Age problem
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Mrs. Miniver
miriamwebster — 16 years ago(June 29, 2009 09:50 AM)
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 impossibleor at least unnecessarily difficultto 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 kilterbut in most cases, there APPEARED to be a big enough age gap that it was convincing. Not the case here, in my estimationGarson looked like she was maybe 10-15 years older than son tops. -
ecjones1951 — 16 years ago(August 09, 2009 04:10 PM)
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 — 16 years ago(February 26, 2010 10:40 AM)
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??!)
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thbryn — 16 years ago(October 17, 2009 09:08 PM)
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.
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herveywillets — 10 years ago(September 22, 2015 08:30 PM)
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 — 15 years ago(February 07, 2011 10:14 PM)
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.