The Full Biography
Greer Garson. Actress. The London-born MGM heroine who made wartime dignity a box-office climate, then spent the decades after in Texas as a woman who had already done the speeches.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is Mrs. Miniver in a kitchen that has agreed to be England, a face the 1940s trusted with the war at home. What the still cannot show is Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson of Manor Park, London, a woman whose birth year the studio liked to shave, five consecutive Best Actress nominations, and a life on a New Mexico and Texas ranch with Buddy Fogelson, far from Culver City’s idea of a goddess.
She was born on September 29, 1904, in Manor Park, then in Essex, now east London. MGM preferred a younger fiction; she eventually let the real year stand. Her father, George Garson, died when she was an infant. Her mother, Nina Nancy Sophia Greer, raised her with a grandmother’s help and a Scots-Irish exactness about school. She read at the University of London, intended to teach, and went into advertising instead. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre and then the London stage found a red-haired woman who could carry a sentence. Louis B. Mayer, in town in 1937, saw her in a play and signed her. She was already past thirty. The ingénue machine did not know what to do with that. Mayer did. He built a type: intelligent, luminous, a little older than the girls, a woman who could carry a picture without a scandal.
The door was Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), for Sam Wood, opposite Robert Donat. She is Katherine, the wife who teaches a shy schoolmaster how to be in a room. Donat won Best Actor. She was nominated for Best Actress in her first picture. Hollywood had hired a finished person. Remember? (1939) was a misfire. Pride and Prejudice (1940), as Elizabeth Bennet opposite Laurence Olivier, is the other early object: a woman who talks back, in a studio England that is also a dream. Then the war pictures, and the type became a climate.
Blossoms in the Dust (1941), as Edna Gladney, a Texas woman who built a home for children the law had labeled illegitimate, brought the second nomination and a Technicolor that MGM used as a halo. Mrs. Miniver (1942), for William Wyler, is the civic object. She is Kay Miniver, a suburban English wife who captures a downed German pilot in her kitchen and holds a family through the Blitz. Walter Pidgeon is the husband. Teresa Wright is the daughter-in-law. The picture won Best Picture. She won Best Actress. Winston Churchill is said to have called it propaganda worth a flotilla; Joseph Goebbels is said to have understood the same fact from the other side. She knew it was a war picture. She also knew it was a performance. Both are true. The Oscar night of March 4, 1943, produced a speech the Academy still cites as the reason speeches got a clock — five and a half minutes, by the usual count, a woman thanking a long list because she had been raised to thank a long list.
Random Harvest (1942), opposite Ronald Colman, a romantic amnesia picture the wartime public used as a cry. Madame Curie (1943), again with Pidgeon, Marie Curie as a labor, a fourth nomination. Mrs. Parkington (1944), a fifth. The Valley of Decision (1945), a sixth in five years — 1941 through 1945, five consecutive Best Actress nominations, a wartime run that still looks like a typo. She was, for that stretch, the female half of MGM’s idea of civilization. Pidgeon was the frequent partner: eight pictures, a public marriage the studio could photograph without a scandal. Adventure (1945) put her opposite Clark Gable, home from the war, a mismatch the ads oversold — “Gable’s back and Garson’s got him” — a line that is funnier than the picture. Desire Me (1947) was a troubled shoot the studio finished without a director’s credit. The type was already beginning to age out, as types do. She had carried five years of the town’s idea of a grown woman. The town, after 1945, wanted a younger weather. She did not become younger. She became a person who could leave.
She had married Edward Snelson, a British civil servant, in 1933; the marriage was over, in the practical sense, long before Hollywood. In 1943 she married Richard Ney, the young actor who had played her son in Mrs. Miniver. The columns ate it. The marriage ended in 1947. In 1949 she married E.E. “Buddy” Fogelson, a Texas oilman and rancher, and the map changed. She did not become a late-life camp version of Miniver. She became a rancher’s wife who had once been the war. Julia Misbehaves (1948) and That Forsyte Woman (1949) are the MGM twilight. The Miniver Story (1950) tried to rent the kitchen again. It did not become the first picture. She took the work that was offered and then, more and more, the work she chose.
Sunrise at Campobello (1960) is the last nomination: Eleanor Roosevelt, in Dore Schary’s account of Franklin’s polio years. Ralph Bellamy is FDR. The performance is a labor of voice and posture, not a halo. She studied the First Lady’s walk and the First Lady’s teeth and did not wink at the camera. She was fifty-six. The ingénue machine had never been her machine. The Roosevelt picture was a reminder that the type had always been a woman, not a girl. She did Auntie Mame on stage, a part the Miniver public did not expect, and proved she could be funny without a kitchen. She did television. She did not spend the 1960s begging Culver City to return. The map had already changed. The ranch was the life. The kitchen was the clip.
I want to give back to Texas what Texas has given me.Greer Garson, on the gifts that followed the ranch
The turn is the marriage and the map. Other MGM women stayed in the zip code and became late television. She left the climate that had made her and did not spend the remaining years begging it to return. The philanthropy — theaters, universities — is a woman putting the Miniver money into rooms that would outlive the stills.
Six things most people never knew
- The birth year is 1904, not the studio’s younger fiction. She corrected the record. The dignity includes a real calendar.
