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 evening salon and soon attracted visitors, meeting Stephen Townsend for the first time. Despite her busy schedule, she felt ill from the heat and the crowds of tourists, spending protracted periods in bed. With her sons, she moved on to spend the winter in Florence, where she wrote "The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax", the only book to be published in England but not in the United States. That winter "Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's" was published in the United States. She would go on to make "Sara Crewe" into a stage play, and later rewrite the story