 1942 (1942-06-04) (Radio City Music Hall) July 22, 1942 (1942-07-22) (U.S.)
Running time	133 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.34 million[2]
Box office	$8.9 million[2]

Mrs. Miniver is a 1942 American romantic war drama film directed by William Wyler, and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Inspired by the 1940 novel Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther,^[3] the film shows how the life of an unassuming British housewife in rural England is touched by World War II. Produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film features a supporting cast that includes Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Richard Ney, and Henry Wilcoxon.^[4]

Upon its release, Mrs. Miniver was both a critical and a commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1942 and winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Garson), and Best Supporting Actress (Teresa Wright).^[5][6] It was the first film with a plot line centered on World War II to win an Oscar for Best Picture, and also the first film to receive five acting nominations at the Academy Awards.^[7] In 1950, a film sequel, The Miniver Story, was made with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon reprising their roles.^[4]

In 2006, the film was ranked number 40 on the American Film Institute's list celebrating the most inspirational films of all time. In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant.^[8]

Plot[]

Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) and her family live a comfortable life at a house called "Starlings" in Belham, a fictional village outside London. The house has a large garden, with a private landing stage on the River Thames at which is moored a motorboat belonging to her devoted husband, Clem (Walter Pidgeon), a successful architect. They have three children: the youngsters Toby (Christopher Severn) and Judy (Clare Sandars), and an older son, Vin (Richard Ney), a student at Oxford University. They have live-in staff: Gladys, the housemaid (Brenda Forbes), and Ada, the cook (Marie De Becker).

As World War II looms, Vin returns from the university and meets Carol Beldon (Teresa Wright), granddaughter of Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty) from nearby Beldon Hall. Despite initial disagreements—mainly contrasting Vin's idealistic attitude to class differences with Carol's practical altruism—they fall in love. As the war comes closer to home, Vin feels he must "do his bit", and enlists in the Royal Air Force, qualifying as a fighter pilot. He is posted to a base near to his parents' home and can signal his safe return from operations to his parents by "blipping" his engine briefly (rapidly open and closing the throttle, which results in short, sharp roars of sound) as he flies over the house. Vin proposes to Carol in front of his family at home, after his younger brother prods him to give a less romantic, but more honest, proposal than he had envisioned. Together with other boat owners, Clem volunteers to take his motorboat, the Starling, to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.

Early one morning, Kay, unable to sleep as Clem is still away, wanders down to the landing stage. She is startled to discover a wounded German pilot (Helmut Dantine) hiding in her garden, and he takes her to the house at gunpoint. Demanding food and a coat, the pilot aggressively asserts that the Third Reich will mercilessly overcome its enemies. She feeds him, calmly disarms him when he collapses, and then calls the police. Soon after, Clem returns home, exhausted, from Dunkirk.

Lady Beldon visits Kay to try and convince her to talk Vin out of marrying Carol on account of her granddaughter's comparative youth at age eighteen. Kay reminds Her Ladyship that she, too, had been young—sixteen, in fact—when she married her late husband. Lady Beldon concedes defeat and realizes that it would be futile to try to stop the marriage. Vin and Carol marry; Carol has now also become a Mrs. Miniver, and they return from their honeymoon in Scotland. A key theme is that she knows Vin is likely to be killed in action, but their short love will fill her life. Later, Kay and her family take refuge in their Anderson shelter in the garden during an air raid, and attempt to keep their minds off the frightening bombing by reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which Clem refers to as a "lovely story". They barely survive as a bomb destroys part of Starlings. The Minivers take the damage with nonchalance.

At the annual village flower show, Lady Beldon silently disregards the judges' decision that her rose is the winner. Instead, she announces that the rose entered by the local stationmaster, Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers), named the "Mrs. Miniver", as the winner, with her own Beldon Rose taking second prize. As air raid sirens sound and the villagers take refuge in the cellars of Beldon Hall, Kay and Carol drive Vin to join his squadron. On their journey home, they witness fighter planes in a dogfight. For safety, Kay stops the car, and they see a German plane crash. Kay realizes Carol has been wounded by machine-gun fire from the plane, and takes her back to Starlings. She dies a few minutes after they reach home. Kay is devastated. When Vin returns from battle, he already knows the terrible news: Ironically, he is the survivor, and she the one who died.

