These days, Academy Award winners are told they have just 45 seconds to deliver their thank you speeches upon accepting their Oscar. Everyone likes to push the envelope, so the award show organizers started cueing the orchestra to start playing as a not-so-subtle nudge to the winner to wrap things up and get off the stage. Without this, some celebrities would seize their moment on stage to filibuster from more face time. The longest Academy Award acceptance speech can be traced back to the Golden Age of Hollywood when Greer Garson won her Oscar in 1943.
Greer Garson was a British-American actress who was active in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. She is best known for her role in the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also appeared in other notable films such as Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Pride and Prejudice.
The Academy Award presentation for the films that were released in 1942 took place on March 4, 1943, at the Coconut Grove Club, located in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. The presentation was long, stretching beyond midnight, when the presenters finally got to the last award of the event, the award for the Best Actress. Greer Garson’s name was called as the winner for her role in Mrs. Miniver, a William Wyler-directed war romance drama.
When Greer Garson stepped up to the podium, the audience prepared for the evening to end. Garson said, “Thank you. That is really all there is to say, but as this is, after all, the opportunity of a lifetime, I hope you won’t mind if I try to expand that word just a little.” Expand, she did! Her “just a little” expansion went on and on, for close to seven minutes. Only three minutes and 56 seconds were recorded.
Greer Garson spoke about her experience as a native of England who immigrated to the United States. She commented on how happy she was in her new country and how the entertainment industry welcomed her with open arms. She connected her personal experience with the character she played in Mrs. Miniver, a British housewife whose life is upended because of World War II.
She concluded her wordy speech by noting that the kind audience that night, and the award she received, made her feel even more accepted in Hollywood. She said, “You have really set the door of your friendship wide open, and that welcome is officially on the mat, and that is why I’m so happy.” The reality was that the audience was shocked at the length of her speech, as this was a time when most winners only spoke a few words as a form of thanks, and no one really knew what to do. Greer was only the 15th Best Actress winner in the history of the Academy Awards and there was no precedent for acceptance speech length.
Greer Garson’s Academy Award acceptance speech is still the longest one in the history of the award presentation. With the new 45-second rule for speeches, it is highly unlikely that her record will ever be broken.