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
The Miniver Story Pidgeon (Clem), Reginald Owen (Mr. Foley) and Henry Wilcoxon (Vicar) played their original roles. Also in the cast were Peter Finch (Polish officer) and James Fox in his first film appearance (Toby Miniver). The story, told partly in flashback and narrated by Clem Miniver, commences on VE Day as Clem and Judy return home from war service and Toby returns from a foster family in America. Judy, a corporal driver, is loved by Tom Foley, a captain in the Royal Engineers, but she is besotted with a general (Leo Genn) married but separated and twice her age. Kay Miniver has