- Five consecutive Best Actress nominations, 1941–45. A wartime run no actress has casually matched. Seven nominations in all.
- Mrs. Miniver is a propaganda object and a performance. Both. She knew it. The Sunday broadcasts keep both.
- The Oscar speech is why the Academy bought a clock. Five and a half minutes, March 1943. She was thanking people. The town made it a joke. The labor was the thank-you.
- Fogelson and the Southwest are the life after MGM, not a footnote. 1949. Oil, a ranch, Texas as a second country.
- The checks went to theaters and schools, not to a farewell tour. SMU’s Greer Garson Theatre. New Mexico State. Dallas still spends some of that will.
She did not have children with Fogelson in the public file that matters; the house was the ranch and the gifts. Friends from MGM describe a professional who was prepared, not icy, and tired of being told she was noble. The Garson in Texas could be funny about the nobility. The stills cannot. She had already left the zip code. The ranch and the Dallas boards were not a consolation prize. They were the second country she chose when the first country had finished with the type.
The later years
The years after Culver City were long, and they were Texas. Fogelson’s Forked Lightning Ranch, near Pecos, New Mexico, and a house in Dallas became the rooms. She learned cattle. She learned a civic circuit that did not require a key light: hospital boards, university boards, a woman who had been a halo deciding to be a checkbook and a presence. The ranch sat on land that is now part of Pecos National Historical Park; the Fogelsons sold and gave in a way that left the place standing. In 1965 she gave the money that built the Greer Garson Theatre at the Dallas Theater Center’s old home, and then, in the 1990s, the Greer Garson Theatre at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts — a 380-seat house, her name on a working stage, not on a museum plaque. The College of Santa Fe received another theater with her name. New Mexico State University received a Fogelson Library gift. She endowed scholarships. She did not announce a retirement. She changed zip codes and kept the labor. Dallas treated her as a civic elder. She treated Dallas as a second country that had asked for the Miniver money and then used it on rooms. She kept a British exactness about a thank-you and a Texan exactness about a gift that should outlive the giver. The Meadows School still uses the house. The Santa Fe stage still uses the name. Sunday television still uses the kitchen. She had already moved. Fogelson’s oil and her Oscar sat in the same ledger and came out as seats, scholarships, and a ranch that became a park. That is a second career the halo never advertised. She did not need it to advertise. She needed it to stand. Ninety-one years is a full chapter. Culver City kept a Sunday afternoon. Dallas kept the woman. The five consecutive nominations are a labor record. The ranch is the life that labor bought. She spent it on rooms that still have her name on the door when the kitchen is only a Sunday clip. The halo did not follow her to Texas. The checkbook did.
She took the occasional part when the part was a choice. The Happiest Millionaire (1967), a Disney picture, Aunt Mary. The Little Drummer Boy (1968), a television narrator. A guest night on Laugh-In that the Miniver public did not know how to file. Little Women on television in 1978, as Aunt March. She had already, in 1960, played Eleanor Roosevelt; the rest was furniture she could decline. She received an honorary doctorate from SMU. She and Fogelson gave the money that built the Greer Garson Theatre at the College of Santa Fe as well as the Dallas house that still bears her name. She sat with the Dallas Theater Center. Fogelson died in 1987. She stayed in Dallas. She kept the boards. She kept the ranch interests. She became, in the city’s account, a philanthropist who had once been a movie star, which is the order she preferred. Friends from the ranch years describe a woman who could still do the Miniver voice at a dinner and then talk cattle. Both are the life.
She died on April 6, 1996, at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, of heart failure. She was ninety-one. The funeral was a Dallas morning, not a Culver City premiere. She is buried at Sparkman-Hillcrest, in the same city that had taken the Miniver money and built rooms with it. The kitchen still plays on Sunday afternoons. The nomination run is a trivia object that is also a labor record. The theaters still have her name on the door.
She had already, by 1942, written the public woman. The half century after Miniver was a Texas life: a ranch, a board, a theater with her name on a working door, a widowhood she did not perform for the columns. She kept a sense of humor about the halo. She kept the checkbook open for rooms that would outlive the stills. Friends from Dallas describe a neighbor who had been England’s kitchen and was now a woman who asked about cattle and scholarships in the same afternoon. What the kitchen cannot hold is the count underneath: a 1904 birth the studio tried to shave, a London stage, a first-picture nomination, five consecutive years of the town saying her name in March, a speech that bought a clock, a son from a picture she married, an oilman, a ranch, and a Dallas theater that is still a working house. She had already, by 1942, written the public woman. The half century after Miniver was the life she actually lived. Culver City kept the kitchen. She had already moved.
After she was gone
Every wartime mother on film still pays her a tax. The nomination run is a trivia object that is also a labor record. Texas still has her name on rooms. Miniver still makes a certain kind of viewer sit up straighter. That was the job. She did it and left.
She came out of Manor Park, took Mayer’s type, carried the war in a kitchen, won, got nominated until the calendar broke, married an oilman, and died in Dallas as a woman who had stopped pretending to be a climate. If you only remember Miniver, you have the still. If you remember 1904, the five years, and the ranch, you have her.
Portrait: MGM studio · Public domain (PD-US, published 1931-1977 without notice) · via Wikimedia Commons