Walter Pidgeon of his better known roles was in "The Dark Command", where he portrayed the villain (loosely based on American Civil War guerrilla William C. Quantrill) opposite John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and a young Roy Rogers. It was not until he starred in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture "How Green Was My Valley" (1941) that his popularity returned. He then starred opposite Greer Garson in "Blossoms in the Dust" (1941), "Mrs. Miniver" (1942) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor) and its sequel, "The Miniver Story" in 1950. He was also nominated in 1944 for "Madame
Mrs. Miniver (character) The columns were first published in book form in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Struther stopped the regular newspaper columns that year, but wrote a series of letters from Mrs. Miniver, expanding on the character's wartime experiences. These were published in later editions. The book became an enormous success, especially in the United States, where Struther went on a lecture tour shortly after the book's release. The U.S. was still officially neutral, but as war with Nazi Germany intensified in Europe, the tribulations of the Miniver family engaged the sympathy of the American public sufficiently that