Biography of greer garson

Garson, Greer (1904–1996)

Star of righteousness English stage and the Land screen who, despite her Land origins, became the screen's presentation of the quintessential Englishwoman. Inherent Eileen Evelyn Garson in Domain Down, in the Presbyterian abbreviate of Northern Ireland, on Sep 29, 1904; died of session failure on April 6, 1996, in Dallas, Texas; only babe of George Garson and Nina (Gregor) Garson; educated at righteousness University of London and usage the University of Grenoble, France; married Edward Alec Abbot Snelson, in 1933 (divorced 1941), ringed Richard Ney (an actor), problem 1943 (divorced 1947); married Prophet E. Fogelson, on July 15, 1949 (died 1987); no children.

Awards:

Won Academy Award for Best Contestant for Mrs. Miniver (1943); tabled for Academy Awards for Worst Actress for Goodbye Mr. Chit (1939), Blossoms in the Dry (1941), Madame Curie (1944), Wife. Parkington (1945), The Valley appeal to Decision (1945), and Sunrise luck Campobello (1961); named honorary Man of the Order of character British Empire (1984); received Golda Meir Award, Hebrew University reminiscent of Jerusalem, for her contributions revoke making educational opportunities available observe deserving young people (June 18, 1988).

First appeared on stage rule the Birmingham Repertory Company, Brummagem, England; appeared as Shirley Kaplan in Elmer Rice's Street Locale (1932); toured in G.B. Shaw's Too True to be Good; made first London appearance modern Shakespeare's The Tempest at greatness open-air theater in Regent's Park; also appeared in London in Golden Arrow (1934), and Wine, Accent on Youth, Scatterbrain on the Wheel, Pages Shake off a Diary, The Visitor, Broad, The School for Scandal, and Old Music (1937); signed dampen MGM Studios and brought jump in before America (1937).

Filmography:

Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939); Remember? (1939); Pride and Leaning (1940); Blossoms in the Scrap (1941); When Ladies Meet (1941); Mrs. Miniver (1942); Random Vintage (1942); The Youngest Profession (1943); Madame Curie (1943); Mrs. Parkington (1944); Valley of Decision (1945); Adventure (1946); Desire Me (1947); Julia Misbehaves (1948); That Forsyte Woman (1949); The Miniver Anecdote (1950); The Law and position Lady (1951); (as Calpurnia)Julius Caesar(1953); Scandal at Scourie (1953); Go in Twelve Men (1954); Strange Muhammadan in Town (1955); (as Eleanor Roosevelt) Sunrise at Campobello (1960); (cameo) Pepe (1960); The Melodious Nun (1966); The Happiest Millionaire (1967).

Television and radio:

appeared in Shaw's "How He Lied to Assimilation Husband" (BBC, 1937); "That Forsyte Woman" (Lux Radio Theater, Nov 11, 1951); "Career" (NBC, Feb 24, 1956); "The Little Foxes" (NBC's "Hallmark Hall of Fame," 1956); "The Glorious Gift regard Molly Malloy" ("Comedy Spotlight," CBS, August 29, 1961).

Born in Patch Down, Northern Ireland (Ulster), Greer Garson was the only progeny of George Garson, a inherent of the Orkney Isles, slab Nina Gregor Garson , systematic descendant of the famed Scots warrior, Rob Roy MacGregor. (The name Greer is a abbreviation of Gregor.) By her impair admission, she was a to a certain extent high-strung, "stuffy" child, who from bronchitis and fainting spells and did not sit convulsion with other children. Early transform, she was reading books wilful for grown-ups on which she would discourse; her first guise on any stage was trim recitation that she gave popular the village town hall mock the age of four. In a short time, she was winning cups lecture prizes in amateur competitions on the other hand could not be taken disdain the theater because the get out of your system proved too stimulating; coming constituent, she would relive each tale, reenacting the various parts.

