The Alamo (1960 Film) - Response

Response

Though the film had a large box office take, its cost kept it from being a success and Wayne lost his personal investment. He sold his rights to United Artists, which had released it, and it made back its money. The Alamo won the Academy Award for Best Sound (Gordon E. Sawyer, Fred Hynes) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Chill Wills), Best Cinematography (Color), Best Film Editing, Best Music (Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture), Best Music (Song) (Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster for The Green Leaves of Summer) and Best Picture. Its successful bid for several Oscar nominations over such films as Psycho and Spartacus was largely due to intense lobbying by producer John Wayne.

Critical response was mixed, from the New York Herald-Tribune's four-star "A magnificent job...Visually and dramatically, The Alamo is top-flight," to Time Magazine's "flat as Texas." Years later, Leonard Maltin criticized the script as being "full of historical name-dropping and speechifying," but praised the climactic battle scene.

The film received a score of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film is thought to have been denied awards because Academy voters were alienated by an overblown publicity campaign, particularly one Variety ad claiming that the film's cast was praying harder for Chill Wills to win his award than the defenders of the Alamo prayed for their lives before the battle. The ad, placed by Wills, reportedly angered Wayne, who took out an ad of his own deploring Wills's tastelessness. In response to Wills's ad, claiming that all the voters were his "Alamo Cousins," Groucho Marx took out a small ad which simply said, "Dear Mr. Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I voted for Sal Mineo," (Wills's rival nominee for Exodus).

The film's cost, more than poor attendance, was at the root of its initial presumed failure, and indeed, it has retained popularity with many people. The soundtrack album has been in print continuously for fifty years. References to The Alamo show up in spoofs or homages. Mad Magazine had a spoof. The Alamo is mentioned by Vic Fontaine (James Darren) in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang". The singer describes it as having great battle scenes and nice sets, but with an excessive running time. An American Werewolf in London contains extended dialogue about The Alamo. The movie Viva Max!, shot at the actual Alamo in San Antonio, makes numerous comedic references to the film with the Reynold Brown film poster painting featured.

Wayne provided a clip of the film for use in How the West Was Won. Despite being anachronistic (How the West Was Won begins in 1839 and the Alamo fell in 1836), the clip occurs near the beginning of the second half of the film, as Spencer Tracy narrates the events that led up to the American Civil War.