The Secret Garden (1949 film) the film earned $610,000 in the US and Canada and $383,000 overseas, resulting in a loss of $848,000. The Secret Garden (1949 film) The Secret Garden is a 1949 US drama film. It is the second screen adaptation of the classic 1911 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (the first adaption was a silent version filmed in 1919) which starred Lila Lee and Spottiswoode Aitken. The screenplay by Robert Ardrey was directed by Fred M. Wilcox. It centers on a young orphan who is thrust into the dark and mysterious lives of her widowed uncle and his crippled son when she
Frances Hodgson Burnett the thought of continuing to live with Townsend at Maytham, Burnett rented a house in London for the winter of 1900–1901. There she socialized with friends and wrote. She worked on two books simultaneously: "The Shuttle", a longer and more complicated book; and "The Making of a Marchioness", which she wrote in a few weeks and published to good reviews. In the spring of 1901, when she returned to the country, Townsend tried to replace her long-time publisher Scribner's with a publishing house offering a larger advance. In 1902, after a summer of socializing and filling Maytham with house-guests, she