How Green Was My Valley (film)

How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 American drama film set in Wales, directed by John Ford. The film, based on the bestselling 1939 novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and scripted by Philip Dunne. It stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and a very young Roddy McDowall.

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How Green Was My Valley
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Ford
Screenplay by	Philip Dunne
Based on	How Green Was My Valley 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Starring	Walter Pidgeon Maureen O'Hara Donald Crisp Anna Lee Roddy McDowall
Narrated by	Irving Pichel
Cinematography	Arthur C. Miller
Edited by	James B. Clark
Music by	Alfred Newman
Distributed by	Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Release date	October 28, 1941 (1941-10-28)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	United States
Languages	English Welsh
Budget	$800,000[1]
Box office	$2.4 million[2]

It tells the story of the Morgans, a hard-working Welsh mining family, from the point of view of the youngest child Huw, who lives with his affectionate and kind parents as well as his sister and five brothers, in the South Wales Valleys during the late Victorian era. The story chronicles life in the South Wales coalfields, the loss of that way of life and its effects on the family. The fictional village in the film is based on Gilfach Goch,[3] where Llewellyn spent many summers visiting his grandfather, and it served as the inspiration for the novel.[3] The author had claimed that he based the book on his own personal experiences but this was found to be untrue after his death; Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales, though he was of Welsh descent.[4] Llewellyn gathered material for the novel from conversations with local mining families in Gilfach Goch.[4]

It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five,[5] famously beating Citizen Kane, Sergeant York and The Maltese Falcon for Best Picture, while Ford won for Best Director, Donald Crisp for Best Supporting Actor, Arthur Miller for Best Cinematography, and Richard Day, Nathan H. Juran and Thomas Little for Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration. In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[6][7] The Academy Film Archive preserved How Green Was My Valley in 1998.[8]