284 SERGEANT YORK
earned him a promotion to sergeant, the Medal of Honor, France’s Croix de Guerre,
and many other military decorations. His combat exploits also made him a cele-
brated national folk hero. After the war, York’s business advisor hired New York
author Sam K. Cowan to write a biography: Sergeant York and His People (1922).
York also cooperated with Gallipoli veteran Tom Skeyhill, who essentially wrote
York’s “autobiography” based on interviews: Sergeant York: His Own Life Story
and War Diary. Over a 20- year period starting in 1919, Hollywood producer
Jesse L. Lasky begged York to sell the film rights to his life story, but York drew the
line on a movie; films were literally against his religion (he belonged to Churches
of Christ in Christian Union, a strict Evangelical sect). In the late 1930s altered
circumstances prompted York to change his mind. He needed money to finance
a planned Bible school. Moreover, war had broken out in Eu rope again, igniting a
fierce national debate between interventionists (the minority position York
favored) and isolationists (the popu lar “Amer i ca First” stance advocated by another
national hero and Medal of Honor winner, pro- German aviator Charles A. Lind-
bergh). Worried about the threat of fascism and hoping that a cinematic rendering
of his WWI military ser vice would help bolster interventionist sentiment, York
fi nally agreed to sell Lasky the movie rights in March 1940. The studio tested Pat
O’Brien and Ronald Reagan to play Alvin York but Lasky and York had always
envisioned Gary Cooper as Alvin York. Cooper initially refused the role but York
made a personal appeal to him, and Cooper signed on in September 1940. Lasky
struck a production deal with Hal B. Wallis at Warner Bros., William Keighley was
assigned to direct ( later replaced by Howard Hawks), and studio head Jack War-
ner arranged to borrow Cooper from Samuel Goldwyn of MGM. To play York’s
wife, Gracie, Lasky wanted Jane Russell, a sexy 19- year- old ingénue, but York
insisted the part go to a nonsmoking teetotaler. The studio tested Helen Wood,
Linda Hayes, and Suzanne Carnahan but ultimately hired Joan Leslie, a
wholesome 15- year- old—24 years younger than her male co- star (the real Grace
Williams York was 13 years younger than her husband). Working closely with the
filmmakers, Alvin York demanded that they adhere to high standards of accuracy.
Accordingly, the screenwriters— Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee, Howard Koch,
and John Huston— relied on the books by Cowan and Skeyhill to fashion a true- to-
life screenplay. They did, however, add the usual sorts of Hollywood embellish-
ments to enliven the narrative (e.g., modeling York’s religious conversion on
St. Paul’s sudden illumination when it was actually a gradual pro cess prompted by
his wife, Grace). Eugene P. Walters was hired as military technical director and Wil-
liam Yetter, a former sergeant major in the Imperial German Army, advised the film-
makers on the German military. The film’s working title was The Amazing Life of
Sergeant York, and the proj ect was bud geted at $2 million.Production
Sergeant York was mostly shot on Stages 6, 9, 16, and 24 at Warner Bros. Studios in
Burbank. On Stage 16 (the biggest in North Amer i ca, 98 feet tall and providing
32,000 square feet of production area) a set was built to represent a section of the
Tennessee Valley at Three Forks of the Wolf, where Alvin York was born. It fea-
tured a 40- foot mock Appalachian mountain made of wood, plaster, rock, and soil