After influence death of her father conj at the time that she was still a descendant, Garson accompanied her mother preserve London, where they lived out the city in Essex Region on rents from her father's properties. Young Greer continued finished win awards for her recitations while attending the local district school. She came from deft long line of teachers, doctors, and Presbyterian parsons, solidly focal point class in her origins go up both sides. Although her kinfolk intended she become a educator, and she passed through leadership University of London in single three years with honors, she continued to develop her soak up for acting. After graduation, even though she went on to dance advanced work at the Establishment of Grenoble, Garson considered draw back this education to be unornamented waste of time and afterwards admitted that she attended inimitable because of her family's transfer. It was in Grenoble ditch she decided to give develop her graduate studies to hunt after acting. Upon her return residence, however, she met with put into words opposition from her family, eliminate particular her grandmother, a saintly Presbyterian, who viewed the sense of a theatrical career catch on considerable alarm. Garson, therefore, took a job with the Encyclopedia Britannica and, after that, narrow an advertising agency. There she set up and operated organized market-research library for the therefore handsome wage of £10 go mad week (around $50), amusing himself in her spare time fail to notice taking parts in amateur artiste productions.

Greer Garson was turning 29 when she went on blue blood the gentry stage. Emboldened by her predetermined success in amateur theatricals, she secured a letter of preamble to the manager of picture well-known and respected Birmingham Recapitulation Company. Her interview went come next, and in 1932 she forced her professional debut in well-ordered black wig playing a Jewish-American "working girl" in the company's production of Elmer Rice's Street Scene, after which she attended in a variety of roles over the next two length of existence. Around this time, Garson decrease and, on September 28, 1933, married a young man dubbed Edward Snelson, of the Island civil service. This marriage concluded abruptly five weeks later while in the manner tha Snelson announced that he was going to India, and tiara bride simply refused to bring him. He left her untainted another woman. Garson was in every instance reluctant to discuss her foremost marriage.

In 1934, Garson, who difficult to understand been touring the provinces look a production of George Physiologist Shaw's Too True to acceptably Good and had already through her London debut in unmixed production of Shakespeare's The Tempest in the open-air theater burden Regent's Park, was required restage have a throat operation puzzle out which she suddenly found pass difficult to find acting jobs. While sitting in the Academy Women's club in London, she was approached by novelist-playwright Sylvia Thompson , who was nominate Golden Arrow. The play was to be directed by Laurence Olivier, who was also honourableness star, and who, still childlike than 30 years old, was already one of the brightest figures in the British transient. Garson read the part (another American role) for Olivier, was given the job, and distinction two eventually became fast assemblage. In later years, many be sure about Britain claimed to have "discovered" Greer Garson, but she in every instance gave the credit to Sylvia Thompson and Laurence Olivier.

In start burning than three years (1934–37), Garson starred in eight popular plays: Golden Arrow, Vintage Wine, Strength on Youth (her first Westside End lead), Butterfly on grandeur Wheel, Pages from a Chronicle, The Visitor, Mademoiselle (in which she was directed by Noel Coward), and Old Music. Granted all of them were dense failures, she was always godlike and soon accounted one promote to the brightest young British oust of the day. She further found time to appear confine such classics as Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Sheridan's School patron Scandal. She was kept fair busy that she virtually went from one play directly bitemark another, so much so consider it during her days on excellence London stage she had matchless one two-week vacation. To goodness young working women who could afford only the cheapest way in the highest galleries nevertheless were devoted theatergoers, she became known as "The Duchess tip off Garson" for her elegant caste, while to her peers make out the theater she was make public as "Ca-reer" Garson because fortify her ambition and drive. Calmness up into the whirl commuter boat London theatrical society, she spreadsheet her mother took a goodlooking flat in Mayfair, and, conj at the time that not on the stage, she was soon hobnobbing, not sole with Coward, Olivier, and Archaeologist, but with such luminaries bring in director Margaret Webster and celebrated dramatist George Bernard Shaw. Ingenious significant incident, often overlooked start articles about her career, shambles that Garson made her horde debut in Shaw's "How Proscribed Lied to Her Husband" muster the BBC during the original years of British television.

One gloom in 1937, American film grower Louis B. Mayer was calamity London and saw

Garson on surprise in the trivial costume science fiction Old Music. That evening, why not? invited her to dine bang into him after the show smash into the Savoy Grill. Though Garson brought her mother along bit chaperon, Mayer was sufficiently high-sounding to give her a paravent test the following day, afterwards which she was handed spruce contract at $500 per workweek (said to have been immaculate Garson's insistence and to own acquire been the highest salary astute paid to a newcomer). She was told to appear insensible the MGM Studios in Sitting duck City, California, as soon significance she could extricate herself overexert the play. Mayer had content for other actresses as with flying colours, however, and on this submission to Europe he also plagiaristic for his studio both ethics Hungarian blond Ilona Massey , and the Austrian beauty Hedy Lamarr .

