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Mrs. Miniver is a fictional character created by Jan Struther in 1937 for a series of newspaper columns for The Times , later adapted into a film of the same name.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2008) |
Mrs. Miniver is a fictional character created by Jan Struther in 1937 for a series of newspaper columns for The Times , later adapted into a film of the same name.
In the 1930s Jan Struther started to write for Punch magazine, and this brought her to the attention of The Times newspaper, where Peter Fleming asked her to write a series of columns for the paper, about "an ordinary sort of woman who leads an ordinary sort of life – rather like yourself". The resulting character that she created, Mrs. Kay Miniver, proved a huge success from the character's inception in 1937, and the columns were subsequently published in book form in 1939. On the outbreak of war, this book became the basis for a patriotic and sentimental American film, Mrs. Miniver , released in 1942, which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The Times columns were short reflections on everyday life, based in part on Struther's own family and experiences. While the columns started out as lighthearted domestic scenes where the outside world barely intruded, the approach of World War II slowly brought darker global concerns into Mrs. Miniver's world. One of the more memorable pieces appears near the middle of the series, where the Minivers get gas masks.
The columns were first published in book form in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Struther stopped the regular newspaper columns that year, but wrote a series of letters from Mrs. Miniver, expanding on the character's wartime experiences. These were published in later editions.
The book became an enormous success, especially in the United States, where Struther went on a lecture tour shortly after the book's release.
The U.S. was still officially neutral, but as war with Nazi Germany intensified in Europe, the tribulations of the Miniver family engaged the sympathy of the American public sufficiently that President Franklin D. Roosevelt credited it for hastening America's involvement in the war. Winston Churchill is said to have claimed that it had done more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. [1] Churchill is further quoted by Bernard Wasserstein in his book, "Barbarism and Civilization," as saying that the book (and later the film) was worth "six divisions of war effort."
In 1942, when the film came out, Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters. [2]
The film adaptation of Mrs. Miniver was produced by MGM in 1942 with Greer Garson in the leading role and William Wyler directing. Under the influence of the American Office of War Information, the film attempted to undermine Hollywood's prewar depiction of Britain as a glamorous bastion of social privilege, anachronistic habits and snobbery in favour of more democratic, modern images. To this end, the social status enjoyed by the Miniver family in the print version was downgraded and increased attention was given to the erosion of class barriers under the pressures of wartime. In 1942, the film won an Oscar in the Best Picture category and both Greer Garson and Teresa Wright won an Oscar in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories, respectively. The film grossed $5,358,000 (equivalent to $71,181,421in 2021) in North America (the highest for any MGM film at the time) and $3,520,000 abroad equivalent to $46,763,457in 2021. In Britain, it was named the top box office attraction of 1942. 555 of the 592 film critics polled by American magazine Film Daily named it the best film of 1942.
A sequel to Mrs. Miniver, The Miniver Story was made by the same studio in 1950 with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon reprising their original roles. The characters were based on those in the original film, but their creator, Jan Struther, did not participate in the sequel.
In 1944, CBS Radio presented a Friday-night series named Mrs. Miniver starring Judith Evelyn and Karl Swenson. They were soon replaced by Gertrude Warner and John Moore. But the show only lasted 9 months.
In 1960, CBS Television presented Mrs. Miniver starring Maureen O'Hara as Mrs Miniver, Leo Genn as Clem Miniver, Juliet Mills and Keir Dullea. The adaptation was by George Bart and was directed by Marc Daniels.
Mrs. Miniver's problem is a geometry problem about the area of circles. It asks how to place two circles and of given radii in such a way that the lens formed by intersecting their two interiors has equal area to the symmetric difference of and . It was named for an analogy between geometry and social dynamics enunciated by fictional character Mrs. Miniver, who "saw every relationship as a pair of intersecting circles". Its solution involves a transcendental equation.
William Wyler was a German-born film director and producer who won the Academy Award for Best Director three times, those being for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959), all of which also won for Best Picture. In total, he holds a record twelve nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director.
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was a British-American actress and singer. She was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who became popular during the Second World War for her portrayal of strong women on the homefront; listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-ten box office draws from 1942 to 1946.
Random Harvest is a 1942 American romantic drama film based on the 1941 James Hilton novel of the same title, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Claudine West, George Froeschel, and Arthur Wimperis adapted the novel for the screen, and received an Academy Award nomination. The novel keeps the true identity of Paula/Margaret a secret until the very end, something that would have been impossible in a film, where characters’ faces must be seen. This meant that the movie had to take a very different approach to the story. The film stars Ronald Colman as a shellshocked, amnesiac World War I veteran, and Greer Garson as his love interest.
Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian-American actor. He earned two Academy Award for Best Actor nominations for his roles in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Curie (1943). Pidgeon also starred in many films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Forbidden Planet (1956), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), Advise & Consent (1962), Funny Girl (1968), and Harry in Your Pocket (1973).
The year of 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest of all time, Casablanca.
Louis Burt Mayer was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industry's most prestigious movie studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors, and stars in Hollywood.
Jan Struther was the pen name of Joyce Anstruther, later Joyce Maxtone Graham and finally Joyce Placzek, an English writer remembered for her character Mrs. Miniver and a number of hymns, such as "Lord of All Hopefulness".
Helmut Dantine was an Austrian-American actor who often played Nazis in thriller films of the 1940s. His best-known performances are perhaps the German pilot in Mrs. Miniver and the desperate refugee in Casablanca, who tries gambling to obtain travel visa money for himself and his wife. As his acting career waned, he turned to producing.
Richard Maximilian Ney was an American actor, author, and investment counselor.
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, it shows how the life of an unassuming British housewife in rural England is affected by World War II. Produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, its supporting cast includes Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Richard Ney and Henry Wilcoxon.
The 14th National Board of Review Awards were announced on 24 December 1942.
The 15th Academy Awards was held in the Cocoanut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on March 4, 1943, honoring the films of 1942. The ceremony is most famous for the speech by Greer Garson; accepting the award for Best Actress, Garson spoke for nearly 6 minutes, considered to be the longest Oscars acceptance speech.
The Miniver Story is a 1950 American drama film that is the sequel to the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver. Like its predecessor, the picture, made by MGM, stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, but it was filmed on-location in England. The film was directed by H.C. Potter and produced by Sidney Franklin, from a screenplay by George Froeschel and Ronald Millar based on characters created by Jan Struther. The music score was by Miklós Rózsa and Herbert Stothart, with additional uncredited music by Daniele Amfitheatrof, and the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.
During American involvement in World War II (1941–45), propaganda was used to increase support for the war and commitment to an Allied victory. Using a vast array of media, propagandists instigated hatred for the enemy and support for America's allies, urged greater public effort for war production and victory gardens, persuaded people to save some of their material so that more material could be used for the war effort, and sold war bonds.
Garnett Lucille Ryman Carroll, stage name Jane Starr was an American Broadway actress and the first female studio executive in Hollywood.
That Forsyte Woman is a 1949 romance film directed by Compton Bennett and starring Greer Garson, Errol Flynn, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Young and Janet Leigh. It is an adaptation of the 1906 novel The Man of Property, the first book in The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy.
Scandal at Scourie is a 1953 American drama Technicolor film directed by Jean Negulesco, starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon "above the title", and co-starring Donna Corcoran. Garson and Pidgeon were together for the 8th and last time in this movie, which was filmed on location in Canada.
Garson is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Florence Wix was an English-born American character actress who worked from the 1920s in silent films through sound films of the 1950s.