​Greer Garson, Hollywood beauty and icon of 1940s, was proud of her connections to Co Down

Although Garson was born on September 29 1904 rather than 1908 and in London rather than Castlewellan, she spent much of her childhood in the town and had significant Ulster connections of which she was proud.

Nancy Sophia Greer, her mother, hailed from Drumaloor, near Belturbet, Co Cavan.

Her maternal grandfather, David Greer, came from Kilrea, Co Londonderry, and was a sergeant in the RIC and at the end of his policing career he was stationed in Castlewellan. In the 1870s or 1880s, he became a land steward to the Annesley family who had built and owned the town.

An extremely intelligent young woman, Garson was educated at King’s College, London, where she studied French and 18th-century literature, and at the University of Grenoble.

Originally, she aspired to be a teacher but she instead became head of the research library of the marketing department of Lever Brothers, and made her acting debut on stage with Birmingham Repertory Theatre in January 1932. She appeared on television during its earliest years, most notably starring in a 30-minute production of an excerpt of ‘Twelfth Night’ in May 1937.

In that year the head of MGM, Louis B Mayer, went to a West End play called ‘Old Music’ on the erroneous assumption that it was a musical. Her performance impressed him sufficiently to offer her a contract. Although MGM initially did not know what to do with a university-educated 30ish British actress, she became one of the studio's top 10 box office draws.

In 1938 Sam Wood cast her in ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’. She was not greatly enamoured with the role, since she was to die early in the film after marrying and humanising the dry schoolteacher Mr Chipping.

Robert Donat won an Oscar for playing him, but the impact of Garson's brief appearance was sufficient to secure an Oscar nomination, losing out to Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone with the Wind’. Graham Greene, then a full-time film critic for the Spectator and Night and Day rather than a celebrated novelist, greatly admired her performance.

Garson portrayed a poised, witty, and intelligent Elizabeth Bennet in the celebrated 1940 film adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, starring opposite Laurence Olivier as Mr Darcy. Her performance was praised for its grace and maturity. (Incidentally, Vivien Leigh was in the frame to play Elizabeth but she was deemed ‘too beautiful’ for the part.)

The film has attracted unwarranted criticism. The costumes were wrong – early Victorian rather than Regency. Garson was too old for the role – she was 36 rather than 20, the age Elizabeth Bennett was in the novel, when she made the film.

Laurence Olivier even thought that the interpretation was wrong: ‘Elizabeth... she was the only down-to-earth sister but Greer played her as the most affected and silly of the lot.’

The truth is that the film was never intended to be a slavish adaption of Austen but was inspired by a 1936 stage version and Garson played the role exactly as Hollywood required.

Perhaps the most memorable scene is the exchange towards the end of the film between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth. Lady Catherine haughtily demands that Elizabeth promise never to marry Darcy. In the film version this was a hoax to test Elizabeth's mettle and sincerity of her love but in the novel the confrontation is authentic, motivated by a combination of Lady Catherine's snobbery and her desire that Darcy marry her own daughter.

Lady Catherine: But remember this: marry him and you will be poor.

Elizabeth: That would be no novelty for me, Lady Catherine.

Lady Catherine: Once and for all, are you engaged to him?

Elizabeth: No, I am not.

Lady Catherine: Ah. And, uh, will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?

Elizabeth: No, I will not.

In 1942 Garson played the title role in ‘Mrs Miniver’, the story of a British family where a mother holds her family together through the stresses of the Second World War.

The historian Tony Judt explained that it was ‘a very English tale of domestic fortitude and endurance, of middle-class reticence and perseverance’. Although it was ‘a pure product of Hollywood… for the English generation that first saw it the film would long remain the truest representation of national memory and self-image.’

Released six months after the US entered the war, President Roosevelt urged MGM ‘to get it out to cinemas all over America’ to mobilise support for the conflict.

Churchill claimed that the film had done more for the British war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.

Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, admiringly observed that film ‘shows the destiny of a family during the current war, and its refined powerful propagandistic tendency has up to now only been dreamed of. There is not a single angry word spoken against Germany; nevertheless the anti-German tendency is perfectly accomplished’.

The film was showered with Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actress (won by Garson) and Best Director. Garson made cinema history by making an acceptance speech that lasted approximately five minutes and 30 seconds. New rules were introduced to prevent this happening in the future.

Other memorable films of this era featuring Garson include ‘Random Harvest’ (also 1942), ‘Madam Curie’ (1943) and ‘That Forsythe Woman’ (1949).

By the late 1940s her career was beginning to falter but this did not matter because in 1949 she married Elijah Fogelson, a wealthy Texan oilman. Thereafter she could pick and chose the roles she wished to play.

Politically a registered Republican, in 1966 she was invited to run for Congress but declined. Religiously, she was a staunch Presbyterian. She spent her last years in Dallas, where she was an outstanding civic leader and unstinting in her work for good causes.

Greer Garson died from heart failure at the Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on April 6 1996 at the age of 91.