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
History of film "Dumbo" (1941) and "Bambi" (1942). The onset of US involvement in World War II also brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and propaganda. American propaganda films included "Desperate Journey" (1942), "Mrs. Miniver" (1942), "Forever and a Day" (1943) and "Objective, Burma!" (1945). Notable American films from the war years include the anti-Nazi "Watch on the Rhine" (1943), scripted by Dashiell Hammett; "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), Hitchcock's direction of a script by Thornton Wilder; the George M. Cohan biopic, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), starring James Cagney, and the immensely popular "Casablanca", with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart would star in