Sergeant York (DVD)

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In the 1930s, 1940s, and well into the 1950s, Gary Cooper was a staple of the Hollywood scene, an icon of masculine strength and rugged individualism. He was the all-American hero, yet with the kind of innocent wholesomeness we also think of in a Jimmy Stewart. At least until Stewart got older, Coop was like the grown-up version of Stewart's boy next door. The "Gary Cooper Signature Collection" brings together some of the star's better work, and no film more personifies his reputation than 1941's "Sergeant York." Appropriately, Warner Bros. have accorded it one of their Two-Disc Special Editions.

The real-life Alvin Cullum York (1887-1964) was one of the most-celebrated American heroes of World War I, having single-handedly taken out a series of German machine-gun nests and captured 132 enemy combatants. Among numerous other tributes, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor. It was a pretty good accounting of himself for a guy whom the army had denied status as a conscientious objector. His story is almost too good to be true. If audiences in 1941 or today thought it was fiction, they would probably have laughed it off the screen as being too corny and far-fetched. The fact is, virtually everything we see actually happened.

But the film was not without controversy. At first, the real York didn't want a film made about him at all. It was only because producer Jesse Lasky personally visited him that he could persuade York to OK the picture. But then York insisted that only Gary Cooper, at the time one of the very biggest stars in Hollywood, play his part. It was inspired casting, no doubt, but Cooper was reluctant to portray a man who was still alive. Then, when Cooper finally agreed to do the part, York further insisted that his war exploits not be emphasized. He didn't want people be remember him for having killed so many men. Well, obviously, it was his war experience that interested Hollywood and the world, so the Warner Studios compromised, producing a film that takes us from about a year before York's conscription for military duty until his triumphal return from duty overseas. Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee, Howard Koch, and John Huston co-wrote a script based on York's own diary and famed moviemaker Howard Hawks ("Bringing Up Baby," "His Girl Friday," "The Big Sleep," "Red River," "The Thing from Another World," "Rio Bravo," "El Dorado") directed.

Still, that was not the end of the controversy. It was 1941, and America had not yet entered the Second World War. The country was torn between those who wanted us to go to war with Germany and those who wanted us to stay as far away as possible from European entanglements. Anti-interventionists saw "Sergeant York" as a Hollywood propaganda film encouraging America's entrance into WWII. Anti-Semitic types even accused Hollywood of being run by Jews who were in league with the White House to force America into war. Ironically, the movie's preface states that the "day will come when man will live in peace on earth." In a way, the film's opponents were right: It was a wake-up call for America to go to war, and after Pearl Harbor, people looked at it in an entirely new light. It became the biggest box-office attraction of the year.

The story begins in the spring of 1916 in a small, rural community in the mountains of Tennessee. York is in his late twenties (Cooper was in late thirties at the time) and living with his mother (stage actress Margaret Wycherly in her film debut), his sister Rosie (June Lockhart), and his younger brother George (Dickie Moore). They're farmers (although the real York, I understand, was a blacksmith), eking out a humble living on the same land their parents and grandparents farmed before them.

At this time Alvin is unhappy with his lot in life. He's poor and unable to buy the more fertile land in the flats he really wants. As a result, he's become a hard-drinking hell-raiser and something of an embarrassment to his family.

The first half of the story tells about York's experiences the year prior to his joining the army: his rowdy ways, his prowess with a rifle, his spiritual rebirth and turn to religion, his attempts to buy a farm of his own, and his romance with a neighbor girl, Gracie Williams (Joan Leslie). The second half of the story tells about York's heroic experiences during the War and his triumphant return.