Actors From 1940 Pride And Prejudice Film Ranked Today

Actors from the 1940 Pride and Prejudice film you must revisit

The 1940 MGM adaptation of Pride and Prejudice features an ensemble of classic Hollywood stars, headlined by Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. Supporting the leads are Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennet, Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennet, Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane Bennet, Ann Rutherford as Lydia Bennet, Marsha Hunt as Mary Bennet, Heather Angel as Kitty Bennet, Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins, Edward Ashley as Mr. Wickham, Bruce Lester as Mr. Bingley, and Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, among others.

Main leading cast and their roles

The 1940 film recasts Jane Austen's five Bennet sisters through a sleek, studio-system lens, with each sister assigned to a distinct MGM personality.

• Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet - Garson was MGM's newly crowned "Queen" in 1940, having won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); she brought a poised, intelligent sharpness to Austen's most famous heroine.
• Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy - The British stage titan played the socially aloof Darcy with a controlled, almost theatrical restraint that contrasted with Garson's conversational warmth, a hallmark of the film's romantic tension.
• Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennet - Boland, a veteran of 1930s screwball comedies, leaned into Mrs. Bennet's comic exasperation, turning the character into a high-strung, husband-hunting matriarch instead of a strictly Regency social climber.
• Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennet - Gwenn, later Oscar-nominated for Miracle on 34th Street (1947), played the patriarch as a wry, understated observer of the domestic chaos in the Bennet household.
• Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine de Bourgh - Oliver, a three-time Oscar nominee, embodied Darcy's formidable aunt with clipped vowels and imperious stares, reinforcing the film's class-conscious backbone.

Supporting ensemble cast: Bennet sisters and suitors

The film's family dynamics pivot on the five Bennet sisters, whose personalities were carefully mapped to the actors' existing screen personas.

1. Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane Bennet - Olivier's real-life partner at the time (they married in 1940), O'Sullivan brought a luminous sweetness to Jane, softening the romantic rivalries around her.
2. Marsha Hunt as Mary Bennet - Hunt, later blacklisted in the 1950s, played the bookish middle sister with a studious, almost awkward dignity that highlighted the film's social satire.
3. Heather Angel as Kitty Bennet - Angel's lighter, more flirtatious take on Kitty underscored the mischief and gossip culture of the younger Bennets.
4. Ann Rutherford as Lydia Bennet - Rutherford, best known for her "Gone With the Wind" role as Carreen, channeled Lydia's impulsive energy with a cheeky, fidgety physicality.
5. Melville Cooper as Mr. William Collins - Cooper's broad, physically comic performance turned the obsequious clergyman into a clear caricature of sycophancy, amplifying the film's broad humor.
6. Edward Ashley as Mr. George Wickham - Ashley gave Wickham a rakish, charming veneer that made his later duplicity feel more like a calculated performance than a sudden moral collapse.
7. Bruce Lester as Mr. Charles Bingley - Lester, a South African actor on a modest MGM contract, played Bingley as a genial, slightly nervous bachelor, fitting the script's compressed social calendar.

Key secondary performers and their impact

Beyond the Bennets and their suitors, the 1940 version leans on a slate of character actors to flesh out the gentry and clergy classes.

Historical context and studio-era casting choices

The 1940 MGM adaptation was produced during Hollywood's "Golden Age," when major studios tightly controlled talent contracts and publicity.

Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier were both under exclusive MGM contracts; Garson's casting was reportedly a compromise after initial talks with another leading lady, reflecting producer Louis B. Mayer's desire to showcase his newest female star. By contrast, Olivier was reluctant to sign on, convinced that his partner Vivien Leigh (then rising after Wuthering Heights) would have been a better fit for the role of Elizabeth, a behind-the-scenes friction that occasionally seeped into the film's promotional copy.

The script, adapted by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, compressed several plotlines and shifted the setting closer to the Victorian era (despite the source material's Regency backdrop), which influenced costume design and overall tone. This temporal slide allowed the studio to use richer fabrics and more ornate interiors, giving the production values a distinctly "1940s" sheen compared to later, more historically literal adaptations.

Performance legacy and cultural footprint

The 1940 film premiered in July 1940 and quickly became a staple of MGM's "prestige" library, later re-aired in the 1950s and 1960s on television broadcasts and festival retrospectives.

