War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Welcome to another special episode of Key Battles of World War I. I'm your host, James Early. This is another of a projected mini-series of episodes in which a guest

and I will discuss several of the best movies about World War I. In today's episode, we will

discuss the classic award-winning All-American 1941 film, Sergeant York. My guest is a fellow

history fanatic in World War I and World War II buff, Sean McIver.

Sean is a co-host of the excellent podcast, come and take it, which I strongly recommend that you check out.

Sean is also a major movie aficionado, so he's the perfect person to have with me today. I'm excited to have him again.

Sean, how you doing?

Well, as they would say in this movie, tolerable, tolerable, well. All right, that's great. We're going to have a lot of fun with this

one. So before we jump into the movie, let me give some of the basic information about the movie.

Sergeant York was released in 1941, and it stars Gary Cooper, of course. Gary Cooper,

the legendary American actor who plays the title role, Alvin C. York. Also stars Walter

Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias, and Stanley Ridges, and quite a few other people. It was directed by Howard Hawks.

It's two hours and 14 minutes and it won awards, including Best Actor for Gary Cooper.

And it's just an iconic American film. A lot of people have seen it. I think just about

every history buff has seen it.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it gets a rating of 88% from the critics and 87% from the audience. So that's

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