Interviewer
Prime Minister, I imagine you seldom have time to go to the movies these days. Is there any film from the past that you particularly remember and are fond of?
Prime Minister
Oh yes, there is, it was in the early days of the war, I was young and went rarely to the cinema, but we all went to see &oqq;Mrs Miniver&cqq;.
Interviewer
Oh yes. [end p1]
Prime Minister
It was the story of an English family in an English village at the beginning of the war, amid the bombs, amid the raids on the village. Greer Garson played the title role, Mrs Miniver, she played it so beautifully, and Walter Pidgeon Mr Miniver. The family, their son, was a fighter pilot and of course they were anxious about him and he had a lovely wife, she also had been a girl in the village.
I remember so very vividly the scene when, he away fighting, aircraft came and machine-gunned the village and it was the daughter who lost her life. I remember the flower show in the village when it was not the great lady of the manor who won the rose show, as she had done for years, but she looked at her rose and at some of the other roses and thought it time that the Stationmaster won the flower show.
All this was part of the spirit of the village as they went about their daily lives helping always with the wartime effort.
It was made by MGM. America had not then come into the war. It was something that America at that time did for us. It lifted our morale and it had a tremendous effect in America. Winston Churchill used to watch it at Chequers. I do not wonder. I loved it and will never forget it. [end p2]
Years later I met Greer Garson when I visited Los Angeles&em;a lovely person, lovely disposition, truly she was Mrs Miniver and I shall never forget it.