How Green Was My Valley ***** (1941, Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall) – Classic Movie Review 71

John Ford’s 1941 black-and-white drama film How Green Was My Valley was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five, beating Citizen Kane, Sergeant York and The Maltese Falcon for Best Picture.

Director John Ford’s 1941 American black-and-white drama film How Green Was My Valley is based on the bestselling 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, set in Wales, and stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp and Roddy McDowall. It won five Oscars, beating Citizen Kane, Sergeant York and The Maltese Falcon for Best Picture. It is produced by Darryl F Zanuck, shot by Arthur Miller and scripted by Philip Dunne.

The warm-hearted, nostalgic family story of life in a turn-of-the-last-century Welsh valley is extremely affectingly and affectionately told by director John Ford in one of his most admired, and mostly fondly remembered movies. It triumphed on Academy Awards night in 1942, taking five Oscars for best film, director, cinematography, art direction and supporting actor.

That best supporting actor actor was Donald Crisp (the father in National Velvet), who gives a distinguished, intense and powerful performance as Gwillym Morgan, a strict Welsh patriarch blessed with an understanding wife (Sara Allgood, Oscar nominated), one daughter, five sons in the dirty, dangerous coalmining business and a sixth called Huw (Roddy McDowall, aged 13), who is a sensitive boy with the promise of a possible rosy future outside the valley.

Based on Richard Llewellyn’s novel, the engagingly sentimental story – told in flashback by Huw as an old man (voice of Irving Pichel) – is warmly, appealingly and attractively by a director obviously sympathetic to the material. The actors, who also include Walter Pidgeon as the local chapel minister Mr Gruffydd and a luminous, magnetic Maureen O’Hara as Angharad, the valley’s most outstanding beauty, a girl Gruffydd loves and Huw adores, are ideally cast and give perfect performances.

The American film studio 20th Century Fox was extravagant enough to build the entire Welsh village seen in the movie, as they were unable to shoot the movie in Wales in World War Two. Ford got the studio to build an 80-acre replica of a Welsh mining town at Brent’s Crags (later Crags Country Club) in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu, California.

Arthur Miller’s luminous black and white cinematography, Alfred Newman’s score and Richard Day’s set designs are superb, a tribute to old Hollywood craftsmanship at its finest. There were five other Oscar nominations.

It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five: producer Darryl F Zanuck won for Best Picture, Ford won for Best Director, Donald Crisp for Best Supporting Actor, Arthur Miller for Best Cinematography, and Richard Day, Nathan H Juran and Thomas Little for Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration.

Philip Dunne recalled reading the novel ‘in horror, turgid stuff, long speeches about Welsh coal miners on strike.’ If so, the scripting task must have been hard but he was only nominated for Best Screenplay.

John Ford replaced original director William Wyler, who had picked McDowall after seeing his screen test.

And, later, two TV mini-series versions followed in 1960 and 1975.

The cast are Walter Pidgeon as Mr Gruffydd, Maureen O’Hara as Angharad Morgan ,Donald Crisp as Gwilym Morgan, Roddy McDowall as Huw Morgan, Sara Allgood as Mrs Beth Morgan, Anna Lee as Bronwen, Patric Knowles as Ivor Morgan, John Loder as Ianto Morgan, Barry Fitzgerald as Cyfartha, Rhys Williams as Dai Bando, Morton Lowry as Mr. Jonas, Arthur Shields as Mr Parry, Frederick Worlock as Dr Richards, Richard Fraser as Davy Morgan, Evan S. Evans as Gwilym Morgan Jr, James Monks as Owen Morgan, Ethel Griffies as Mrs Nicholas, Lionel Pape as Mr Evans senior, Marten Lamont as Iestyn Evans, Ann E Todd as Ceinwen, Clifford Severn as Mervyn Phillips, and Irving Pichel as adult Huw Morgan (unseen narrator).

Maureen O’Hara celebrated her 95th birthday on 17 August 2015. She was never Oscar nominated but was finally awarded an honorary Oscar at 94 on 8 November 2014. The British Film Institute awarded her a BFI Fellowship in 1993. She died on 24 October 2015, aged 95.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 71

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