Mrs. Miniver’s House in World War II England

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on JUNE 27, 2011

Igrew up watching old black and white movies with my mom. We’d go through the TV Guideat the beginning of each week and highlight all of the ones we wanted to watch so we wouldn’t miss anything good.

When I was in college I started doing research on some of my favorites and had the idea that I would someday write a behind-the-scenes book about them and my favorite film stars. I compiled files full of trivia and information I tracked down when I should have been doing my Algebra homework.

Okay, so I never wrote that book, but if you consider I have written a Movie Monday post every week like clockwork for the past 2 1/2 years, it kind of adds up to one, doesn’t it? To be honest, I don’t think I can keep it up.

The movie posts are hugely time consuming. So, starting in July, I’m going to give myself a break. I’ll still be covering TV and Movie sets, of course, but not every single week. I do have one for you today, though, and it’s a classic!

The 1942 movie Mrs. Miniver tells the story of a middle-class British family whose lives are disrupted by the start of World War II. It won 6 Oscars, including Best Picture, and was nominated for 6 more.

When the movie was filmed, Americans were still feeling neutral about the war in Europe. For the most part, the U.S. didn’t want to get involved. But then Mrs. Miniver came along and grabbed the country’s attention.

It was hard for moviegoers to remain neutral after they saw Mrs. Miniver’s beautiful house with the white-picket fence fall victim to the Nazi air raids. Winston Churchill himself said the movie’s propaganda value was worth more than a dozen battleships.

The movie was based on the fictional English housewife created by Jan Strutherfor a series of newspaper columns in the 1930s.

The handsome Walter Pidgeon played Mr. Miniver, one of the hundreds of boat owners summoned to Dunkirk to help evacuate British soldiers. The actor was not British, though–he was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen after moving to Hollywood in the 1920s to star in silent films.

The family deals with the daily aerial bombardment of German planes during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Parts of the house became inhabitable, including the dining room:

Greer Garson was discovered by Louis B. Mayer in 1937 when he saw her performing on a London stage. He signed her to an MGM contract the next day.

Her first part was in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), which earned her an Oscar nom.Her next movie was one of my favorites–the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. They were miscast as Elizabeth and Darcy (they were both in their 30s at the time), but I always enjoy watching it anyway.

A Nazi paratrooper is no match for Mrs. Miniver, who faces him alone in her kitchen:

The minister’s speech at the end of the film moved President Roosevelt so muchthat he ordered it printed onto leaflets and dropped them over occupied Europe.

The Miniver master bedroom has a fireplace and a separate dressing area:

Greer Garson won an Oscar for this role and holds the record for giving the longest acceptance speech in history. Legend has it that she rambled for an hour, but it was really only 5 1/2 minutes.

Mrs. Miniver shows the newlyweds to their room, which is still pretty despite the damage to the ceiling:

A sequel called The Miniver Story followed in 1951, and it, unlike the original, was actually filmed in England. It was not, however, as successful. In it, Mrs. Miniver finds out she is dying of cancer, but keeps the grim news to herself.

Greer Garson was only 11 years older than Richard Ney, who played her oldest son. They fell in love while filming the movie and married in 1943. Four years later, their nasty divorce put an end to Ney’s Hollywood career because Garson was so universally loved.

Ney, who died in 2004, was actress Minka Kelly’s grandfather. You might know Minka from her roles on “Friday Night Lights” (loved her as Lyla Garrity!) and “Parenthood,” among others.

I’ve heard from readers over the years that Mrs. Miniver’s house is one of their all-time favorites. Is it one of yours?

Click Here to See More Houses from Classic Films, from Christmas in Connecticut to Gone With the Wind.

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The Stone Farmhouse in “Christmas in Connecticut”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on DECEMBER 25, 2008

Ilove old black and white movies. Especially romantic comedies. And if there’s a little Christmas thrown into the storyline, all the better! One of my favorites to watch at this time of year is Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck.

I’ve been in love with the stone farmhouse that it takes place in ever since I saw it as a girl. I love the vaulted ceilings, the walls of windows, the built-in bookshelves, and the big stone fireplace in the living room.

Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) writes a popular column in Smart Housekeeping, describing her daily life as a wife and mother, an accomplished cook and home decorator, on a farm in Connecticut. But the truth is, Elizabeth is a single woman living in NYC who needs a recipe to boil water.

Her “Uncle Felix” (played by Hungarian-born S.Z. Sakall, who fled Europe because of the Nazis) runs a successful restaurant in the city, and she uses his recipes for the magazine column. The Connecticut farmhouse she writes about is actually her architect boyfriend’s.

When her boss, Alexander Yardley, invites himself to Christmas dinner and wants to bring along war hero Jefferson Jones as a sort of publicity stunt, Elizabeth and her boyfriend–now fiance–have to pretend to be married.

