Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson Fogelson, CBE (29 September 1904 – 6 April 1996), was an Anglo-American actress who was very popular during the Second World War, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-ten box office draws from 1942 to 1946.
As one of the major stars at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations, including a record five consecutive nominations, winning the Best Actress award for Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Biography

Garson was married three times. Her first marriage, on 28 September 1933, was to Edward Alec Abbot Snelson (1904–1992), later Sir Edward, a British civil servant who became a noted judge and expert in Indian affairs. She lived with him briefly in Nagpur, a small town in central India, but pined for the theatre and finally succumbed to its calling. A besotted Sir Edward reportedly grieved at losing her and would watch multiple screenings of any film of hers that played in Nagpur. The actual marriage reportedly lasted only a few weeks, but it was not formally dissolved until 1943.

Garson was the mistress of MGM casting director Benny Thau during her early days at the studio.

Her second husband, whom she married (at age 39) on 24 July 1943, was Richard Ney (1916–2004), the younger actor (27 years old) who played her son in Mrs. Miniver. They divorced in 1947. Ney said the divorce was due to the pressure of sharing a home with his mother-in-law, while Garson testified in court that Ney was critical of her work and accused her of being a "has-been". Ney eventually became a stock-market analyst, financial consultant, and author.

In 1949, Garson married a millionaire Texas oilman and horse breeder, E.E. "Buddy" Fogelson (1900–1987). In 1967, the couple retired to their "Forked Lightning Ranch" in New Mexico. They purchased the U.S. Hall of Fame champion Thoroughbred Ack Ack from the estate of Harry F. Guggenheim in 1971 and were highly successful as breeders. They also maintained a home in Dallas, Texas, where Garson funded the Greer Garson Theatre facility at Southern Methodist University.

During her later years, Garson was recognised for her philanthropy and civic leadership. She donated several million dollars for the construction of the Greer Garson Theatre at both the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts on three conditions: 1) the stages be circular, 2) the premiere production be William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and 3) they have large ladies' rooms.
Garson was a devout Presbyterian.

For much of her life, Garson's true age was concealed from the public. When she was making feature films, her year of birth was given as 1914, making her 10 years younger than she really was. This may have been a canny business decision made by MGM, in an attempt to extend her run as a popular romantic leading lady. Certainly, her busy period in films ended in 1955, soon after she was believed to have turned 40, although she was, in fact, over 50.

From the early 1970s, interest was renewed in the stars of Hollywood's golden age, as their films received regular TV airings, and more facts about performers, as opposed to the information that the studios had circulated about them, came to light. Around this time, a more plausible year of birth for Garson, 1908, began to appear in print. This could have been the year she had given when she took to the stage in the UK, conscious that she was a late starter or, for similar reasons, to MGM at the time she first signed with them. This second date achieved wide credence, until after Garson's death, when obituaries revealed that she had been born four years earlier, in 1904.


Death
In her final years, Garson occupied a penthouse suite at the Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. She died there from heart failure on 6 April 1996, at the age of 91. She is interred beside her late husband in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas.

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