Greer Garson, the actress who epitomized a noble, wise and courageous wife in some of the sleekest and most sentimental American movies of the 1940s, died on Saturday at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. She was 92.
Ms. Garson, who had a history of heart problems, had lived at the long-term-care hospital for the past three years, according to Ann Harper, a spokeswoman at the hospital.
Ms. Garson became an instant success as a captivating young wife in the sentimental 1939 film Goodbye, Mr. Chips. She was nominated for an Academy Award for this first film performance and quickly became one of the 10 most popular Hollywood stars.
She received five more Oscar nominations in five years for self-sacrificing portrayals in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Madame Curie (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944) and The Valley of Decision (1945). She won the best-actress Oscar for Mrs. Miniver, in which she superbly symbolized the spirit and virtue of a British homemaker in wartime.
With much of the earth ravaged by World War II, the Scotch-Irish actress filled a need for a dignified and intrepid wife-mother figure.
After the war, because of inferior vehicles and changing tastes, she was unable to escape the mold.
Nonetheless, in her Broadway debut in 1958, Ms. Garson won acclaim in a comedy, succeeding Rosalind Russell as the devil-may-care Auntie Mame. Two years later, Ms. Garson received a seventh Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in the film Sunrise at Campobello.
While preparing for Auntie Mame she told an interviewer: “I’m tired of playing four-handkerchief heroines in crinoline roles. I think there’s a little bit of Auntie Mame in every woman – a kind of counterpart to the Walter Mitty in every man. She promoted a liveliness and kindliness, and isn’t that the best one can do?” Early on, the actress enjoyed peerless popularity. Nine of her first 11 movies opened at Radio City Music Hall and played at that premier movie palace a total of 64 weeks. In 1978, Vincent Canby of The New York Times offered a tribute in which he deemed Ms. Garson “emblematic of everything the Music Hall offered its patrons.”
Ms. Garson was born on Sept. 29, 1903, in County Down, Northern Ireland, of Presbyterian parents. Her father, George Garson, a businessman, died soon after, and she and her mother, Nina, moved to London. The name Greer was a contraction of MacGregor, her mother’s ancestral name.
Ms. Garson obtained a secure post as a market researcher for a London advertising firm, but gave it up to study acting with the Birmingham Repertory Theater during two years in the provinces, where she received increasingly favorable notices.
She polished her craft during two years in the West End, starring in eight plays, including Shaw’s Too True to Be Good, and became one of Britain’s ablest young stage actresses. Most of the plays were flops, but she was praised for her talent, drive and professionalism. Envious associates dubbed her Ca-Reer Garson, a tag that trailed her to Hollywood.
Her postwar, mostly unsuccessful, movies included Adventure (1946), co-starring Clark Gable; That Forsyte Woman (1949), with Errol Flynn and Walter Pidgeon; and the cameo role of Calpurnia in Julius Caesar (1953). In later years, she co-produced several plays in New York, including On Golden Pond.
Ms. Garson’s marriages to Edward A.A. Snelson, a British civil servant, and to Richard Ney, an actor 10 years her junior who had played her son in Mrs. Miniver, ended in divorce. In 1949, she married E.E. “Buddy” Fogelson, an oil developer and industrialist. Fogelson died in 1987.
The actress continued to support the performing arts, giving $10 million to Southern Methodist University in Dallas for the Greer Garson Theater, which opened in September 1990.
