Background
Garson, Greer was born on September 29, 1908 in Northern Ireland. Daughter of George and Nina Sophia (Greer) Garson.
Garson, Greer was born on September 29, 1908 in Northern Ireland. Daughter of George and Nina Sophia (Greer) Garson.
Bachelor with honors, London University. Student, Grenoble University. HHD (honorary), Rollins College, 1950.
Doctor of Communication Arts (honorary), College of Santa Fe, 1970. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Ulster University, 1977.
Having worked with some success in the English theatre, she was spotted by Louis B. Mayer, signed up, and given an impressive cameo debut in Sam Wood’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (39). After a poor comedy, Remember (40, Norman Z. McLeod), she embarked on a sequence of films in which she embodied qualities of ladylike appeal, uxorial and maternal loyalty, and above all (blowing back her stray curls) dutiful sacrifice that made her almost an Allied totem of the war years: badly miscast as Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (40, Robert Z. Leonard); Blossoms in the Dust (41, Mervyn Le Roy); When Ladies Meet (41, Leonard); phenomenally popular opposite Walter Pidgeon as Mrs. Miniver (42, William Wyler), a film that won her the best actress Oscar and conditioned American public opinion to the sentimental explanation for a necessary war; opposite Ronald Colman in Random Harvest (42, Le Roy); again with Pidgeon in one of the last old-fashioned biopics, Madame Curie (43, Le Roy); and in Mrs. Parkington (44, Tay Garnett). Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, and Madame Curie—her most characteristic work—were all produced by Sidney Franklin. She was a major star, nominated for the Oscar every year from 1941 to 1945.
Two more films sustained her, The Valley of Decision (45, Garnett) and Adventure (46, Victor Fleming), which was billed, “Gable’s back, and Garson’s got him.” But with peace her popularity- faded as suddenly as it had materialized. She had little innate talent other than the ability to gather a rather sedate gaiety to her bosom: she could easilv seem like a duke's wife talking to peasants. After the war, she made several blighted attempts to broaden her range: Desire Me (47, Jack Conway and George Cukor); Julia Misbehaves (48, Conway); was more convincing as Irene in That Forsyte Woman (49, Compton Bennett); was mistakenly persuaded to reprise past successes in The Miniver Story (50, H. C. Potter). Her career at MGM petered away with The Law and the Lady (51, Edwin II. Knopf); Scandal at Scourie (53, Jean Negulesco); Calpurnia in Manldewiczs Julius Caesar (53); and Her Twelve Men (54, Leonard). At that point she asked for her release, made Strange Lady in Town (55, Le Roy) at Warners, and then went back to the theatre. She made only three more films: as Eleanor Roosevelt in the disastrous Sunrise (it Campobello (60, Vincent J. Donohue); as a benign Mother Prioress in Henry Koster’s The Singing Nun (65); and as Fred MacMurray’s wife in the Disney Happiest Millionaire (67, Norman Tokar).
Principal founding donor Fogelson Forum Dallas Presbyterian Hospital, Fogelson Library., Greer Garson Theatre, Garson Communications Center and Studios College of Santa Fe, Fogelson Pavillion at Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas. Greer Garson Theatre at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Married Edward A. Snelson (divorced). Married Richard Ney, 1943 (divorced). Married E. E. Fogelson, 1949 (deceased 1987).