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 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. Following the attack, the scene was filmed again to reflect the tough, new spirit of a nation at war. The key difference was that in the new version of the scene, filmed in February 1942, Mrs Miniver was allowed to slap the flyer across the face. The film was released 4 months later. Wilcoxon and director William Wyler "wrote and re-wrote" the key sermon the night before the sequence was to be shot. The speech "made such an impact that it was used in essence by President