Rainy Saturday afternoons spent watching old movies at my grandparents’ house in my childhood kindled my enduring passion for history. Recalling those times, I watched the beautiful wartime film Mrs Miniver (1942) last week. This cosy, though ultimately unsettling, piece of propaganda was allegedly described by Churchill as more effective for morale than five battleships or a dozen destroyers. Like so many of Churchill’s anecdotes, I’ve struggled to find a source for this quote! But unlike many of Winston’s quotes, he may have understated the film’s importance in winning over the American public. Fighting against Anglophobia and the isolationist lobby led by Charles Lindbergh, American support was by no means guaranteed before December 1941. This article examines how Mrs Miniver reinforced the Europe-first message after its release in 1942.
Figure: A still from Mrs Miniver (1942)
Commissioned by MGM in late 1940, the film’s exacting director, William Wyler, wanted to build solidarity for the British cause in America against the Nazis. Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver) and the Canadian, Walter Pidgeon (Clem Miniver), play an urbane, likeable couple living in the idyllic English village of Belham. The movie opens in the last days of peace in 1939 with Mrs Miniver worrying she’s being too extravagant buying a hat at a fancy London store, whilst her husband is equally concerned about spending his architect’s salary on a new car. Life is good for this middle-class couple. The showiness and opulence feel very un-British compared to other films of the time, perhaps a little too American? That was the point. Henry Travers (who would go on to play Clarence, the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life) represents the working classes and is inspired by Garson’s beauty to call his new breed of rose, Mrs Miniver. Only the wonderful chemistry between Garson and Pidgeon, along with their humour, saves the film from being saccharine as it gets going. The only tension comes from the anachronistic Lady of the Manor, Lady Beldon, who looks down on the middle classes getting above their station. War is announced by the vicar from the pulpit, and the congregation sings “Children of the Heavenly King.” Appealing, as so many aspects of this movie, to the American audience, this was the hymn sung at Abraham Lincoln’s funeral service.[1]
Figure: Richard Ney playing Vin Miniver.
The Minivers’ idealistic son, Vin, played by the American heartthrob Richard Ney, falls for Lady Beldon’s daughter, played by Teresa Wright, a fellow countrywoman. The slightly too suntanned and American-pie, Ney, cuts a dashing figure in the parochial surroundings of the English village. But again, he wasn’t cast to make the character relatable to English audiences; he was cast to make the character relatable to their cousins across the Atlantic. The star-crossed romance blooms despite the young Vin joining the RAF. The couple eventually marry, much to Lady Beldon’s initial disdain and eventual approval. The class boundaries erode as the preparations for war increase, with air raids and bombs dropping on the village. This theme of progress toward a levelling of classes, or at least greater democracy, is repeated in wartime British films, for example, in In Which We Serve and Went the Day Well.[2] As with the selection of the hymn and the cast, this message would appeal to an American audience, all too wary of a class-divided England.
Figure: The actor Henry Travers starring in Mrs Miniver.
I won’t spoil the film, but as it progresses, the civilians of Belham are thrown into the front line of the war, and there’s a shocking ending that reminds us that no one is safe. We find that Clem owns a boat and becomes part of the armada of small boats that rescue men from the beaches of Dunkirk. The 1958 John Mills’ Dunkirk borrows heavily from Mrs Miniver’s depiction of the Thames boatyard and the flotilla chugging down to the sea. Meanwhile, a German bomber has been shot down over the village, and the Nazi pilot lands in the Minivers’ backyard. Threatening Mrs Miniver in her kitchen at gunpoint, he says, “We will bomb your cities. Rotterdam, we destroyed in two hours.” But what about the women and children, she cries and slaps the German’s face before he’s apprehended by the local bobby. If the film lays it all on a bit thick, the audience is left in no doubt who is responsible for committing war crimes. One of the most powerful scenes depicts the Minivers protecting their two young children in their beds inside their Anderson shelter during an air-raid. The tension builds as the bombs drop, creeping closer and closer until they’re right overhead. It’s a disturbing, uncomfortable scene to watch, and it stands in sharp contrast to the cosy village life depicted earlier in the film.
Figure: Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon in the air raid scene from Mrs Miniver.
Mrs Miniver was released on 4 June 1942 and was an immediate box-office hit. It played for a record-breaking ten weeks at Radio City Music Hall in New York and was the highest-grossing movie of its time for MGM. It received more Oscar nominations than any other film in 1943, and Greer Garson won Best Actress. To top it all, she gave the longest acceptance speech in Oscar history, lasting for 6 minutes! Here’s a clip:
Mrs Miniver ends with the vicar of Belham addressing the village congregation. He asks why children, old people, and a young girl “at the height of her loveliness” should be victims. He explains, “Because it is a war of the people.” President Roosevelt was said to have been deeply moved by this speech and asked that the words should be printed on pamphlets to be dropped over occupied Europe. The film even attracted the admiration of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, who ordered that it be studied by his staff as an exemplary wartime film to win hearts and minds. It became an inspiration for the unfinished Nazi film, Das Leben geht weiter, which started to be filmed in the Autumn of 1944 and showed an ordinary German family struggling through the difficulties of Allied bombing. So, Churchill may have been understating the value of Mrs Miniver when he compared it to five battleships.
Figure: Final scene of sermon in the Belham village church from Mrs Miniver.
History research sometimes has a habit of creating a curious serendipity that reinforces a viewpoint or, more often, completely trashes it. I sat in a comfortable armchair watching this enjoyable wartime melodrama about a middle-class family whose English village life is shattered by the horror of German bombers. The next day, I attended a lecture by Dr Victoria Taylor on the Allied bombing of Dresden. She handled a difficult and controversial topic with sensitivity, putting this horrific event of 13 February 1945 into context from many different historical angles, not least the 25,000 civilian German victims. Mrs Miniver seemed a world away from the sickening photos of the burnt and mummified corpses from the German city, which, once seen, cannot be forgotten. I’m reminded once again not to be too seduced by the silver screen and to appreciate the power of propaganda, which could have easily depicted a German family.
Further Reading:
A useful primer for Mrs Miniver presented by Paul Gambaccini made in 2015 can be found in this radio programme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b051j5tb
[1] See https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/lastfuneral.htm.
[2] Arthur Marwick, Class: image and reality in Britain, France and the USA since 1930 (W. Collins, 1980), p. 227.