Mrs. Miniver (character) President Franklin D. Roosevelt credited it for hastening America's involvement in the war. Winston Churchill is said to have claimed that it had done more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. Churchill is further quoted by Bernard Wasserstein in his book, "Barbarism and Civilization," as saying that the book (and later the film) was worth "six divisions of war effort." In 1942, when the film came out, Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters. The film adaptation of "Mrs. Miniver" was produced by MGM in 1942 with Greer Garson in the leading role and William Wyler directing. Under
Mrs. Miniver RAF fighters in the V-for-Victory formation heading out to face the enemy. The film went into pre-production in the autumn of 1940, when the United States was still a neutral country. The script was written over many months, and during that time, the United States moved closer to war. As a result, scenes were re-written to reflect the increasingly pro-British and anti-German outlook of Americans. The scene in which Mrs. Miniver confronts a downed German flyer in her garden, for example, was made more and more confrontational with each new version of the script. It was initially filmed before the