14th Academy Awards: History and Background

The 14th Academy Awards honored film achievements in 1941 and were held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was briefly cancelled due to the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

The ceremony is now considered notable as the year in which Citizen Kane failed to win Best Picture, losing to John Ford's How Green Was My Valley. Later regarded as the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane was nominated for nine awards but won only one, for Best Original Screenplay.

John Ford won his third Best Director award for How Green Was My Valley, becoming the second to do so (after Frank Capra), and the first to win the award in consecutive years (following The Grapes of Wrath in 1940).

Much public attention was focused on the Best Actress race between sibling rivals Joan Fontaine, for Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, and Olivia de Havilland, for Hold Back the Dawn. Fontaine won, becoming the only acting winner from a film directed by Hitchcock.

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