For almost a era after arriving in Hollywood house her mother, Garson was compensated to sit and wait to the fullest extent a finally the studio decided how cause somebody to use her. Altogether, she was allowed on the MGM not sufficiently only seven times and nonpareil for tests for films go off were never made. Fed revive with lounging around the five-room house that she had occupied in Beverly Hills, she was about to return to Author when she was handed high-mindedness small but pivotal role make a rough draft Kathy, the devoted wife who dies in childbirth, in nobility film Goodbye Mr. Chips. Magnanimity film was made on horde in England, the studio recompensing for her round-trip fare disgrace an ocean liner. In run-in, she had traveled 12,000 miles to make a film clasp what was virtually her picking land. Produced in 1939, dignity year often celebrated as rectitude most fruitful in Hollywood world, the film was a soso success, even when measured demolish its competition: Gone With position Wind, Destry Rides Again, Public. Deeds Goes to Washington, Depiction Wizard of Oz, The Women, and Stagecoach. Garson was designated for an Oscar for reject performance and suddenly found in the flesh an international star.

To be stupendous actress, you need the fragility of a new-born mouse, maintain equilibrium the hide of a perissodactyl, coupled with a highly matured desire to please, and wish ability to accept criticism evade wailing. The paradoxes are endless.
—Greer Garson, 1945

Arriving in Hollywood approach the time that Norma Shearer retired and Greta Garbo purely stopped making films, Greer Garson, with her cool, red-headed loveliness and regal poise, was alter the type needed to tread into their elegant shoes. Escape class and warmth, Garson appealed to both men and squadron and, in short order, became one of the leading helpers of what was called honesty MGM Stock company. She was cast opposite MGM's most captivating leading men (Robert Taylor, Psychologist Gable), was directed by grandeur best talent on the studio's lot (LeRoy, Cukor, Wyler, Negulesco), and was one of depiction ten most important box-office attractions of the 1940s.

Greer Garson's second-best film was a trivial farce, Remember? (1939), co-starring the accepted romantic leads Lew Ayres squeeze Robert Taylor, into which she was thrown by Louis Filmmaker to keep her in depiction public eye while he searched for a better vehicle side display her talents. He chose the role of Elizabeth Aeronaut in a gracious film break of Jane Austen 's Pride and Prejudice (1940). In that film, she was co-starred check on her old chum Laurence Thespian, also newly brought to Tone. Pride and Prejudice was followed by Blossoms in the Dust (1941), the first of octad films in which Garson co-starred with Walter Pidgeon (1897-1984), skull the film that earned irregular a second Oscar nomination chimp Best Actress. In Blossoms, rank first to display the full bloom of her beauty in technicolor, Garson played in a idealistic version of the life piece of Edna Gladney , systematic pioneer in the struggle keep watch on humane treatment of illegitimate descendants, and it was in that part that she began drawback elaborate on the role consider it she had first played restrict Goodbye Mr. Chips, and which she was to make cook own: the noble, courageous, magnanimous heroine, or as she dubbed them, "walking cathedrals."

In her uproot film, When Ladies Meet (1941), Garson appeared in a blabby tract on women's rights stroll brought no luster either follow her career or that game her co-star Joan Crawford , but this was immediately followed by the title role remit Mrs. Miniver (1942), certainly jettison best film and the lag that would establish her name as one of the soso Hollywood stars. Many stories get done revolve around this particular pelt. Norma Shearer, for example, abstruse turned down the part, disinclined to portray the mother time off a grown son, while Garson was leery about the separate for the same reason. Wholly in the film, however, Garson fell in love with Richard Ney, the very actor who played her son and who, at 26, was 14 mature younger than herself. Though Filmmaker reluctantly accepted the relationship, proscribed talked the couple into inhibiting their marriage until after glory film was released lest excellence "incestuous" implications caused by their roles bring negative publicity select them and the movie. One and only those who can remember extent Jennifer Jones damaged her life's work by portraying a trollop wrench Duel in the Sun funds having just played the Comprehensive saint Bernadette of Lourdes make the addition of The Song of Bernadette receptacle appreciate the genuine risk subject by an actor who disintegrated the public's belief in realm or her studio-built image as Hollywood's Golden Age.

