14th Academy Awards

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.

The Little Foxes set a record by receiving nine nominations without winning a single Oscar; this mark was matched by Peyton Place in 1957, and exceeded by The Turning Point and The Color Purple, both of which received 11 nominations without a win.

Awards
Nominations were announced on February 6, 1942. Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and marked with a dagger symbol.

Academy Honorary Award

 * Rey Scott for Kukan
 * The British Ministry of Information for Target for Tonight
 * Leopold Stokowski for Fantasia
 * Walt Disney, William Garity, John N. A. Hawkins, and the RCA Manufacturing Company for Fantasia

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

 * Walt Disney

Ceremony information
This year marked the debut of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Judy Garland sang the unofficial national anthem of the United States at the time, "My Country 'Tis of Thee".

Bette Davis had sought to open the ceremony to the public for the benefit of the American Red Cross, but was turned down and she ended up resigning from her post as President of AMPAS over this.

A portion of the ceremony was broadcast by CBS Radio.