Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein would help the new Allies, Britain and America, to understand each other. He read and advised on early drafts of "Mrs. Miniver" (1942), the film starring Greer Garson as the heroic mother of a wartorn British family, which MGM made after a meeting of MGM executives with Bernstein in Hollywood. As the invasion of France loomed, Bernstein brought his friend Alfred Hitchcock back from Hollywood to Britain to work on two short documentary films for the post-invasion French audience. As the war wound to its close, Bernstein heard the first reports of extermination camps, visited Belsen himself, and was determined
Mrs. Miniver expectations, grossing $5,358,000 in the US and Canada (the highest for any MGM film at the time) and $3,520,000 abroad. In the United Kingdom, it was named the top box office attraction of 1942. The initial theatrical release made MGM a profit of $4,831,000, their most profitable film of the year. Of the 592 film critics polled by American magazine "Film Daily", 555 named it the best film of 1942. "Mrs. Miniver" won six Academy Awards in 1943. Notes The fifth episode of season 1 of "Downton Abbey" copies the scene of Lady Beldon giving her award away at a