The villagers assemble at the badly damaged church where their vicar affirms their determination in a powerful sermon:

We in this quiet corner of England have suffered the loss of friends very dear to us, some close to this church. George West, choirboy. James Ballard, stationmaster and bellringer, and the proud winner only an hour before his death of the Beldon Cup for his beautiful Miniver Rose. And our hearts go out in sympathy to the two families who share the cruel loss of a young girl who was married at this altar only two weeks ago. The homes of many of us have been destroyed, and the lives of young and old have been taken. There's scarcely a household that hasn't been struck to the heart. And why? Surely, you must have asked yourselves this question? Why, in all conscience, should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness? Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed?

I shall tell you why. Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is the war of the people, of 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. Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead, they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves, and those who come after us, from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the People's War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then! Fight it with all that is in us! And may God defend the right.

A solitary Lady Beldon stands in her family's church pew. Vin moves to stand alongside her, united in shared grief, as the members of the congregation rise and stoically sing "Onward, Christian Soldiers". The camera pans to empty sky showing through the gaping hole in the bombed church's roof. We hear a full orchestra triumphantly playing “Land of Hope and Glory,” and see flight after flight of RAF fighters in the V-for-Victory formation, heading out to face the enemy.

Cast[]

Production[]

Screenplay[]

The film went into pre-production in the autumn of 1940, when the United States was still a neutral country. The script was written over many months, and during that time, the United States moved closer to war. As a result, scenes were re-written to reflect the increasingly pro-British and anti-German outlook of Americans. The scene in which Mrs. Miniver confronts a downed German flyer in her garden, for example, was made more and more confrontational with each new version of the script. It was initially filmed before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. Following the attack, the scene was filmed again to reflect the tough, new spirit of a nation at war. The key difference was that in the new version of the scene, filmed in February 1942, Mrs. Miniver was allowed to slap the flyer across the face. The film was released 4 months later.^[10]

Wilcoxon and director William Wyler "wrote and re-wrote" the key sermon the night before the sequence was to be shot.^[11] The speech "made such an impact that it was used in essence by President Roosevelt as a morale builder and part of it was the basis for leaflets printed in various languages and dropped over enemy and occupied territory".^[11] Roosevelt ordered it rushed to the theaters for propaganda purposes.^[12] The sermon dialogue was reprinted in both Time and Look magazines.^[13]

Reception[]

Alternate theatrical release poster

Critical response[]

In terms of modern film technology directing, acting and esthetics, this was a quintessential Hollywood film. Yet it had a profound impact on British audiences. Historian Tony Judt says the film is a very English tale of domestic fortitude and endurance, of middle-class reticence and perseverance, set symptomatically around the disaster at Dunkirk where all these qualities were taken to be most on display--[it] was a pure product of Hollywood. Yet for the English generation that first saw it the film would long remain the truest representation of national memory and self-image.^[14]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 42 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "An excessively sentimental piece of propaganda, Mrs. Miniver nonetheless succeeds, due largely to Greer Garson's powerful performance."^[15] In 2006, the film was ranked number 40 on the American Film Institute's list of the most inspiring American films of all time. In 2009, Mrs. Miniver was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant.^[8] The film was selected for the following reasons:

This remarkably touching wartime melodrama pictorials the classic British stiff upper lip and the courage of a middle-class English family (headed by Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon) amid the chaos of air raids and family loss. The film's iconic tribute to the sacrifices on the home front, as movingly directed by William Wyler, did much to rally America's support for its British allies.^[8]

Reactions to propaganda elements[]

Joseph Goebbels, minister of Nazi propaganda, wrote:

[Mrs. Miniver] shows the destiny of a family during the current war, and its refined powerful propagandistic tendency has up to now only been dreamed of. There is not a single angry word spoken against Germany; nevertheless the anti-German tendency is perfectly accomplished.^[16][13]