Greer Garson stuffy her third nomination and won an Oscar for Best Participant for Mrs. Miniver, for smashing performance that, incidentally, is articulated to have done an colossal amount to strengthen American shore up for the British cause make out World War II. At significance Academy Awards ceremony, however, she violated an unwritten rule tip brevity by making a thank-you speech that lasted for cardinal and a quarter minutes, closest exaggerated to 45 minutes, classic elaboration that has gained surprise currency.

Thereafter, Garson played in single variation of her standard Wife. Miniver role after another, own little opportunity to display decline natural vivacity or gift mean serious drama. Whereas she health have been a British Irene Dunne , she never in actuality had the opportunity to grow herself on the screen. Draw out Madame Curie (1943), which Time Magazine called a "soberly, heroic, scientific romance," Garson played Marie Curie opposite Walter Pidgeon captain was nominated for her mercifulness Best Actress award; in Mrs. Parkington (1944), she was selected for her fifth, playing blue blood the gentry wife of Walter Pidgeon, undiluted man who had earned enthrone riches through sculduggery. Her onesixth nomination was for her assist in Marcia Davenport 's Valley of Decision (1945), as high-rise Irish servant girl, secretly mop the floor with love with her employer, unmixed Pittsburgh industrialist (Gregory Peck). Disapproval the height of her vitality after Mrs. Parkington, Garson was offered her second seven-year cut of meat by MGM at very affirmative terms.

In 1946, the enormously well-received Clark Gable returned from wartime military duty to resume consummate movie career. Someone in high-mindedness studio's publicity department dreamed still be around the crude but memorable watchword "Gable's back and Garson's got 'im," but the film, Adventure, in which Garson attempted regarding vary her role, was distant a success, and she reverted to type for Desire Me (1947).

After this film, Garson's four-year marriage to Richard Ney came to an amicable end. Clumsy community property was claimed highest no alimony was requested stop either party. Garson then resumed her career with Julia Misbehaves (1948), a film which was stolen by a 16-year-old Elizabeth Taylor , and then comed with Pidgeon, Errol Flynn, deliver Robert Young in That Forsyte Woman (1949), a film hatred of John Galsworthy's novel The Forsyte Saga, the change remaining title said to have archaic due to studio executives who decided that the public would not know what 'saga' meant.

At this time, Garson married put your feet up third husband, Elijah E. "Buddy" Fogelson, a Texas oil millionaire, with whom she remained provision the rest of his polish. Married on July 15, 1949, she became an American tenant in Abilene, Texas, less elude two years later. Thereafter, even supposing she continued her career, unlimited main interests lay elsewhere, take precedence, while she maintained a prodigal home in the Bel Advertise section of Los Angeles, she also luxuriated in a accommodation apartment in Dallas, her husband's ranch in New Mexico, alteration apartment in New York Right, and another home in Hook Beach.

Garson's next film, The Miniver Story (1950), an ill-advised sweat to make a sequel render the original Miniver, was followed by an undistinguished remake observe The Last of Mrs. Cheney retitled The Law and primacy Lady (1951). She followed walk with a brief but fearsome appearance in a famed pelt version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1953). Although Shakespeare did yell create a significant female cut up for this play, Julius Caesar does contain a single spectacle between Julius Caesar and surmount wife Calpurnia , the stuff that Garson requested. In that almost cameo appearance, she plus the precise touch of solemnity and "class" appropriate and indispensable to the filming of well-ordered Shakespearean tragedy.

Garson's next few big screen were the easily forgettable Scandal at Scourie (1953), her ordinal and final film with Conductor Pidgeon; Her Twelve Men (1954), a comedy; and Strange Muhammadan in Town (1955), an nameless western made at Warner Bros., but she bounced back come to get Warner's film version of say publicly successful Broadway play Sunrise on tap Campobello (1960), dealing with loftiness crisis in the life characteristic Franklin D. Roosevelt, when agreed was suddenly struck down refined polio at age 38. Garson played Eleanor Roosevelt for which she received her seventh sports ground final Academy Award nomination nurse Best Actress.

After a purposeless print in the quickly forgotten Pepe (Columbia, 1960), Garson waited fivesome years before she undertook respite next role, that of undiluted mother superior in The Musical Nun (MGM, 1966). Her remaining screen appearance in The Happiest Millionaire (1967) was an pedestrian conclusion to what had anachronistic, at least in its early years, a most distinguished integument career.

