How Green Was My Valley is a novel of 1939, by the author Richard Llewellyn. Its success spawned sequels. Darryl F. Zanuck paid $300,000 for the rights to the novel. The successful 1941 film was based on the book and was directed by John Ford.
The author’s claims to have based it on his own knowledge of the Gilfach Goch area were proven false, as Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales. The title of the novel is taken from its last sentence: How green was my valley then, and the valley of them that have gone.
The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five and beating out such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane for Best Picture. The cast included Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, Roddy McDowall (as Huw), and Barry Fitzgerald. None of the leading players were however Welsh.( * The songs sung by the male voices are all authentic Welsh. The song sung at the opening is “Men of Harlech”.)
In 1990 this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Plot Summary
The story is told through the eyes of Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), now a middle-aged man leaving the mining town of Cwm Rhondda, after the death of his father in a mining accident. The film is largely then told in a flashback of certain events of his youth.
The social changes of the Victorian England in the grip of Industrial Age make inroads into their town; “In those days, the black slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the sides of our hill. Not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village,..”, and its harshness takes toll in human terms: his brother, Ivor (Patric Knowles) dies in a mining accident and Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, on whom he had crush from the time she came into the family. Later, towards the end his own father is also killed in the mine. Juxtaposed to these is the romantic interlude between Angharad (Maureen O’Hara), one of Huw’s three sisters and Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), the local minister.
Huw is 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. Gruffydd aids in Huw’s recovery and instills in him a positive attitude. Huw observes the tender romance between the preacher and his sister, who enters into a loveless marriage with the local wealthy coal owner. After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, he decides to leave as well, and tells us the story of his life just before he does.
Director John Ford wanted to shoot the movie in Wales, but events in Europe during World War II made this impossible. an 80-acre set was built in the Santa Monica Mountains at Brent’s Crags, near Malibu. The design of the village was based on the real Cerrig Ceinnen and nearby Clyddach-cum Tawe in Wales
Directed by John Ford
Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
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
Running time 118 minutes
Country United States
Language English
How Green Was My Valley won five Academy Awards in 1941, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Crisp), Best Art Director, Best Cinematography, and the book was later adapted into a 1975 BBC miniseries.
Similar Movies
The Corn Is Green (1945, Irving Rapper)
The Good Earth (1937, Victor Fleming, Sidney Franklin)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)
I Remember Mama (1948, George Stevens)
Life With Father (1947, Michael Curtiz)
The Quiet Man (1952, John Ford)
The Stars Look Down (1939, Carol Reed)
The Corn Is Green (1978, George Cukor)
The Citadel (1938, King Vidor)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, Elia Kazan)
Movies with the Same Personnel
The Quiet Man (1952, John Ford)
Fort Apache (1948, John Ford)
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939, John Ford)
The Long Voyage Home (1940, John Ford)
Forever and a Day (1943, René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Victor Saville, Kent Smith, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, Frank Lloyd)
They Were Expendable (1945, John Ford)
Challenge to Lassie (1949, Richard Thorpe)
Gentleman Jim (1942, Raoul Walsh)
Other Related Movies
None But the Lonely Heart (1944, Clifford Odets)
Trivia:
.
* The film was shot in black and white because the color of flowers in Southern California did not match those found in Wales.
* Darryl F. Zanuck originally intended the film to be a four-hour epic to rival Gone with the Wind (1939).
* William Wyler was all set to direct on location in Wales, and Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn and ‘Tyrone Power were all being courted for parts in the film. William Wyler went off to make The Little Foxes (1941) instead.
* It only took two months to make the film.
* Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood were always first choice to play the father and mother.
* Alexander Knox was Fox’s first choice for the part of Dr Gruffyd, later played by Walter Pidgeon.
* John Ford referred to Philip Dunne’s script as “nearly perfect a script as could be possible”.
* For the scene where the miners greet their women by putting their earnings in baskets, actress ‘Maureen OHara stopped the scene’s filming once she noticed that her basket was a modern Kraft basket and not a basket of the movie’s period. Director John Ford was so upset by being corrected in front of the cast and crew.
* Cyfartha’s final line, “‘Tis a coward I am, but I will hold your coat,” was added by Ford himself over the objections of screenwriter Philip Dunne.
Memorable Quotes:
Huw Morgan: [Narrating] Memory… Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago; of men and women long since dead.
—-
Huw Morgan: There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can close my eyes on my valley as it is today, and it is gone, and I see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the plenty of the Earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful. Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday. In those days, the black slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the sides of our hill. Not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village, for the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers through the green.
—-
Huw Morgan: [Narrating] It is with me now, so many years later. And it makes me think of so much that is good, that is gone.
Huw Morgan: [Narrating] I think I fell in love with Bronwen then. Perhaps it is foolish to think a child could fall in love. But I am the child that was, and nobody knows how I felt, except only me.
Huw Morgan: [narrating] Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.
