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 1870, her mother died, and in 1872 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which ("That Lass o' Lowrie's"), was published to good reviews. "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"