5 Off My Head - Siri Says 1941

Like most of us these days it appears Siri wants to punch some Nazis, and so this morning when I asked her our weekly query - to choose a number between 1 and 100 - she gave me 41, shooting us back to the year 1941, and with it The Movies of 1941. 

Unfortunately for her Siri over-shot the War and with it Prime Nazi Punching Time a wee bit -- Pearl Harbor didn't hit until December of that year and so the US wasn't in full-propaganda mode yet, and you can see that from this batch of films. The only film really about the overseas conflict is in the runners-up, is British, and was a direct attempt by its director Michael Powell to pressure the US into joining the war. (The movies of 1942, which I previously listed for this series, are a darker batch.)

So anyway this is a surprisingly light selection of films with such dark clouds looming on the horizon - more Barbara Stanwyck than she can shake her gams at! She put out four movies this year and two of them (one co-starring Gary Cooper and one co-starring Henry Fonda) are my absolute faves of hers, while the other two (one co-starring Gary Cooper and, uh, one co-starring Henry Fonda) ain't no stinkers. Oh and there's also what was called the Greatest Movie Ever Made for about six decades. (I always quibbled with that distinction but it's still pretty fine all the same.) And so I give you...

(dir. Howard Hawks)

-- released on December 31st, 1941 --

(dir. George Waggner)

-- released on December 12th, 1941 --

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on November 14th, 1941 --

(dir. Orson Welles)

-- released on September 5th, 1941 --

(dir. Preston Sturges)

-- released on March 21st, 1941 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston),  Sullivan's Travels (dir. Preston Sturges), Meet John Doe (dir. Frank Capra), Dumbo (dir. Ben Sharpsteen), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (dir. Alexander Hall), Hellzapoppin' (dir. H.C. Potter)...

... Mr. & Mrs. Smith (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), Penny Serenade (dir. George Stevens), 49th Parallel (dir. Michael Powell), You Belong to Me (dir. Wesley Ruggles)

Never Seen: How Green Was My Valley (dir. John Ford)

-----------------------------------------
.