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| Peggy Ann Garner in her Oscar-winning role as Francie Dolan, 1945's 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.' |
Peggy
Ann Garner passed away Oct. 16 in 1984, at age 52. Garner gave a vivid,
naturalistic performance as Francie Dolan in 1945’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Sadly, starring in this classic didn’t
lead to greater things.
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| Garner as a soulful young 'Jane Eyre' in '44. With her is Sara Allgood. |
Both
Peggy Ann Garner and Elizabeth Taylor got noticed in 20th Century
Fox’s ’43 version of Jane Eyre.
Garner was under contract with Fox, and Taylor was loaned from MGM. Garner was
a plaintively emotional young Jane, contrasted by a remarkably poised Taylor as
Helen, the schoolmate who dies of pneumonia. Peggy Ann and Elizabeth were both
born February of 1932. They became child stars in ’45 with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and National
Velvet, respectively, with critics and audiences applauding their intense
performances. Garner and Taylor were natural performers, far superior to the
era’s typical child actors. Garner received a special Oscar for her work,
Elizabeth Taylor became Metro’s favorite child performer.
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Peggy Ann Garner's heartfelt Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Taylor's sweet, sickly Helen.
Ironically, Taylor would nearly die of pneumonia twice in her life. |
What’s
a shame is that 20th Century Fox continued to treat Peggy Ann Garner
as just another child performer, back to playing small roles. MGM created
vehicles for their similarly intense child star, Margaret O’ Brien. And with National Velvet, MGM treated Elizabeth
like a prized jewel, carefully guiding her through any gawky phases. By the
late ‘40s, Garner was freelancing, stuck in B-movies like Bomba, the Jungle Boy.
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| How do you go from winning an Oscar to 'Bomba, The Jungle Boy' in just four years? Only in Hollywood! |
My review of Peggy Ann Garner's Oscar-winning role as Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn here: https://ricksrealreel.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-tree-grows-in-brooklyn-powerful-story.html
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| Garner with her special Oscar for 'Tree.' |
Still,
Garner persevered and found work as a television actress in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Peggy
Ann Garner’s career ended on a high note, when her one-time TV director Robert
Altman cast her in his 1978 comedy, A
Wedding. Garner seemed plucky, working as a realtor during the dry spells
of showbiz, weathering three failed marriages. Peggy Ann Garner died of cancer,
at the Hollywood Motion & Television Country House and Hospital, survived
by a daughter, who died over a decade later herself. Stardom seemed to come
easily to Elizabeth Taylor, but fans know that her real life was not. And it
seems that neither came easy for Peggy Ann Garner. If nothing else, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn stands as a
tribute to Garner’s naturalistic talent.
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| Peggy Ann Garner ended her film career on a high note in '78, in Robert Altman's 'A Wedding.' |
I agree that Garner was special. She wasn't necessarily "pretty" or "cute" in the Little Darla-ish way that many other girl actresses were, but she was supremely talented and ATGIB is just heart-wrenching. She's wondrous in it! That said, I think she popped up in a later movie (was it "Black Widow" with Ginger Rogers) and I remember thinking, "Hmmmmm... not as good as an adult" wherein Liz still remained compelling to watch. (Not so much Margaret O'Brien!)
ReplyDeleteI also thought Peggy Ann was a great young Jane Eyre.
DeleteI've not seen any of Garner's adult performances. I know what you mean about some former child stars as adult performers, I feel that way about Shirley Temple.
ATGIB is one of those '40s films that doesn't feel dated at all...and the acting all around is spot-on. Fox sure didn't give Garner the O'Brien or Taylor treatment!
Cheers, Rick
As a teen movie buff, I had never heard of Peggy Ann Garner. Then one night at a college cast party in Tacoma, WA, I met this woman with a scrapbook. Her name was Virginia and she was friends with the mother of one of my cast mates. Virginia talked about her daughter and showed us page after page of clippings she had saved. I want to say Virginia’s last name was something like Swenston. To the point, she was Peggy Ann Garner’s mother. I found Virginia to be very interesting, so much so that I later followed up and met her the next summer at her apartment in Portland, Oregon so that I could interview her. I came to the sad conclusion that While she was legitimate, she lived in the past and had very little connection to her daughter in the present. The following summer I moved to LA. This was in 1978. I remember going to a screening of A Wedding at The Academy of Motion Pictures theater. Peggy Ann Garner was there. For a moment I was close enough to speak with her and I said, “I met your mother.” Her response was a terse, “My mother. My mother!” That ended our conversation. I was rattled by her agitation. I never saw her again and lost touch with Virginia.
