Greer Garson Books

Michael Troyan has a gift for biography. I hope he can collaborate with Turner Classic Movies to produce a video on the life of Greer Garson.
This book makes me wish I could have known Greer Garson. She loved and respected her mother, she loved her husband, she loved children and orphans and the disabled and disadvantaged. She loved her dogs, ranching in New Mexico, history, and she loved Texas...makes me love her even though I never met her. Good job, Mr. Troyan.

All too often, celebrity biographies are depressing catalogs of scandal and hedonistic, self-destructive behavior. Not this biography. When you finish it, you are sad, but it's because Greer Garson is no longer with us and you will never have the opportunity to meet her.
This fascinating biography is full of vignettes that reveal the character and personality of this woman who overcame chronic illness and many other obstacles to become one of Hollywood's most respected actresses. Examples of her warmth, sincerity, and decentness abound. As her beloved husband of more than thirty years to whom she is devoted lies near death in a Dallas hospital, she stands by his bedside with an old friend and recites from memory her favorite Psalm. Asked to read the Bible at a church service on Easter she realizes she has forgotten her glasses. She composes herself and ad libs for the congregation a beautiful and memorable message of her own.
She contributes millions to fund libraries, build theaters, establish scholarships, and support medical facilities. At the College of Santa Fe to which she has donated millions, she can be found on occasion pulling weeds and tending favorite rose bushes. She was so admired and respected in Texas where she had a home that she was formally asked to run for the U.S. Congress.
One hopes that Mr. Troyan or some other writer will gather Greer Garson's letters and publish them and that the A&E Network will finally remember her in an installment of "Biography." In the meantime, Garson fans should buy this book. It will inspire you and enrich your life and your appreciation of this beloved actress will only deepen. A richly detailed, superbly written biography of a truly lovely human being!

Modern actors and actresses don't seem to have the charisma, style and elegance of yesteryear's stars. Maybe that's because most of today's actors are really nothing but pitiful celebrities striving to be what once was, when Hollywood was golden.

I long for yesterday when it comes to film stars: Betty Davis, Myrna Loy, Katherine Hepburn Ginger Rogers, and so many more. Oh, yes, and that includes Greer Garson. The beautiful and talented woman we thought was born in Ireland in 1908, was really born in London in 1904.

Author Michael Troyan delves into Greer Garson's life, as much as anyone could, given that she was an extremely private woman. He carries you through her intense desire to succeed as an actress, her `discovery' and career struggles to resist being typecast, all the way through her marriages, and to her death on April 5, 1996 at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital with Van Cliburn at her bedside.

I'd always thought of Ms. Garson as a brilliant actress who could get any part she wanted. I had no idea of her struggles with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. One of my favorite films is the record-breaking "Mrs. Miniver." I get chills thinking about her Academy Award-winning performance.

And while it felt a bit like voyeurism looking in on her life, I'm glad I visited it through Troyan's eyes. It was a satisfying trip. And the author did a marvelous job showing us a small part of the woman who was Greer Garson.

For a compelling look at one of the best actresses to ever grace the stage, big or small screen, read A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a wonderful slice of our American film history.

This book on Greer Garson I highly recommend. It's very balances and tells of the good and bad times in her life about her career andher fmaily. Though i must admit I wished it had mentioned more about her interests and personal life off screem. But overall it's really well written and interesting book about alovely screen actress. Greer Garson really had class
and a wnderful grace about her in all of her films

An excellent read if you're into details. For me, the details got a little overwhelming, but I so much wanted to learn more about this actress that I admire greatly. Sadly, as the author himself stated, it was difficult to write a biography because Greer Garson was a very private person and did not give many interviews or express many personal opinions in public. However, he richly details her movies, her public service, and others' opinions of her (and a good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold). I have always enjoyed watching her many films and am tracking down as many of them as I can on DVD so this made for a fine addition to my collection of her work. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading and loves any of her many films.

