Reception
Sergeant York was a spectacular success at the box office and became the highest grossing film of 1941. It remains one of the highest grossing films of all time when adjusted for inflation. It benefited from the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred while the film played in theaters. The film's patriotic theme helped recruit soldiers; young men sometimes went directly from the movie theater to military enlistment offices.
At the 14th Academy Awards, the film won two Oscars:
- Best Actor - Gary Cooper
- Best Film Editing - William Holmes
It was also nominated for:
- Outstanding Motion Picture - Warner Bros. (Hal B. Wallis and Jesse L. Lasky Producers)
- Best Director - Howard Hawks
- Best Writing (Original Screenplay) - Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston, Howard Koch
- Best Supporting Actor - Walter Brennan
- Best Supporting Actress - Margaret Wycherly
- Best Art Direction (Black-and-White) - John Hughes, Fred M. MacLean
- Best Cinematography (Black-and-White) - Sol Polito
- Best Music (Score of a Dramatic Picture) - Max Steiner
- Best Sound Recording - Nathan Levinson
Read more about this topic: Sergeant York
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)