The Secret Garden (1949 film) 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 comes to live with them in their isolated country house in Yorkshire, England. A 1987 "Hallmark Hall of
Frances Hodgson Burnett in the past, she turned to writing as a source of income and began to write "A Lady of Quality". "A Lady of Quality", published in 1896, was to become the first of a series of successful adult historical novels, which was followed in 1899 with "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim"; and in 1901 she had published "The Making of a Marchioness" and "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst." In 1898, when Vivian graduated from Harvard, she divorced Swan Burnett. Officially the cause for the divorce was given to be desertion, but actually Burnett and Swan had orchestrated the