I re-read this book every year at the start of the holiday season. It reminds me of what they are about - family, home, and the quiet joys of tradition and domestic tranquility. I love her keen observances of people and everyday objects. And I feel the same way about engagement books! I have bought copies for all my favorite women.

Mrs. Miniver is a story of courage and love and family written in Britain during World War II. Most people today who know the story, know it from the Greer Garson classic movie. But books have always been special in my family, and I was delighted to discover it was still in print.

Like so many other readers, I picked this book up expecting the written version of the Greer Garson film. As soon as I read the author's thanks to the Times for allowing her to republish a series of articles carried by that newspaper in the pre-war years, though, I realized that wasn't what I was about to read. So I adjusted my expectations, settled back, and thoroughly enjoyed Mrs. Miniver in her original incarnation. The war doesn't begin until the book's final vignette, although its looming threat is hinted at many times in the earlier ones.

Jan Struther's articles share with us the life of Mrs. Miniver, a happily married Londoner who has a second home in Kent and three perfectly normal children. Like other women of her time and class, she has no need to be employed at anything but living the proper social life, and directing the activities of her servants so that husband Clem will have a haven to come to every night and a competent hostess to entertain their friends and business contacts. Clem appears to be a building contractor, which makes such contacts especially important.

So far, so boring. Except that Mrs. Miniver has a keen mind, and an equally keen awareness of her own emotions and the triggers that rouse them. Each article's vividly written descriptions of routine events in an average woman's life not only involve the reader's senses; they also offer, subtly and therefore effectively, philosophical comments that any thinking person can't help responding to with recognition. We've lived what Mrs. Miniver has lived, all of us, despite being separated from her world by gulfs of time and space. Between those moments (at least one, but usually several, per article) and Struther's beautiful use of everyday language, this book turns out to be a quiet delight.

This book feels like a stream of kindly and observant words into a forgotten age.
It chronicles London life for an upper Middle class family immediately prior to WW2, as seen by the woman of the family unit. It captures an essential and sedate sense of Britishness long since lost and it is written with sad eye on the changes to come almost as if it anticipates them. This seems to be why the author takes such intense pleasure in the ordinary and brings such events to life, vividly, with huge empathy and comfort. There are elements of it's purpose and philosophy in the film version, but the film is much more dramatic and by and large bares no resemblence to the novel.
Being British, and having had family who survived the Blitz and the horrors of WW2, this book brought me to tears often for it must have captures the price paid for war, so eloquently.
The books emotive power lies in it's solid sense of it's time and in the sense of all that is to change. It's pleasent sense of ordinary, comfortable and uneventful plodding is strangely powerful.

This book shows the characterization of the woman in the film, but Hollywood definitely took some huge liberties with the plot line. As this is always the case, I expected some minor differences, but this is completely different. The novel was published before the Battle of Britain, and the author obviously didn't know the future. Hollywood at the time wanted to use headlines for film fodder, so it's only a matter of course that they should change the plot of the novel to suit the times. Both the movie and the novel are worthwhile.

The African Queen - C.S. Forrester. Weak. Good, but weak. The movie may have won an academy award but the book comes up short. More of a novella, or screenplay than a book. The author could have doubled the text and it may well have been a good book. I appreciate the drama of the two people pulled from separate worlds that are changed dramatically by unfolding events and raise themselves to previously unimagined feats of character and bravery. Still, it was a wasted effort, two little to hang it all on and a pointless ending.

I will not reveal the ending; I will say only that it does not end with the German captain of the Louisa marrying the protagonists just as the ship impales itself on the overturned African Queen's torpedoes. C. S. Forester's ending requires less suspension of disbelief, less "deus ex machina." Throughout the voyage of refugees Rose Sayer and Mr. Allnutt down the Ulanga and Bora Rivers in German Central Africa at the outbreak of war, the reader is treated to C. S. Forester's literal, high resolution realism. Forester would not have felt the need to depart from that realism to enhance the final drama. Forester reveals the characters of protagonists Rosie and Allnutt as successive adversities beset them on their voyage. Their steam launch, The African Queen, is their vessel in both senses of the word: if course it is their boat, but it also represents a container in which the protagonists' spirits are blended in a purposeful collaboration. it is a touching human drama, and the realism is such that the reader's ears ring unceasingly with the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes.

