Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray upgrade of The Valley of Decision, the highest grossing film of 1945 and the most sought-after Greer Garson on Blu-ray title after the still missing Random Harvest from three years earlier.

Critics of eighty years ago may have preferred The Lost Weekend, Spellbound, The Bells of St. Mary’s, The House on 92nd Street, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,State Fair, and The Keys of the Kingdom, the seven most prominent films on year-end ten best lists, but it was the year’s eighth most popular film with the critics that audiences loved best.

Marcia Davenport’s 1942 bestseller about the Pittsburgh steel mills takes place from 1873-1941 but Tay Garnett’s film only covers the first section of the epic novel from 1873-1883. It centers on the romance of the daughter of an embittered injured steelworker and the son of the owner of the mill.

Garson, then the biggest female star in the world, stars as Mary Rafferty, the Irish lass who takes a job as a maid in the mill owner’s home against the wishes of her father. The role would earn the actress her fifth Best Actress Oscar nomination in six years following her nods for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver (for which she won), Madame Curie, and Mrs. Parkington. It would be her last major success until her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960’s Sunrise at Campobello earned her a seventh Oscar nomination as well as her third National Board of Review award and only Golden Globe.

Starring opposite Garson, Gregory Peck in only his third film, would see his second and fourth films, The Keys of the Kingdom and Spellbound, also among the year’s eight most critically acclaimed films. Peck would also be the recipient of several Oscar nominations in the 1940s earning four from 1945-1949 for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman’s Agreement and 12 O’Clock High. He would win on his fifth nomination for 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

The film’s supporting cast is also quite impressive.

Donald Crisp, switching from his Oscar winning patriarch of the impoverished coal mining family in 1941’s How Green Was My Valley to the steel mill owner here, gave another of his fine character performances which would continue through such later classics as The Long Gray Line, The Man from Laramie, The Last Hurrah, and Spencer’s Mountain.

Lionel Barrymore once again proved that confinement to a wheelchair couldn’t deter him from giving a fiery performance. The Oscar winning star of A Free Soul was at his nasty best as Garson’s volatile father, a role similar in meanness to his better-known role in the following year’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

Barrymore also famously played Scrooge in A Christmas Carol on radio in the 1930s. He was set to play the part in the 1938 film version when he was forced to bow out for health reasons. Reginald Owen, who replaced him in that plays the mill owner’s coachman in this.

Gladys Cooper could be cold and off-putting in her Oscar nominated performances in Now, Voyager and The Song of Bernadette or gentle as a lamb as she was in The White Cliffs of Clover and here as Peck’s mother and Garson’s benefactor the year after she played Garson’s alcoholic daughter in Mrs. Parkington. She would go on to play memorable supporting roles in such films as The Bishop’s Wife, Separate Tables, and My Fair Lady for which she would again receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1964. She would reunite with Garson for 1967’s The Happiest Millionaire in which she played her aunt.

Future Oscar winner Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy) was only two years away from playing Blanche DuBois in the original version of Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire when she played Peck’s insufferable wife here.

Future Oscar nominee Dean Stockwell (Married to the Mob) made his film debut here as Peck and Tandy’s son. The following year he would play the main character, an Irish orphan sent to live with his Scottish mother’s family, in The Green Years in which he would be reunited with Tandy and Cooper. Tandy played his aunt while her real-life husband Hume Conyn played her father and Stockwell’s grandfather. Cooper played Cronyn’s mother and Stockwell’s great-grandmother. Charles Coburn as Stockwell’s great-grandfather, received the film’s only acting Oscar nomination. The year after that Stockwell was reunited with Gregory Peck as his father in Gentleman’s agreement could also be seen as William Powell and Myrna Loy’s son in the last Thin Man film. He would reunite with Gladys Cooper in 1949’s The Secret Garden and go on to a long screen career.

Dan Duyea, who had two other unforgettable villainous roles in 1945 in The Woman in the Windrow and Scarlet Street, was Peck’s not-so-nice brother in the film. Marshall Thompson (Battleground) was his alcoholic younger brother. Marsha Hunt, who had played Garson’s sister in (Pride and Prejudice and Blossoms in the Dust, was Peck’s sister here.

Preston Foster (The Last Days of Pompeii) plays a more levelheaded labor leader than Barrymore and Geraldine Wall (Alias Nick Beal) brings warmth to the role of Garson’s widowed sister.

Connie Gilchrist (A Letter to Three Wives, Auntie Mame) stands out in her one scene as a wisecracking cook.

The film surprisingly underperformed at the 1945 Oscars. Its only Oscar nomination aside from Garson’s was for Herbert Stothart’s score. A previous Oscar winner for The Wizard of Oz, it was his tenth and final nomination.

Tay Garnett, whose next film would be The Postman Always Rings Twice continued to direct films as well as many TV productions for the next twenty years.

Happy viewing.