Beth Morgan: I have come up here to tell you what I think of you all, because you are talking against my husband. You are a lot of cowards to go against him. He has done nothing against you and he never has and you know it well. How some of you, you smug-faced hypocrites, can sit in the same chapel with him I cannot tell. To say he is with the owners is not only nonsense but downright wickedness. There’s one thing more I’ve got to say and it is this. If harm comes to my Gwilym, I will find out the men and I will kill them with my two hands. And this I will swear by God Almighty.
—-
Mr. Gruffydd: But remember, with strength goes responsibility – to others and to yourselves. For you cannot conquer injustice with more injustice – only with justice and the help of God.
—-
Angharad: Look now, you are king in the chapel. But I will be queen in my own kitchen.
Mr. Gruffydd: You will be queen wherever you walk.
Angharad: What does that mean?
Mr. Gruffydd: …I should not have said it.
Angharad: Why?
Mr. Gruffydd: I have no right to speak to you so.
[he leaves]
Angharad: [stopping him] Mr. Gruffydd, if the right is mine to give, you have it.
—-
Mr. Gruffydd: You’ve been lucky, Huw. Lucky to suffer and lucky to spend these weary months in bed. For so God has given you a chance to make the spirit within yourself. And as your father cleans his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit… By prayer, Huw. And by prayer, I don’t mean shouting, mumbling, and wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think. Think well what you’re saying. Make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that way, your prayer will have strength, and that strength will become a part of you, body, mind, and spirit.
—-
Dai Bando: How would you go about taking the measurement of a stick?
Mr. Jonas: Why, by its length.
Dai Bando: And how would you measure a man who would use a stick on a boy one-third his size? Now, you are good in the use of a stick, but boxing is my subject, according to the rules laid down by the good Marquess of Queensberry… And happy I am to pass on my knowledge to you.
—-
Beth Morgan: Nothing is enough for people who have minds like cesspools. Oh Huw, my little one, I hope when you’re grown their tongues will be slower to hurt.
—-
Mr. Gruffydd: Huw, I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ever dreamed of, not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind. With truth. With the golden sound of the Word. But only a few of them heard. Only a few of you understood.
—-
Mr. Gruffydd: I know why you have come – I have seen it in your faces Sunday after Sunday as I’ve stood here before you. Fear has brought you here. Horrible, superstitious fear. Fear of divine retribution a bolt of fire from the skies. The vengeance of the Lord and the justice of God. But you have forgotten the love of Jesus. You disregard His sacrifice. Death, fear, flames, horror and black clothes. Hold your meeting then, but know if you do this in the name of God and in the house of God, you blaspheme against Him and His Word.
—-
Mr. Gruffydd: Who is for Gwilym Morgan and the others?
Dai Bando: I, for one. He is the blood of my heart. Come, Cyfartha.
Cyfartha: …’Tis a coward I am. But I will hold your coat.
—-
Huw Morgan: [Narrating] Everything I ever learnt as a small boy came from my father, and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday.
Ianto Morgan: We are not questioning your authority, sir, but if manners prevent our speaking the truth, we will be without manners.
—-
Dai Bando: A man is never too old to learn, is it, Mr. Jonas?
Mr. Jonas: [uncertainly] No.
Dai Bando: I was in school myself once, but no great one for knowledge.
Mr. Jonas: [angrily, shaking his cane] Look here, what do you want?
Dai Bando: Knowledge.
[taking Mr. Jonas' cane]
Dai Bando: How would you go about taking the measurement of a stick, Mr. Jonas?
Mr. Jonas: By its’ length, of course.
Dai Bando: And how would you measure a man who would use a stick on a boy one-third his size?
[throws Mr. Jonas' cane aside]
Cyfartha: Tell us!
Dai Bando: Now, you are good in the use of a stick, but boxing is my subject… according to the rules laid down by the good Marquis of Queensbury.
Cyfartha: [saluting] God rest his soul!
Dai Bando: And happy I am to pass on my knowledge to you!
[backhands Mr. Jonas, sending him reeling]
—-
Dai Bando: [Cyfartha is holding Mr. Jonas in boxing position] Now look, to make a good boxer, you must have a good… *right hand*, you see?
[strikes Mr. Jonas with a right jab, the force of which knocks Mr. Jonas into the wall]
Dai Bando: Now, you see, that is how you will punish your man – with a right and a left, and put your shoulder into it!
[Mr. Jonas is slumped against the wall, dazed]
Cyfartha: The gentleman is talking to you!
—-
Dai Bando: Position again.
[Dai Bando and Cyfartha drag Mr. Jonas to his feet]
Dai Bando: Could I have your attention, boys and girls? I am not accustomed to speaking in public…
Cyfartha: Only public houses.
Dai Bando: But this -
[backhands Mr. Jonas in the nose, sending him sprawling]
Dai Bando: never use. It’s against the rules. Break a man’s nose. Now then -
[turns to find Mr. Jonas collapsed against the wall, unconscious]
Dai Bando: I’m afraid he will never make a boxer.
Cyfartha: No aptitude for knowledge.
(ack: imdb,wikipedia,allmovie)
compiler:benny