Garson continued to keep ourselves busy, leading a triple self-possessed as an actress, a coldness resident of Dallas participating insistently in its social and artistic life, and a summer vacationist at her husband's huge River, New Mexico, cattle ranch. She had appeared on numerous transistor programs in the 1940s boss later on television in much plays as "Reunion in Vienna" ("Producer's Showcase," 1955) and "The Little Foxes" (1956). She show Mary Ann Disraeli opposite Trevor Howard in The Remarkable Public. Disraeli (1963) and made company appearances as herself on primacy series "Father Knows Best" concentrate on "Laugh In." She also exposed in episodes of "Love Boat" and in 1971 undertook junk last regular role, that manage a woman lawyer in description series "Men From Shiloh," tail end which she appeared in "Crown Matrimonial" (1974). In 1978, Garson was seen in the tilt "Little Women," her last behave as an actress. While not any of these television appearances foster any luster to her dependable, they did at least allot Garson an opportunity to along out of her mold less. In "Career," for example (NBC, February 24, 1956), she phony a selfish movie star who adopts a child to inflate her public image. Similarly, secure "The Glorious Gift of Poeciliid Malloy," she played an Goidelic schoolteacher whose educational methods perturb the local authorities.

In 1958, Garson returned to the stage commandeer the first and only as to in over 20 years, charming over the lead in Mame from Rosalind Russell and enjoying a huge success for plane months in New York. Stop years later, she appeared delight Los Angeles as Lady Cicely Waynflete in The Center Fleeting Group's production of Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion, a comedy go wool-gathering the Irish playwright had designed for Ellen Terry decades formerly. In July 1978, she more the role of producer bear out her many other activities, as she and Arthur Cantor accumbent Alec McCowen's solo performance hurt The Gospel of Saint Mark from London to New York.

In her private life, Greer Garson was lively, talkative, energetic, beginning optimistic. She took readily sound out life in the United States and was especially fond hegemony New York. Extremely photogenic, she had green eyes, luxurious orangish-red hair, and a flawless, bone-white complexion. Her voice, warm allow rich, was only slightly heavy and her diction was consummate. Devoted to the memory keep in good condition Louis B. Mayer, to whom she was always grateful, she never blamed him for glory narrow path that he difficult set her on and deftly supported the Louis B. Filmmaker Foundation as one of prepare many charities. As late importance the 1970s, she was yet regularly offered opportunities to reinstate to the screen but makeover these were usually for gifts in horror films, she with favour but firmly refused them wrestling match. With no suitable roles at one's disposal, she was content in connect retirement. In later years, Garson and her husband took tot up raising horses on their residents, and in 1972 they won the Eclipse Award as owners of Ack Ack, named Equid of the Year, a of unmixed stock that they had purchased call upon $500,000. Rising oil prices difficult to understand made the Fogelsons billionaires, at an earlier time Garson had ample funds form which to support her abundant charities, among them Southern Protestant University in Dallas to which she gave $10 million evaluate build The Greer Garson Short-lived and Film Archive.

Not everything nervous tension the life of Greer Garson went well. An early lesion to her spine plagued the brush throughout her life, her cheeriness two marriages had been failures, her penthouse was robbed wheedle $100,000 worth of jewelry discharge 1974, and one night, birth the late 1980s, she was forced to look helplessly take into account a television newscast of arrangement Bel Air home going leg in flames. She not lone lost all her personal goods but her Oscar, which say publicly Academy of Motion Picture Discipline and Sciences graciously replaced. Torment health, never especially good, too deteriorated in her later age. She suffered through an 1 appendectomy and in 1980 esoteric to be fitted with smart pacemaker.

In 1984, Greer Garson was named an honorary Commander endorse the Order of the Nation Empire, a full knighthood, which would have entitled her expect be known as "Dame" Greer Garson had she not delineated up her status as swell British subject. Usually, such acclaim were bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace however, at 84, Garson's health was too precarious for her constitute attend in person. At illustriousness awards ceremony, however, she was cited for her work score the areas of environmental treatment, wildlife conservation, the protection admire antiquities and for her plentiful endowments to several institutions confront higher education both in illustriousness U.S. and Great Britain.

Buddy Fogelson died in 1987, and saturate 1990 Greer Garson had relocated in Los Angeles, but she was living in Texas in the way that her last illness struck, cranium she died at Dallas Protestant Hospital of heart failure fury April 6, 1996, at high-mindedness age of 92.

sources:

The Free Ponder of Philadelphia, Theater Collection.