How Green Was My Valley (film)

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How Green Was My Valley
Theatrical Poster
Directed by	John Ford
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Written by	Story: Richard Llewellyn Screenplay: Philip Dunne
Starring	Walter Pidgeon Maureen O'Hara Anna Lee Donald Crisp Roddy McDowall
Music by	Alfred Newman
Cinematography	Arthur C. Miller
Editing by	James B. Clark
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	October 28, 1941 (USA)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English Welsh
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IMDb profile

How Green Was My Valley (1941) is an American film drama directed by John Ford. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, written by Philip Dunne, and based on the Richard Llewellyn novel of the same name. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five and beating out such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane for Best Picture. The film tells the story of the Morgans, a close, hard-working Welsh family at the turn of the twentieth century. It chronicles a socio-economic way of life passing and the family unit disintegrating.

In 1990, How Green Was My Valley was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

1 Plot
2 Background
3 Cast
4 Awards
- 4.1 Academy Award wins
  - 4.1.1 Academy Award nominations
- 4.2 Other
5 Cultural references
6 Footnotes
7 External links

Plot

The story is through the eyes of Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), now a middle-aged man leaving the mining town of Cwm Rhondda, recalling the events that most impressed his younger self. His first memories are of the marriage of his brother, Ivor (Patric Knowles), the burgeoning romance of his sister, Angharad (Maureen O'Hara), and the new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon). Still too young to work in the local coal mine like his father, Gwilym (Donald Crisp), and his five older brothers, he senses the seriousness of an imminent strike by the rift it creates between his father and the other boys when three of them move out of the family abode. During the tensions of the strike, Huw saves his mother (Sara Allgood) from drowning and in so doing temporarily loses the use of his legs. As Gruffydd aids in Huw's recovery, insisting on a positive attitude, he suggests that it is only the first of many trials the boy will have to face. The film concludes with the death of the father in mining accident.

Background

Director John Ford wanted to shoot the movie in Wales, but events in Europe during World War II made this impossible. Instead, he built a replica of the mining town^[1] at the close-to 3,000 acre Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon.