Hello there! Thanks for your patience during my short blog sabbatical. Since a sabbatical is technically “a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel” and, honestly, I didn’t get paid nor did I study film during my absence, I’ll just call it what it was and say I had a fine VACATION. And now, let’s get back to it!

Some have called it the paramount American film, others simply the greatest movie of all time. Here’s a clue (whisper this creepily in your heads): “Rosebud.” That’s right! Citizen Kane, that classic of the cinema, was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942; but it only took home one little golden statue. And it wasn’t for Best Picture. No, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, definitely one of the foremost films to have never won the Academy’s highest honor, only collected an Oscar for Writing (Original Screenplay). Instead, this week we are focusing on the film that actually won Best Picture for 1941, How Green Was My Valley (1941, 20^th Century-Fox), a movie that eclipsed Citizen Kane in both Oscar nominations (10 total, including Sound Recording, Music [Music Score of a Dramatic Picture], Film Editing, Writing [Screenplay], and Actress in a Supporting Role for Sara Allgood as the matriarch Mrs. Morgan) and wins (5 total: Outstanding Motion Picture, Art Direction [Black-and-White], Cinematography [Black-and-White], Directing, and Actor in a Supporting Role for Donald Crisp as the patriarch of the Morgan family).

A scene in the green valley

The film How Green Was My Valley was based on the 1939 novel of the same name written by a man who called himself Richard Llewellyn and who claimed to be Welsh and a coal miner, in addition to serving in the British army and working as both a journalist during the Nuremberg Trials and a screenwriter for MGM studios. Years after his death in 1983, however, it was revealed that much (if not most) of Llewellyn’s personal history had been fabricated. His real name was Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd; and though his parents were of Welsh descent, he himself was not born in Wales as he had maintained and only resided there briefly. Instead, the stories he claimed to know about coal miners actually belonged to a family who ran a bookshop in London that Llewellyn frequented. (You can read more about Llewellyn’s fake life in this cleverly titled article, “How Phoney Was My Welsh Valley”: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/dec/05/tracymcveigh.theobserver.)

Anyhow, any negativity aside regarding the imaginary world of authors…How Green Was My Valley was nearly denied its night of Oscar glory due to two real-life (totally documented and undeniably true), very tragic events: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the death of superstar actress Carole Lombard in a plane crash on January 16, 1942. Initially, the Academy determined that the Oscar ceremony, which was scheduled for February 26, 1942, should be cancelled altogether. But after further deliberation, the event was held as planned, though under more subdued conditions than usual: no formal attire was permitted, the searchlights outside the venue were scrapped, and the occasion was labeled a “dinner” instead of the typical “banquet.” Photos of the ceremony show actors and actresses who appear dressed in mourning attire (though the clothing is still rather swanky, of course).

Married to Hollywood’s leading man, Clark Gable, at the time of her death (together the “Brad and Angelina” of their day), Lombard was one of the first Hollywood starlets to embark on a tour to rally support for the war cause (raising funds by encouraging people to purchase war bonds). Her untimely demise at the age of 33 during her return home to California from such a tour riveted the nation for weeks and crushed Gable. Conspiracy theories abounded (and still do!) regarding the possibility that the plane on which she was a passenger had been sabotaged by the German enemy, who had declared war on the United States only a little over four weeks earlier. (For more on Lombard’s death, check out this article: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carole-lombard-killed-in-plane-crash.)

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

The fact that World War II, only in its early stages in the U.S., is so connected to the tragedy of Lombard’s death demonstrates in part just how quickly and deeply the war infiltrated every part of American life. Not only were over two thousand people killed in the attack in Hawaii, but everyday occurrences such as travel within the continental U.S. were viewed with the suspicion of possible foul play and the expectation that additional attacks were likely. The present darkness of the last days of 1941 and the early days of 1942 had reduced the verdant past to memory, an idea emphasized immediately in the opening of How Green Was My Valley when Huw, the ten-year-old narrator of the tale, reflects:

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. Yet who shall say what is real and what is not? Can I believe my friends all gone when their voices are still a glory in my ears? No. And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain a living truth within my mind. There is no fence nor hedge round Time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember.

Those words, though written prior to the Pearl Harbor bombing, seem to capture the nation’s emotions in the early days of 1942–and perhaps that is why we are not discussing Citizen Kane this week.

For more thoughts on How Green Was My Valley and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!