Greer Garson
in the Random Harvest film trailer (1942)
Birth name	Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson
Born	September 29 1904(1904--) London, England
Died	March 6 1996 (aged 93) Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Edward Alec Abbot Snelson (1933-1940) Richard Ney (1943-1947) E. E. "Buddy" Fogelson (1949-1987)
Awards Academy Awards Best Actress 1942 Mrs. Miniver Golden Globe Awards Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama 1960 Sunrise at Campobello

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson, CBE (September 29, 1904 - April 6, 1996) was an Academy Award-winning English actress very popular during the World War II years and was the leading lady in many pictures with Walter Pidgeon.

Early life

Known in childhood as "Eggy", she was born in Manor Park, London, England in 1904. She was the only child of George Garson (1865-1906), a clerk born in London but with Scottish lineage, and his Irish wife, Nancy ("Nina") Sophia Greer (d. 1958).

She was educated at the University of London, where she earned degrees in French and 18th-century literature. She intended to become a teacher, but instead began working with an advertising agency, and appeared in local theatrical productions.

Career

She appeared on television during its earliest years, in the 1930s, most notably in a thirty-minute production of an excerpt of Twelfth Night in May 1937, alongside Peggy Ashcroft. This is the first known instance of a Shakespeare play performed on television.

Greer Garson was discovered by Louis B. Mayer while he was in London looking for new talent. Garson was signed to a contract with MGM in 1936 but did not appear in her first American film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, until 1939. She received her first Oscar nomination for the role, but lost to Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind. She did receive critical acclaim the next year for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1940 film, Pride and Prejudice.^[1]

Garson starred opposite Joan Crawford in When Ladies Meet in 1941 and that same year, became a major box office star with the sentimental Technicolor drama Blossoms in the Dust which brought her the first of five consecutive Best Actress Oscar nominations, tying Bette Davis' 1938-1942 record, a record that still stands. Garson won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942 for her role as a strong British wife and mother in the middle of World War II, in Mrs. Miniver. (Guinness Book of World Records credits her with the longest Oscar acceptance speech, at five minutes and 30 seconds,^[2] after which the Academy Awards instituted a time limit.) She was also nominated for Madame Curie (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944), and The Valley of Decision (1945).

She had been America's most popular dramatic actress for several years when she was teamed with Clark Gable in his first film since returning from war service in 1945 entitled Adventure. The film was advertised with the now-classic catch-phrase "Gable's back and Garson's got him!" Garson's popularity dropped somewhat in the late 1940s, but she remained a popular film star until the mid 1950s.

In 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. After her MGM contract expired in 1954, she made only a few films. In 1958, she received a warm reception on Broadway in Auntie Mame, replacing Rosalind Russell, who had gone to Hollywood to make the film version. In 1960, Garson received her seventh and final Oscar nomination for Sunrise at Campobello, in which she played Eleanor Roosevelt, this time losing to Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8.

Garson's last film was 1967's The Happiest Millionaire, although she made infrequent television appearances. In 1968 she narrated the children's television special The Little Drummer Boy which went on to become one of the classic children's Christmas television programs and which has been broadcast annually every year since 1966.

Personal life

The actress was married three times. Her first marriage, on September 28, 1933, was to Edward Alec Abbot Snelson (1904-1992), later Sir Edward, a British civil servant who became a noted judge and expert in Indian and Pakistani affairs. The actual marriage reportedly lasted only a few weeks, but was not formally dissolved until 1943.

Her second husband, whom she married in 1943, was Richard Ney (1915-2004), the young actor who played her son in Mrs. Miniver. They divorced in 1949, with Garson claiming that Ney had called her a "has-been" and belittled her age. Ney eventually became a respected stock-market analyst and financial consultant.

That same year, she married a millionaire Texas oilman and horse breeder, E. E. "Buddy" Fogelson (1900-1987), and in 1967, the couple retired to their "Forked Lightning Ranch" in New Mexico. In 1971 they purchased the U.S. Hall of Fame champion Thoroughbred Ack Ack from the estate of Harry F. Guggenheim and were highly successful as breeders. They also maintained a home in Dallas, Texas where Garson funded the Greer Garson Theater facility at Southern Methodist University.

Garson donated millions for the construction of the Greer Garson Theater at the College of Santa Fe on three conditions: 1) that the stage be circular, 2) that the premiere production be William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and 3) that it have large ladies' rooms.^[3]

Death

Greer Garson died from heart failure in Dallas on April 6, 1996, at the age of 91. She is interred there in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery.

Filmography

• Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
• Remember? (1939)
• The Miracle of Sound (1940) (short subject)
• Pride and Prejudice (1940)
• Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
• When Ladies Meet (1941)
• Mrs. Miniver (1942)
• Random Harvest (1942)
• The Youngest Profession (1943) (cameo)
• Madame Curie (1943)
• Mrs. Parkington (1944)
• The Valley of Decision (1945)
• Adventure (1945)
• Desire Me (1947)
• Julia Misbehaves (1948)
• That Forsyte Woman (1949)
• Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)
• The Miniver Story (1950)
• The Law and the Lady (1951)
• Scandal at Scourie (1953)

• Julius Caesar (1953)
• Her Twelve Men (1954)
• Strange Lady in Town (1955)
• Sunrise at Campobello (1960)
• Pepe (1960) (cameo)
• The Singing Nun (1966)
• The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
• Little Women (1978)
• Directed by William Wyler (1986) (documentary)

Awards
Preceded by Joan Fontaine for Suspicion	Academy Award for Best Actress 1942 for Mrs. Miniver	Succeeded by Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette
Preceded by Elizabeth Taylor for Suddenly, Last Summer	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama 1961 for Sunrise at Campobello	Succeeded by Geraldine Page for Summer and Smoke

Footnotes

External links

• Greer Garson at the Internet Movie Database
• Greer Garson at the TCM Movie Database
• Greer Garson at the Internet Broadway Database

References

• TCM Film Guide, "Leading Ladies: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actresses of the Studio Era", Chronicle Books, San Francisco, California, 2006