The propaganda angle was picked up upon by Variety in its 1942 review:

In its quiet yet actionful way, is, probably entirely unintentionally, one of the strongest pieces of propaganda against complacency to come out of the war. Not that it shows anything like the result of lack of planning by governments or individuals, but in that it brings so close to home the effects of total war.^[17]

Box office[]

The film exceeded all expectations, grossing $5,358,000 in the US and Canada (the highest for any MGM film at the time) and $3,520,000 abroad. In the United Kingdom, it was named the top box office attraction of 1942. The initial theatrical release made MGM a profit of $4,831,000, their most profitable film of the year.^[2][18]

Of the 592 film critics polled by American magazine Film Daily, 555 named it the best film of 1942.^[19]

Awards and nominations[]

Sequel and adaptations[]

• In 1943, the film was adapted into an episode of the Lux Radio Theatre. That episode in turn was popular enough to inspire a 5-day a week serial, starring radio veteran Trudy Warner on CBS.^[21]
• In 1950, a film sequel, The Miniver Story, was made with Garson and Pidgeon reprising their roles.
• In 1960, a 90-minute television adaptation directed by Marc Daniels was broadcast on CBS, with Maureen O'Hara as Mrs. Miniver and Leo Genn as Clem Miniver.
• In 2015, a musical adaptation was written and presented at a community theater in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In popular culture[]

In 1944 American rose grower Jackson & Perkins introduced Rosa 'Mrs. Miniver', a medium-red hybrid tea rose, named after Mr. Ballard's winning rose in the film. Over time the rose was lost to cultivation. In 2015, one remaining plant was located in a German garden by Orlando Murrin, a gardener in Exeter, UK. In 2016 it was successfully propagated by St Bridget's Nurseries in Exeter and returned to commerce in 2017.^[22]

Notes[]

The fifth episode of season 1 of Downton Abbey copies the scene of Lady Beldon giving her award away at a flower show, with Maggie Smith's Violet Crawley in place of Lady Beldon.

In the play A Raisin in the Sun, Brother, Ruth, and Beneatha give Mama (Lena) a gift with the note "To our own Mrs. Miniver – Love from Brother, Ruth, and Beneatha".

References[]

Further reading[]

• Christensen, Jerome. "Studio Identity and Studio Art: MGM, Mrs. Miniver, and Planning the Postwar Era." ELH (2000) 67#1 pp: 257–292. online
• Glancy, Mark. When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood 'British' Film (1999).
• Grayzel, Susan R. "“Fighting for the idea of home life”: Mrs Miniver and Anglo-American representations of domestic morale." in Gender, Labour, War and Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009) pp. 139-156.
• Herman, Jan. A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director (1995).
• Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: Patriotism, Movies, and the Second World War from Ninotchka to Mrs. Miniver (Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2000)
• Short, K. R. M. "'The White Cliffs of Dover': promoting the Anglo-American Alliance in World War II." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (1982) 2#1 pp: 3-25.
• Summerfield, Penny. "Dunkirk and the Popular Memory of Britain at War, 1940—58." Journal of contemporary history 45.4 (2010): 788–811.
• Troyan, Michael. A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson (2010)

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mrs. Miniver (film).

• Mrs. Miniver at IMDb
• Mrs. Miniver at the TCM Movie Database
• Mrs. Miniver at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Mrs. Miniver at AllMovie
• Mrs. Miniver at Rotten Tomatoes
• "Mrs. Miniver Opening Scenes". Retrieved August 20, 2008.
• "Mrs. Miniver and the German Soldier". Retrieved August 20, 2008.
• "The full Cast of Mrs. Miniver". Retrieved October 9, 2008.
• "Mrs. Miniver Script transcript". Archived from the original on August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 8, 2008.
• Mrs. Miniver on Lux Radio Theater: December 6, 1943
• BBC Radio 4 - And The Academy Award Goes To ... Mrs Miniver, Series 5 Episode 1
• https://www.facebook.com/argentatheater/photos/a.169385319756394.41770.165842060110720/1057032024325048/?type=3&theater&ifg=1