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The Secret Garden is a 1949 American drama film, the second screen adaptation of the classic 1909 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 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.
The MGM release was filmed primarily in black-and-white, with the sequences set in the restored garden of the title filmed in Technicolor.
[edit] Plot synopsis
When tempestuous Mary Lennox, born in India to wealthy parents, is orphaned by a cholera epidemic, she is sent to live with her reclusive and embittered Uncle Archibald Craven and her ill-behaved, bedridden cousin Colin at their desolate and decaying estate known as Misselthwaite Manor. Dickon, the brother of one of the house maids, tells her of a garden secreted behind a hidden door in a vine-covered wall. When a raven unearths the key, the two enter and discover the garden is overgrown from neglect since Craven's wife died there in an accident. They decide to keep their discovery a secret, and begin to restore it to its original grandeur. Under the influence of the Secret Garden, Mary becomes less self-absorbed, Colin's health steadily improves, and Archibald's curmudgeonly personality fades away.
[edit] Principal cast
[edit] Principal production credits
[edit] External links
 American films of the 1940s |
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