How Green Was My Valley - 1941

A compelling, classic, heart-wrenching drama of a Welsh coal-mining family over a fifty-year period, adapted from a story by Richard Llewellyn. Told in voice-over narration and flashback as intelligent and sensitive 10 year-old Huw Morgan (McDowall) nostalgically looks back on a bygone way of life. Huw is the youngest of seven children (six sons and one beautiful daughter Angharad (O'Hara)) in the Morgan family, led by elderly Mr. and Mrs. Morgan (Crisp and Allgood). Tensions in the family grow at the beginning of the 20th century, during periods of labor unrest and workers' strike.

When stern Mr. Morgan resentfully refuses to join a miners' union, calling it "socialist nonsense," the family is split and the older brothers depart for a boarding house. Among other crises and losses that devastate the community, Angharad's romantic love for the local preacher Mr. Gruffydd (Pidgeon) is ultimately thwarted. The film concludes with Huw's understanding of the vanished old way of life.

The Quiet Man - 1952

The Quiet Man Masterprint
11 in. x 17 in.
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Framed   Mounted


The Quiet Man (1952) is director John Ford's epic romantic comedy - a loving, sentimental, nostalgic tribute to his Irish ancestry and homeland. A rich, beautifully-textured Technicolor presentation deserving of its Color Cinematography award, it was filmed mostly on location in Ireland, although some backdrops and background studio shots were obviously intermixed. Its screenplay was based on Frank Nugent's adaptation of Maurice Walsh's Saturday Evening Post 1933 short story Green Rushes. Ford considered the rollicking, comedy love story one of his favorite films.

[The memorable plot, about the collision course between an anti-materialistic, Irish-American boxer nicknamed 'Trooper Thornton' (Wayne) in the town of Innisfree in the land of his Irish birthplace and a local, mean bully (McLaglen) - further entangled when he falls in love with the man's fiesty, red-haired, materialistic sister (O'Hara) who refuses to consummate her marriage without her dowry (350 Irish pounds in gold), was inspired by a Celtic myth about a monumental battle between two sacred kings (gods) who annually fought for the affections of a queen (or goddess).]

The famous director of westerns had already won Best Director Academy Award Oscars for three previous non-Western films - The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and How Green Was My Valley (1941). This sentimental film, Ford's first 'romantic love story,' received a total of seven Academy Awards nominations (including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor - Victor McLaglen, Best Screenplay - Frank Nugent, Best Art Direction, and Best Sound) and won two Oscars: Best Cinematography - Winton Hoch and Archie Stout, and Ford (at 57 years of age) won his fourth and final Best Director Oscar, establishing a record that is still unbeaten.