Frank Capra on The Bitter Tea of General Yen:

I wanted an Academy Award very badly. I thought I was as good or better than the other guys. I had never had any worries about thinking I was good at all. This cockiness I had as a kid just stuck with me and I'm still cocky. And anyhow, coming in second is not better than coming in last, as far as I'm concerned. I wanted to get out there in front. I wanted to win one of these Academy Awards for directing. It became an obsession; all ambitious people, all nutty people think that way. I'd seen how the Academy voted – they voted for art; they didn't vote for comedy. They didn't vote for this kind of junk I'm making. So I though, What the hell, I'll give them art. And I took on The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which is a story about miscegenation between a Chinese warlord and an American missionary. But I fell in love with the story, too. And I think I made a very fine picture out of it. I loved the film myself. It had a quality of honesty between these people.The warlord said all the things that needed to be said about miscegenation, about racism. And I felt that this woman had depth enough to understand. She was so  bigoted [at first]. And this reformation of this character from a bigot to one who could love anybody – why, this was an honest story to me.But no Academy Award.

(From the Frank Capra chapter in Richard Schickel's
book The Men Who Made the Movies, page 70.
Published by Atheneum, 1975, New York.)