MovieChat Forums > Mrs. Miniver (1942) Discussion > Age problem

Age problem

posted 15 years ago by miriamwebster
14 replies | jump to latest

Greer Garson was only 11 years older than Richard Ney, who played her son. . .and unfortunately (thanks to glamorous lighting, makeup and costuming that only accentuated her relative youthfulness), she looked it. Was impossible--or at least unnecessarily difficult--to believe she was actually the mother of a grown son.

UPDATE: Yes, I am well aware that Hollywood movies are full of instances where actual ages of performers playing mother/son, etc. were chronologically off kilter--but in most cases, there APPEARED to be a big enough age gap that it was convincing. Not the case here, in my estimation--Garson looked like she was maybe 10-15 years older than son tops.

[–] ecjones1951 15 years ago

Well, I don't know about that. My mother was 19 when I was born, and until I was in my early 20s many people thought we were sisters. She stayed quite youthful-looking into her mid-60s. She never had any plastic surgery, and chalked her looks up to good genes and drugstore brand moisturizer. People used to make Dorian Gray jokes about Mom, saying that a portrait of her must be in the attic doing all her aging for her. She would just smile mysteriously.

What I find awkward about Garson and Ney's being a romantic couple and getting married the year after Miniver came out is not that she looked so young but that he looked so young.

[–] raketex 15 years ago

Wow! I had never heard that about Garson being married to Ney. Now, THAT would have been a strange sight to behold and choke down seeing the two of them together out in the public after the movie came out! (Garson and Pidgeon married in real life I could see, but Garson and Ney??!)

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] pt100 11 years ago

Because of the mother-and-son relationship in the movie, the studio asked them to delay their marriage until after the film had left theaters, and so they did.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] srklondie 15 years ago

Sorry, I can't agree with you. However, don't know if you know it or not, but she was married to him in real life for a couple of years.

[–] thbryn 15 years ago

In "Adams's Rib" Spencer Tracy's mother --Mrs.Mondello-- was a year older than Tracey. In "Young Philadelpians" Paul Newman was four years older than his "mother." These things happen. Casting doesn't have to be perfect, just good.

[–] srklondie 15 years ago

As Jim Henry (Robert Tessier) said to Chaney (Charles Bronson) in ' Hard Times ', " You're pretty good ".

[–] raketex 15 years ago

In the same vein, Cary Grant's mother in "North by Northwest" was only a little over 7 years older than he was in real life.

[–] ptrish328 14 years ago

Yes, but Cary Grant was ageless.

[–] herveywillets 9 years ago

Joan Crawford once remarked "I'd play Wallace Beery's mother if the role was good enough".

And it's not always the ladies, Lionel Jeffries played Dick Van Dyke's father in CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, even though he was six months younger than Van Dyke.

[–] laxlon 14 years ago

They just said on TCM that Greer Garson was actually 37 when she made "Mrs. Miniver". Guess Greer lied about here age. When you think about it, she was kind of old by Hollywood standards becoming a star with "Mr Chips" in 1939. Joan Crawford was born one year after Greer Garson and by the early 1940s she was washed up at MGM and Garson was just getting started.

[–] momsabeach 11 years ago

Wasn't Angela Lansbury younger or just a bit older than Sinatra and she played his evil mother in Manchurian Candidate

"A daffy woman constantly strives to become a star..."

[–] Fingaroo 11 years ago

She actually played Laurence Harvey's mum, but yes, she was only a couple years older than he.