The Instant Expert's Guide to Frank Capra

Three decades have passed since the death of Frank Capra on 3 September 1991. During that time, his reputation has fluctuated, as critics and scholars have argued about the meaning and value of his films, as well as their legacy. Yet, while there's seemingly no consensus on what Capra was striving to say during his 1930s heyday, audiences have continued to warm to pictures that are often as dark as they are folksy. Cinema Paradiso wonders why.

Actor-director John Cassavetes once joked, 'Maybe there never was an America in the thirties, Maybe it was all Frank Capra.' So adroitly did a Sicilian immigrant capture the mood of his adopted homeland during the Great Depression that he often seemed to have a greater understanding of his compatriots than those elected to govern them. Indeed, he was so in tune with the times that he won the Academy Award for Best Director three times during the decade.

Yet not everyone shared François Truffaut's enthusiasm for the 'unquenchable optimism' that Capra generated from 'recognising the facts of human suffering, uncertainty, anxiety, (and) the everyday struggles of life'. For every critic who commended his support for the individual and his heartfelt humanist trust in the power of community, there were naysayers who found his work excessively sentimental and politically naive. Such was the diversity of interpretation that Capra could be branded a patriotic populist and an coincidental Communist with equal conviction.

A conservative Republican and a Roman Catholic, Capra always claimed that 'the underlying idea of my movies is actually the Sermon on the Mount'. Thus, for all the critical carping about Beatitudes and platitudes, there was always a sincerity to Capra's canon that has allowed a man of his times to leave a lasting legacy. If you still aren't convinced, try playing the game that biographer Joseph McBride based on the premise of It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Imagine what cinema would be like if Frank Capra had never existed.

The Six Year-Old in Steerage

Francesco Rosario Capra was born in the Sicilian village of Bisacquino on 18 May 1897. The youngest of the seven children born to fruit farmer Salvatore and his wife, Rosaria, the boy celebrated his sixth birthday in steerage during the 13-day voyage across the Atlantic aboard the SS Germania that Capra would recall as one of the most miserable experiences of his life. He was buoyed, however, by his father's promise that the light cast by the torch held by the Statue of Liberty would be as bright as the star that had shone over Bethlehem.

Following a cross-country rail journey on hard wooden seats, the Capras initially settled into a house on Castelar Street on the East Side of Los Angeles. However, they moved to Albion Street in the Lincoln Height district, where racial integration was not encouraged and the environment left Capra with resentments (as opposed to overt prejudices) that regrettably lasted a lifetime. He also felt ashamed of his peasant background and the menial jobs that his mother (who would be the model for his strong female characters) had to take because her husband was so work-shy.

Consequently, while he readily sold newspapers from the age of 10 to help feed the family, Capra also devoted himself to his studies at Manual Arts High School. Moreover, he insisted on reading chemical engineering at the Throop Polytechnic Institute, even though he had to wait tables, clean the engines at a power plant, play the banjo and run the student laundry in order to pay his way.

In his determination to better himself, Capra also edited the college newspaper and served as a captain in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. As a result, on graduating in 1918, he received a second lieutenant commission in the US Army. Despite his eagerness to see action back in Europe, he spent several months teaching ballistics and mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Scott in San Francisco. However, he was invalided out of uniform during the Spanish Flu pandemic that would claim between 20-50 million lives.

In 1920, he changed his name to Frank Russell Capra on becoming a naturalised American citizen. But he struggled to find work and the combination of an undiagnosed burst appendix and his failure to contribute to the family coffers (after his father's death in 1916) brought on bouts of depression. Refusing to be a burden, Capra rode the rails and dossed down in Frisco flophouses, while taking whatever jobs he could find. In addition to labouring on a farm, he also sold wildcat oil stocks, hustled at poker and went door to door peddling Elbert Hubbard's 14-volume tome, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. He also tried his hand at being a film extra.

