The Secret Garden (1949)

The Secret Garden (1949) – An orphaned girl is sent to live with her reclusive uncle in Yorkshire. What awaits her there are secrets.  Family secrets, including a secret cousin and a secret garden that may hold the key to all their troubles.

Directed by Fred M. Wilcox                                     Starring Margaret O’Brien, Dean Stockwell,                                                                                                            Herbert Marshall

Why You Will Like It: A wonderful bit of magic in the story, and some fun performances by the youngest stars.

The story, from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, has multiple movie versions dating right up to one shot in 2018.  This version benefits from a range of young actors who go on to successful careers. O’Brien was a child star when this movie was filmed, with an Oscar to her credit (for “Meet Me in St. Louis”).  She would have a long career (still going!) in television as would her co-star Dean Stockwell.  Stockwell plays the cousin and has great fun chewing the scenery during his temper tantrums.  If you grew up, as I did, watching Stockwell in Disney movies and television it may take a moment to see the adult in the child. Add in a younger Elsa Lanchester, plus character actors like Herbert Marshall and Reginald Owen, and you have the recipe for fun.

At the start, the two children are pains.  Mary Lennox (O’Brien) is a spoiled brat who loses her family to disease in India.  Moving from the heat of the sub-continent to Yorkshire does little to make her pleasant.  The household is filled with darkness, both physical and spiritual.  It is unprepared for an intelligent, determined and inquisitive girl.  Meanwhile, Colin (Stockwell) uses his lifelong illness as a weapon to torture everyone around him.  He screams and throws things till he gets his way.  The irresistible force meets the immovable object, and both come away changed.

There are pieces of this that feel dated, but overall the movie carries you right along.  It was a flop at the time.  The New York Times declined to review it, and it didn’t make its production budget back.  All these years later, it’s a fun movie for an otherwise dull afternoon.

Rating – *** Worth A Look