The curving stone fireplace is almost larger than life with the opening stretching above their heads and niches built-in for books and things.

I tried to get a good shot of the fireplace, but it was difficult. The camera was always panning past it, or people were standing in front of it…

In this shot you can see the built-in bookshelves on the other side of the fireplace, too:

She brings “Uncle Felix” along to the farmhouse to cook, and they borrow a neighbor’s baby to play the part of baby Roberta. But then Elizabeth meets Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) sparks fly, and complications ensue. Maybe she won’t marry John Sloan after all. . .

John’s den with bar:

Sydney Greenstreet, a well-known character actor, played Alexandra Yardley, Elizabeth’s publisher. I love when he says, “What a Christmas!” at the end of the movie and can’t stop laughing.

Jefferson helps Elizabeth bathe the baby in the bathroom. “Are you sure the baby’s name is Robert?” Oops. “I mean, Roberta!”

This looks like the perfect place to spend Christmas to me…

Jefferson wins Elizabeth over by singing Christmas carols while she trims the tree:

Her fiance John starts to feel a little left out, though…

According to the IMDB website, the set was the same one used in the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn rom-com “Bringing Up Baby” in 1938. I found that interesting because I loved that house, too. I’ve got to rent it again so I can compare the two! The exteriors were similar, as I recall, but I clearly remember the entry and staircase in “Bringing Up Baby,” and it was completely different from the one in this film. They must have changed a lot around.

12/10 UPDATE: I wrote a post about “Bringing Up Baby,” so you can see how the sets compare here.

Jefferson and Elizabeth in the upstairs hallway. (These are the kinds of outfits I like to hang out in when I’m in my Connecticut farmhouse, too.)

Felix teaches Elizabeth how to flip flapjacks:

Love the Dutch door in the kitchen. So does this cow, which has wandered to the house from the barn:

Sitting around the kitchen table:

Housekeeper Norah proclaims this “The best kitchen in Connecticut!”

A shot of the pretty guest bedroom:

I like the fireplace in the bedroom with the slanted wall above it. Gotta love all the dormers in this house!

The war hero’s fiancee shows up to complicate things further:

But everything gets straightened out in the end and Elizabeth and Jefferson fall in love. Unfortunately, when Elizabeth chooses Jefferson, she must leave John’s farmhouse behind, so the ending isn’t a totally happy one (in my opinion!).

Elizabeth’s character was supposedly based on popular Family Circlemagazine columnist Gladys Taber, who lived on Stillmeadow Farm in Connecticut. But unlike Elizabeth, Gladys was the real deal who wrote something like 50 books about cooking and homemaking.

4/10 UPDATE: Susan Turnley says that Taber was not really the inspiration for the movie:

Apparently this rumor came about many years ago when the IMDb.com website began annotating movies for readers. There were paid-by-the-hour workers who had to come up with newsy notes about the movies. One of them cooked up the line: “…Gladys Taber, whose column ‘Butternut Wisdom’ ran in Family Circle Magazine from before World War II until the 1970?s…” Fans of Gladys know that the Butternut Wisdom column didn’t start until 1959, 14 years after the movie.

From late 1937 to the end of 1957, Gladys had a column entitled “Diary of Domesticity” that ran in Ladies Home Journal. BTW, Gladys always said that the title of that column was forced on her and “it was a bad title but a pretty good column.” The family says they are sure the character of Elizabeth Lane was not based on Gladys, but the rumor has gone viral on the internet. I do feel that it doesn’t hurt getting her name out to more people: our goal is to get more people reading her books.

8/10 UPDATE: I just got this note from Anne Colby about the Gladys Taber connection to the movie:

Taber was my grandmother, and my family still owns Stillmeadow Farm. But I have to correct Susan Turnley’s post a bit, since my family actually has always believed- and hoped- that the movie was indeed loosely based on my grandmother’s Ladies Home Journal column “Diary of Domesticity”(I know, what a title). We’ve never tried to pin this down, however, so we’d welcome any confirmation/thoughts.

Taber’s column was one of the Journal’s most popular columns ever, and in 1945, the monthly essay was nationally well-known and at the height of its success. Apparently during the war, copies of Ladies Home Journal were sometimes included in care packages sent to troops overseas, and my family has a wonderful fan letter sent to my grandmother from a WWII soldier who had read her columns while in the service, and wrote that the soldiers had found comfort in her portrait of hometown America.

Beyond the basic plot point, however, the similarity ends– since Gram really lived on her (very simple) CT farm, and her cookbooks, while delicious, were not exactly low-fat– so she would have envied Barbara Stanwyck’s glamorous look!

Thanks, Anne!

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page to see more, from Gone with the Wind toMr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

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