Gary Cooper Best Actor Oscar® for “Sergeant York”
This exhibit has been extended!
Gary Cooper was the only person that Alvin York trusted to portray his story from the Great War. York insisted that if Cooper 
was not part of the movie he would not authorize the film. Cooper’s 1941 portrayal of the World War I hero is considered one of his finest – and for his exceptional work he was awarded his first Academy Award® for Best Actor.
Maria Cooper Janis, the daughter of Gary Cooper, loaned the National World War I Museum her father’s Oscar for the special exhibit. “It is very meaningful to me to have the story of Sgt. York as an American hero be honored at this wonderful Museum dedicated to all the heroes of World War I. To be able to share the symbol of excellence embodied in the Oscar awarded to my father Gary Cooper for his screen portrayal of Alvin York, makes me very proud indeed. I hope visitors leave the Museum inspired by the memories of heroism and courage – and by the lives lived, on and off the battlefield."
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® enthusiastically approved and supported this special presentation of Gary Cooper’s Oscar.
The Oscar is on exhibit in the main gallery of the Museum.
The Gary Cooper Oscar exhibition is supported by Buffalo Funds.
In her book “Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers,” Maria Cooper Janis said this of her father’s role as Sergeant York:
This is the role that won my father his first Oscar. As my father once said about this role, “It took everything I had and I gave it everything I had.” My father spoke of playing the role of Sergeant Alvin York in the following way:
“I remember my first big struggle with my responsibility to the movie-going public. Hal Wallis showed me a script called Sergeant York, based on the real-life story of the great hero of World War I. In screen biographies dealing with remote historic characters, some romantic leeway is permissible. But York happened to be very much alive, his exploits were real, and I felt that I couldn’t do justice to him. York himself came to tell me I was his own choice for the role, but I still felt I couldn’t handle it. Here was a pious, sincere man, a conscientious objector to war, who, when called, became a heroic fighter for his country. He was too big for me. He covered too much territory.
“To prepare myself for the role, I visited Sergeant Alvin C. York in his own Tennessee hills and absorbed from his faith and philosophy. He didn’t smoke or drink or swear, and he believed that every man had a right to live in peace. But the more he prayed for guidance, the clearer it became that peace could not be preserved by meek surrender to an aggressor. Once convinced that it was up to the strong to resist attacks on the weak, he prayed for strength and became the fightingest soldier in the AEF.”
During his lifetime, Cooper received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning again for “High Noon.” His career spanned from 1925 until shortly before his death in 1961, and included more than 100 films.
Cooper acted in several additional movies about the Great War. In 1927 he played a supporting role in “Wings,” the only silent film ever to win an Oscar for Best Picture. In “A Farewell to Arms” (1932) he starred opposite Helen Hayes.
Cooper was born in Montana in 1901 and went to England with his mother and older brother in 1910. He attended school at Dunstable but returned home each summer, and came home in 1915 to live on and work the family ranch.