If I love a movie, I will often read the book with the expectation that it will be better.
In this case I think the movie is better than the book. Not that it is a bad book, I found it enjoyable enough. I just think that Bogey's and Hepburn's interpretation of the characters is what really brought this story to life.

Throughout most of the book, I found myself thinking, "This is one case where I like the movie better." Although the plot for the first 3/4 of the book is the same as the movie's, the characterization is a bit different. For example, the movie portrays Rose as a determind, principled, yet prim woman who slowly learns to love; in the book, she comes across as a bit immature, supposedly the result of being repressed by men her entire life, and is so thrilled with the freedom earned by her brother's recent death that she decides to kamikaze a German boat. Personally, I found the movie's Rose more realistic and likeable; the book's Rose felt too much like a poster child of feminist propoganda.

In general, most of the novel is a bit heavy-handed is describing the character's motives, characters, and thought processes, and leaves very little to the imagination. Subtlety, apparently, is not Forester's strong point.

The only thing keeping me from giving this book a lower rating is the ending. Forester truly redeems himself in my eyes with the ending, which is far darker and more realistic than the movie's. The ending calls into question everythng that you assumed that Forester was trying to tell you -- all the notions of heroism, patriotism, and true love. The last line is probably one of my favorite of all last lines,


(Spoiler space)



forcing you to ask yourself: Are Charlie and Rose truly soulmates, or has an extreme situation simply brought them together and instigated passion? While in the movie it is clear that Charlie and Rose truly love another, the book suggests that their "love" may simply be due to the arousal that arises during a near-death situation. For me, this very human, bittersweet ending enabled me to forgive Forester for his earlier heavy-handed treatment of the characters.

I was shocked to learn how bad this book really is. The title is so beloved by many as the Bogart/Hepburn classic, and one would expect the book to not only match the Hollywood translation but to dwarf it with typical literary superiority. Not so. The basic plot itself is brilliant enough in its simplicity: two unlikely characters (the archetypical Cockney grease monkey and the chaste maiden) have an adventurous float down an untamed river on a cocked-up mission to sink a German gunship. Ok so far. What Forester does with this promising seed is ridiculous and leaves the reader wondering whether this was all just a vehicle for Forester to deliver a little saucy "maiden-missionary-loses-her-virginity" stuff mixed in with his clearly evident views that missionaries are idiots. Forester's story is outrageous on all levels. From the timely and chance first meeting between Rose and Allnut, to the mere minutes that it took for Rose to hatch her ignorant plot to sink a German warship, to Allnut's agreement to participate, to the absurd success of the journey, to the ridiculous "Cockney ingenuity" with which Allnut fashions a propeller out of a coconut or some such stunt, Forester lays a number of eggs. The creme de la creme is Rose's glorious fall from grace. This whole angle of the book borders on soft porn, at least by 1930's standards. Are we to believe that this apparently devout missionary woman has maintained her purity for all these years just to give it all to this unbathed louse? Forester clearly delighted in this stuff: at one point, he actually describes Rose's 'chests' as literally levitating with her newfound vigor and energy - having replaced her former existence of Christian bondage with a new life of unbridled jungle boogie. Come on. Last criticism, with a SPOILER ALERT: the movie's ending is much better than the novel's. Whereas the movie made the boat (the very namesake of the book) into one of the main characters that ultimately sunk the German gunboat, Forester sinks the Afican Queen early and unceremoniously, and then takes the reader through an irrelevant account of Belgian naval manuevers and German military justice. Anyway, I've written enough: stick to the movie.