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Our Columnists Reflect on Oscar's Best Films |
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HOW GREEN IS MY VALLEY art1.jpg) Donald Crisp, left, embraces Roddy McDowall as Sara Allgood looks on in "How Green Was MyValley," the Best Picture Oscar winner of 1941. Crisp won the Supporting Actor Oscar and Allgood was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. |
A rare screening with
the writer and stars
of TheColumnists.com
In the early summer of 1983, I saw a small notice in The Los Angeles Times calendar of events that a rare showing of a nitrate print of "How Green Was My Valley," the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1941, would be shown that night at the theater of the Directors Guild of America (DGA).
My wife and I then had been living in Los Angeles for just a couple of months as I became used to my new assignment as a TV columnist and Hollywood-based movie feature writer for The San Jose Mercury News and the Knight Ridder Syndicate. I had not yet attended any of the regular screenings for members of the Directors Guild and was curious about what sort of facilities they had. I was a great admirer of the movie, so I thought it might be well worth the drive from our home in the San Fernando Valley to the screening in the Beverly Hills area.
Another lure was the fact they'd be showing a nitrate print. In the 1940s, when the film was made, they still used the flammable nitrate stock for film negatives. Nitrate film disintegrates over time, so the negatives and prints had to be stored very carefully. The so-called "safety film" that replaced nitrate stock would not burst into flame, but it was not able to capture the full quality of the original when a safety film print was made from a duplicate negative.
As it turned out, I'd never seen such luminous quality in a black and white film. "How Green Was My Valley" was superbly photographed by Arthur Miller and watching a nitrate print of it from a nitrate negative brought "oohs" and "aahs" from the small crowd of Guild members and maybe a dozen or so members of the public who had seen the same notice I'd seen about the screening.
"How Green Was My Valley" is the multi-generational story of young Huw Morgan, who grew up in a coal-mining family in a small mining town in Wales. The hardships, the romances and the tragedies of the Morgan family make it a deeply-affecting story of how a very close family shapes the life of a young man. I'd seen the movie before reading the autobiographical source novel by Richard Llewellyn, so I was surprised to find that the film ended before young Huy came to full manhood, but the novel went on much farther into his adult life.
Still, the film was incredibly satisfying and most moviegoers were not as upset as film purists later would be to discover that Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" had lost the Best Picture Academy Award that year to "How Green Was My Valley," even though "Citizen Kane" so often has been voted the all-time best American film by film scholars ever since.
"How Green Was My Valley" was made by John Ford, already a legendary director in Hollywood for his many great films since the silent days, but it had no huge box office stars in the cast. Walter Pidgeon, borrowed from MGM, had top billing and Maureen O'Hara, who had been working in the U.S. only since 1939, was second billed. The leading role of Huw was played by an unknown British lad, 13-year-old Roddy McDowall, and the only acting award winner for the film was silent movie veteran Donald Crisp, who played the family patriarch. He won the Best Supporting Actor award for 1941.
When the lights came on after the screening, the evening's host then announced that several people associated with the film were present and would be happy to answer any questions the audience might have. And there sitting before us were Roddy McDowall, the great character actress Anna Lee and Philip Dunne, the author of the screenplay.
McDowall had become a screen favorite following his impressive American debut in "How Green Was My Valley" and gone on to be the star of scores of films from "My Friend Flicka" and "Lassie, Come Home" to Orson Welles' "Macbeth" and his many star appearances in the "Planet of the Apes" series.
Anna Lee had starred in the original "King Solomon's Mines" (1937) with Paul Robeson and later starred in "Flying Tigers" with John Wayne, "Bedlam" with Boris Karloff, and, because of her long friendship with John Ford, had become a member of his regular "stock company. At the time of the screening, she was appearing in ABC's daytime serial "General Hospital" as Lila Quartermaine.
Writer Philip Dunne had many great films to his credit, including "The Last of the Mohicans" (1936) with Randolph Scott, "Stanley and Livingstone" (1939) with Spencer Tracy, "The Rains Came" (1949), "Pinky" (1949) and "The Robe" (1953).
Dunne and the others confirmed the theory many had that Darryl F. Zanuck, then head of production at 20th Century-Fox, had been looking for a "big" film project to rival the 1939 MGM box office bonanza "Gone With the Wind" and had settled on "How Green Was My Valley" to be his four-hour epic. But subsequent budget problems and the outbreak of war in Europe forced the studio to downsize its thinking. Dunne's four-hour screenplay was cut in half and economy-minded director John Ford was brought in on the proviso that he could do the film for $1 million.
"He did it for $1.3 million, which was a miracle," Dunne told me that night.
With that budget, Ford still was able to get a make believe Welsh village built in a Malibu canyon that looked incredibly authentic. (Fox used the same set later when it filmed John Steinbeck's novel "The Moon is Down" in 1943.)
Anna Lee, who was English, told me she convinced Ford that she was part-Irish--he loved anything Irish--in order to get the role of Bronwyn, who has perhaps the most dramatic scene in the film when she learns her husband has been killed in a mine accident. Greer Garson had been the first choice for the role when William Wyler was going to direct the picture. but Garson had turned it down. Delays in starting the film caused Wyler to pull out and Ford replaced him. Wyler hired Garson for his next picture, "Mrs. Miniver," and she won the 1942 Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Lee began her long association with John Ford after working in "How Green Was My Valley," but the relationship didn't start out auspiciously
"I was very scared of Ford at first," she said. "I never told him I wasn't part Irish until just before he died. It didn't really matter anyway. He turned out to be a real Anglophile and we got along fine, even though he called me a 'limey' all the time."
Dunne told the audience that lots of other juvenile actors were looked at before McDowall landed the role of Huw.
"They had narrowed it down to about seven little English refugees," said Dunne. "There were at least five perfect little Freddie Bartholomews. This this strange-looking little character popped up on the screen."
Everybody but the casting director loved McDowall for the role. Dunne said the casting people thought McDowall was "wall-eyed" and didn't look like he'd grow up to be Tyrone Power, who was supposed to play the adult Huw before that part of the story was trimmed from the script.
"If only I had," McDowall cracked.
McDowall got the role and he always claimed it changed his life. He had made lots of pictures in England earlier, but he was totally absorbed by the role of Huw.
"I became that little boy in the movie," McDowall said. "That man (Ford) had such an extraordinary ability to play the strings of an actor. Nobody ever used my talent like that man. He always made you think you made everything up yourself. He had a wonderful way of fusing a cast together. We all became friends and remained friends. He was a magician."
When I think back on that amazing night of nostalgia with the "How Green Was My Valley" people, I can't help but feel sad. Dunne, Lee and McDowall are all gone now. Later I had a long one-on-one interview with Lee in her dressing room at ABC and came to love her both as a person as a performer. I met McDowall several times later and realized he was a very entertaining guy and a great expert on film history. I miss them all, but I can revisit them anytime I want, as we all can, by putting on a home video edition of "How Green Was My Valley," a film that continiues to glow even more as the years go by.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The illustration is courtesy of 20th Century-Fox. This column first posted Feb. 16, 2009.
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