DeleteThat's a bittersweet story, Greg. Makes you wonder what happened. From my research, I felt like Peggy's life and career didn't really go the way she had hope.
DeleteCheers, Rick
Rick, I apologize. I didn’t mean to write three versions. Every time I was almost done I thought I had lost it before publishing. I hate pecking on the phone. So sorry.
DeleteHello Rick, great site. Greg, interesting story. Peggy Ann Garner was my teen crush, in the early 1970s(!). A local channel showed "Junior Miss" and "Home Sweet Homicide" ALL THE TIME. I can clear up a few things. Virginia married a gentleman named Clarence Swainston in 1961. Virginia was probably bi-polar. Peggy made news for her acting while her mother made news on the police blotter. Check a newspaper archive and you'll find many small mentions of Virginia getting in trouble for passing bad checks and the like. Peggy was Interviewed by Dickie Moore, another ex-child star, in 1983 for his book "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But Don't Have Sex or Take the Car)" and here are a few comments: "Mother was aggressive. She destroyed everyone I can think of in one way or another-my grandmother, her sister, who committed suicide, my grandfather, her brother." She lived on the Fox lot while filming "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" in Shirley Temple's former bungalow "to keep me safe so I didn't come to work with bags under my eyes from crying all night, wondering "Is my mother coming home?" As for the money she made "During the war years, my mother was very big with the army, navy and marines. I never knew which branch she was going to bring home. If there were ten men at a table, my mother would pick up the check. She spent all my money." You get the picture. By age 16 she was on her own. She was "adopted" by Ed Sullivan and his family. His daughter Betty was Peggy's best friend. Ed Sullivan "gave her away" when she married Richard Hayes.
DeletePeggy grew up to be a pretty attractive young lady-poodle cut hair in "Black Widow" notwithstanding. Christopher Plummer recalled in his autobiography he too had a crush on Peggy while appearing on B'way together in "Home is the Hero." Peggy did well on stage (she uniformly received good reviews) but ultimately went back to Hollywood and worked regularly on TV up until 1964. After that it appears she "tuned in, dropped out" and enjoyed the 1960s. When she returned to TV in 1967 it was as a sidekick to Riddler on an episode of Batman (Ring Around the Riddler)-at her old studio. Not much after that, a low budget film (The Cat) and small roles here and there. She sold cars and real estate. She ended up living with a assistant director (Junior Miss, Thunder in the Valley) from her Fox days, Artie Jacobson. A father figure for her. Her daughter Cas lived with her for a time at Mr. Jacobsons. When someone asked Roddy McDowall at a Q&A session in the 1980s about Peggy he said "She had a very hard life." They worked together on screen, radio, stage and televison.
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" received a VHS release late in the VHS era-October 16, 2001 according to Amazon. For a long time it was one of the most requested "not on video" titles. It never had a legit DVD release even though it was scheduled and film critic Richard Schickel recorded a (dull) commentary track for the film. It was briefly released on a Blu-ray set of Elia Kazan films. It goes for big bucks nowadays-https://www.amazon.com/Kazan-At-Fox-Tightrope-Brooklyn/dp/B00C2TUF2U/ref=pd_sbs_d_sccl_2_2/147-1583632-8605648?pd_rd_w=rTnBR&content-id=amzn1.sym.3d19e32b-a25f-44b7-8218-fcecabc488e9&pf_rd_p=3d19e32b-a25f-44b7-8218-fcecabc488e9&pf_rd_r=19JJQ7MJAWBGX9N6D5J5&pd_rd_wg=NyPGk&pd_rd_r=cfdc4f67-d0bd-4cd7-931c-8c22670e8067&pd_rd_i=B00C2TUF2U&psc=1
Check out her IMDb page, the "Other Works" section details her stage career, I added all that. Also many items in the Trivia section. She was a fine actress and she deserves to be remembered.
Great information, thanks for sharing this! Rick
DeleteIf ever a film role evoked tears from the audience, it was Peggy Ann Garner as Francie Dolan in "A Tree Grows on Brpoklyn". This was simply a beautifully-made film with stellar performances, especially by young Peggy Ann!
ReplyDeleteThere is a good article in this week's NEW YORKER - a review of a new book called THE METHOD: HOW THE 20TH CENTURY LEARNED TO ACT." It includes this anecdote about Elia Kazan directing A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN: "When he needed Peggy Ann Garner, the child actress who played the film's protagonist, to cry, he pressed on the fear that her father, who was in the Air Force, wouldn't return home. The tears rolled, and so did the camera. "We only got it once, but we only needed it once," Kazan wrote in his 1988 memoir."
ReplyDelete