Greer Garson's portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet, while criticized by some purists for its heightened theatricality, remains one of the most widely seen screen adaptations of the character in the mid-20th century; film historians estimate that the 1940 version reached over 15 million viewers through its initial theatrical release and early rights sales in the UK and North America. Laurence Olivier's Darcy, conversely, is often cited as the first "movie-star" interpretation of the part, setting a template for later suave, brooding Darcys in the 1990s and 2000s.

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Trivia and behind-the-scenes details

Several on-screen quirks of the 1940 film reveal MGM's production habits and contractual constraints.

• The film's famous opening scene, set at a ball in Meryton, reportedly required over 12 costume changes for Greer Garson, underscoring the studio's emphasis on fashion as a visual hook.
• Edmund Gwenn improvised several of Mr. Bennet's wry remarks, which the director, Robert Z. Leonard, kept in the final cut, contributing to the patriarch's mordant, under-the-breath tone.
• Because of wartime rationing and studio budgeting, exterior scenes were shot on soundstages with painted backdrops, giving the English countryside a slightly stylized, almost storybook quality.

Why these actors still matter today

The 1940 Pride and Prejudice anchors its emotional weight in the chemistry between Garson and Olivier, supported by a tightly knit ensemble of character actors.

Modern viewers often revisit the film not just for its literary source material, but as a study in how a mid-20th-century studio reshaped Austen's social comedy into a star-driven romance. By focusing on the main cast-Garson, Olivier, Boland, Gwenn, O'Sullivan, Rutherford, Hunt, Angel, Cooper, Ashley, Lester, Oliver, and Inescort-audiences get a snapshot of Hollywood's approach to canon in the 1940s, where literary fidelity bent around star power and production design.

How to watch and appreciate the 1940 cast in context

For viewers revisiting the 1940 film today, the most rewarding approach is to treat the principal actors as a period "portrait gallery" rather than strict Austen purists.

1. Begin by watching the opening home-life sequences to observe how Mary Boland and Edmund Gwenn establish the Bennet family dynamic through comic timing rather than psychological depth.
2. Compare Greer Garson's Elizabeth in conversation scenes with Mr. Darcy to the quieter, more interior modern adaptations; her line deliveries are often more performative and enunciated, reflecting 1940s stage-to-screen norms.
3. Pause at key social gatherings (the Netherfield ball, the Rosings Park visit) to note how Edna May Oliver and Frieda Inescort project class disdain through posture and glance as much as through dialogue.
4. Track Melville Cooper's Mr. Collins across his proposal to Charlotte and later visits; his evolving physical comedy illustrates how the same character can shift from embarrassing to grotesque without changing a single line.
5. Finally, re-watch the final reconciliation between Darcy and Elizabeth, focusing on Olivier's subtle smile and Garson's restrained, almost tearful relief; this closing beat condenses the film's emotional arc into a single, iconic Hollywood moment.

How accurate is the 1940 film's casting to the novel?

The 1940 adaptation makes several deliberate departures from Jane Austen's character sketches, both in tone and in casting choices.

For example, the novelistic Mrs. Bennet is often described as more shrill and less visually comedic than Mary Boland's broadly played version, while the film's Mr. Bennet (Edmund Gwenn) is slightly warmer and more involved than Austen's famously detached patriarch. Likewise, the movie compresses several minor characters and realigns relationships, so viewers seeking strict fidelity should treat the 1940 film as a "1940s Hollywood interpretation" rather than a scene-for-scene translation.

What do film scholars say about the 1940 cast's legacy?

Academic writing on the 1940 Pride and Prejudice often highlights its role in popularizing Austen for mass American audiences.

One frequently cited statistic is that MGM's adaptation was among the first major Austen adaptations to break the British literary market into the Hollywood studio system, with later studies placing its viewership in the pre-television era at roughly 1.8 million cinema admissions in the U.S. alone during its first year. Critics also note that Greer Garson's Elizabeth and Laurence Olivier's Darcy set a template for star-driven Austen films, influencing later adaptations that pair international stars with period costumes and stylized dialogue.

How does the 1940 cast compare to later Pride and Prejudice ensembles?

Later adaptations, such as the 1995 BBC miniseries and the 2005 feature film, adopt different casting philosophies and historical sensibilities.

Comparing major Elizabeth Bennet portrayals across eras

Version	Elizabeth Bennet actress	Mr. Darcy actor	Casting style emphasis
1940 MGM	Greer Garson	Laurence Olivier	Star-driven, theatrical; foregrounds glamour and dialogue over psychological realism.
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