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Categories: 1904 births | 1996 deaths | Academy Award winning actors | Cinema actors | English actors
Greer Garson
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson (September 29, 1904 - April 6, 1996) was an Academy Award winning actress. Known in childhood as "Eggy" and supposedly born in County Down, Ireland, in 1908, she was actually born in London, the only child of George Garson (1865-1906), a clerk from the Orkney Islands who was himself the son of an Irish cabinetmaker, and his Scottish wife, Nancy ("Nina") Sophia Greer.
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. She appeared in local theatrical productions, and was discovered by Louis B. Mayer while he was in London looking for new talent. Garson was signed to a contract with MGM and appeared in her first American film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, in 1939. She received her first Oscar nomination for the role.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942 for her role as a British matron pluckily surviving in the midst of war in Mrs. Miniver, and she received more nominations during the 1940s. By the end of the decade, and through the 1950s, however, her roles were becoming less appreciated. In 1960, however, she again received an Oscar nomination for Sunrise at Campobello, in which she played Eleanor Roosevelt.
The actress was married three times. Her first husband, married on Sept. 28, 1933, was Edward Alec Abbot Snelson (1904-1992), a British civil servant who became a noted judge and expert in Indian and Pakistani affairs; the marriage reportedly lasted only a few weeks, ultimately dissolved in the 1940s (Snelson was later knighted). Her second, whom she married in 1943, was Richard Ney (born 1914, 1915, 1917, or 1918, sources differ), 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 (died 1987), and in 1967, the couple retired to the Forked Lightning Ranch in New Mexico. She died of heart failure in Dallas, Texas and is interred there in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery.
Academy Awards and Nominations
- 1961 Nominated Sunrise at Campobello
- 1946 Nominated The Valley of Decision
- 1945 Nominated Mrs. Parkington
- 1944 Nominated Madame Curie
- 1943 Won Mrs. Miniver
- 1942 Nominated Blossoms In the Dust
- 1940 Nominated Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Filmography
- Little Women
- The Little Drummer Boy Book II
- Little Drummer Boy
- The Happiest Millionaire
- The Singing Nun
- The Invincible Mr. Disraeli
- Pepe
- Sunrise at Campobello
- Strange Lady in Town
- Her Twelve Men
- Julius Caesar
- Scandal at Scourie
- The Law and the Lady
- The Miniver Story
- That Forsyte Woman
- Julia Misbehaves
- Desire Me
- Adventure
- The Valley of Decision
- Mrs. Parkington
- Madame Curie
- The Youngest Profession
- Random Harvest
- Mrs. Miniver
- When Ladies Meet
- Blossoms In the Dust
- Pride and Prejudice
- Remember?
- Goodbye, Mr. Chips
- How He Lied to Her Husband
- The School for Scandal
- Twelfth Night
Categories: 1904 births | 1996 deaths | Academy Award winning actors | Cinema actors | English actors