Wild About Harry

It's not known which titles feature Frank Capra the extra. However, it's likely that he appeared alongside cowboy star Harry Carey in John Ford's lost 1919 Western, The Outlaws of Poker Flat, while doing odd jobs at the Christie Film Company. In his 1971 autobiography, The Name Above the Title, Capra spun many a yarn about his formative years. But, in 1919, he joined forces with onetime actor W.M. Plank and the wealthy Ida May Heitmann to form the Tri-State Motion Picture Company in Nevada, where Plank directed three shorts based on Capra scenarios, Don't Change Your Husbands, The Pulse of Life and The Scar of Love (all 1920).

When they failed to make money, Capra returned to California, where he contributed to the Screen Snapshots series produced by CBC Film Sales before convincing San Francisco-based Shakespearean actor Walter Montague that he had enough Hollywood experience to direct Fulta Fisher's Boarding House (1922), a one-reel adaptation of a poem by Rudyard Kipling poem that Capra made for $1700 in just two days.

Before this was released, however, Montague ditched Capra from a second venture and he went to work in the laboratory of film editor Walter S. Ball. The 24 year-old also became a director for hire when he was entrusted with the documentary, The Visit of the Italian Cruiser Libia to San Francisco, Calif., November 6-29, 1921, in which he took a cigar-smoking cameo alongside the battleship that had become famous during the Great War.

Certain he had found his métier, Capra worked as a prop man, film cutter and title writer, while also collaborating with Robert Eddy on the Plum Center Comedies produced by the Paul Gerson Picture Corporation. Shortly after marrying actress Helen Howell, he joined Hal Roach's studio to write gags for the popular Our Gang shorts. After just seven weeks, however, he was poached by Keystone boss Mack Sennett, who set him to work with Arthur Ripley on 25 slapstick two-reelers starring baby-faced comic, Harry Langdon.

The pair also scripted the Harry Edwards feature, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), which Langdon made after decamping to First National Studios. He promoted Capra to direct The Strong Man (1926). But they fell out during the making of Long Pants (1927) and Langdon's career went into steady decline during the early sound era. However. he remains one of the kings of knockabout and thoroughly deserves his place alongside Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in Robert Youngson's wonderful documentary, When Comedy Was King (1960). He's also played by Richard Cant in Jon S. Baird's Stan & Ollie (2018), which is covered in depth in the Cinema Paradiso article, 10 Films to Watch if You Liked Stan & Ollie.

Biographer Joseph McBride has discovered that Capra wreaked his revenge on Langdon by slipping stories to Hollywood's voracious gossip columnists. But he distanced himself from the fallout by heading to New York to direct Claudette Colbert in her screen debut, For the Love of Mike (1927). The picture performed badly and Colbert hated the experience so much she vowed to quit movies. Moreover, Capra had his salary withheld for going over budget and had to hitch his way back to Hollywood.

By now divorced, Capra gratefully accepted Sennett's offer to work on the comedy series, The Smiths, as well as the Carole Lombard vehicle, The Swim Princess. But Harry Cohn had remembered Capra from their time at CBC and invited him to become one of the principal directors at the renamed Columbia Pictures Corporation.

Mr Columbia

It's fitting that Capra should have fetched up at Columbia, as its Statue of Liberty logo seemed to confirm father Salvatore's assertion at Ellis Island in 1903 about the torch being a beacon of freedom. Capra certainly had ample opportunity to tackle a range of topics, as Columbia was a Poverty Row studio with a small staff that produced second features to support the main attractions showing at big city and neighbourhood cinemas alike.

Having started out with That Certain Feeling, a silent comedy about a disinherited heir who becomes a ditch-digger, Capra centred So This Is Love? around a milquetoast who takes up boxing to impress his heart's desire. He edged closer towards the formula for which he would become renowned with The Matinee Idol (all 1928), in which Broadway star Johnnie Walker falls for an actress in a troupe that specialises in hackneyed melodramas.

Changing tack, Capra starred Mitchell Lewis in The Way of the Strong, a crime saga about the world's ugliest bootlegger. Sadly, however, it's no longer possible to gauge the quality of Say It With Sables, as no copies of the drama about a father and son falling for the same woman are known to exist. A similar situation drives a wedge between sailors Jack Holt and Ralph Graves in Submarine (both 1928), which was the first Capra feature to be released with sound effects and a pre-recorded score.

It's odd that Sony has never released a boxed set of Capra's early outings, as they provide an intriguing insight into his future preoccupations. They proved profitable enough for Cohn to raise Capra's salary to $3000 per picture and for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to borrow him for Brotherly Love in mid-1928. Capra felt constricted by the studio's rigid production methods, however, and quit before the camera started rolling.

Cohn welcomed him back with The Power of the Press (1928), Capra's last silent, which starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as a reporter trying to prove Jobyna Ralston innocent of murder. There was something of a personal element about Capra's first part-talkie, The Younger Generation, as Ricardo Cortez tried to hide his Jewish immigrant roots in order to fit in with his new friends. However, the emphasis was on narrative sleight of hand in The Donovan Affair (both 1929), in which Jack Holt plays an inspector restaging a power cut murder.

This picture only exists with re-dubbed dialogue and sound and it remains one of the most difficult Capra pictures to see. Unlike Flight (1929), which reunited Jack Holt and Ralph Graves in a Marine Corps actioner that is notable for re-teaming the director with cinematographer Joseph Walker, who would become a key collaborator during Capra's purple patch.

So would Barbara Stanwyck, who headlined Ladies of Leisure (1930), The Miracle Woman (1931), Forbidden (1932) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). Two of these titles can be found below in Cinema Paradiso's Capra Top 10, along with the Jean Harlow comedy, Platinum Blonde (1931). Sadly, however, it's not currently possible to see such early talkies as Rain or Shine (1930), Dirigible (1931) or American Madness (1932), even though the latter is clearly a dry run for the underdog tales that would be dubbed 'Capraesque' or 'Capracorn' depending on a critic's political standpoint and tolerance for whimsy.

Two crucial players in Capra's shift away from genre hopping towards message movies were screenwriters Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, with the latter being the liberal foil to Capra's conservatism during the long presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal policies during the Great Depression infuriated the director. Riskin worked on 13 pictures with Capra, which amassed 29 Academy Award nominations. Yet, Capra (who had married Lucille Reyburn in 1932) wasn't always a generous collaborator and insisted that Cohn made him the only director in Hollywood whose name went above the title. He also took pride in the fact that he was elected president of both the Academy in 1931 and the Screen Directors Guild in 1935.

However, when Will Rogers opened the envelope for Best Director at the 1934 Oscars and said 'Come up and get it, Frank,' he was referring to Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade and not Frank Capra for Lady For a Day (both 1933). Consequently, the humiliated Capra had to resume his seat. But things would be very different at the seventh annual ceremony in February 1935.

Mr Hollywood

At the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, It Happened One Night (1934) became the first film to win the Big Four Academy Awards. Only Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) has since matched the feat, which is actually enhanced by the fact that all three features also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

As co-producer with Harry Cohn, Capra took home the statuettes for Best Picture and Best Director, while the acting honours went to Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, who had clearly forgiven Capra for her inauspicious debut. Such was the impact of this prototype road movie that sales of vests plummeted after audiences saw a bare-chested Gable. It's not known whether Adolf Hitler ditched his undershirt, but he was reported to be an admirer of the film.

Having worked with the King of Hollywood, Capra paid fealty to the Queen in directing Myrna Loy in the racehorse comedy, Broadway Bill (1934). Adapted from Mark Hellinger's short story, 'Strictly Confidential', it was more formulaic and sentimental than its predecessor. But Capra was already thinking about a new style, as he decided that 'My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other.'

He set about putting this lofty ambition into action with Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), which expanded upon Clarence Budington Kelland's short story, 'Opera Hat', to show how a small-town everyman becomes the talk of New York after he leaves Mandrake Falls, Vermont to collect the $20 million bequeathed by his late uncle. Gary Cooper was ideally cast alongside Jean Arthur, as the wisecracking reporter who helps the innocent abroad reach a life-changing decision.

Once again, Capra received the Oscar for Best Director, but Robert Z. Leonard's The Great Ziegfeld took Best Picture, while another biopic, William Dieterle's The Story of Louis Pasteur (both 1936) meant that Coop and Riskin went home empty handed. Ironically, Capra had only made the film because Ronald Colman had been unavailable to start an adaptation of James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1937). But the story of a British diplomat's stay in the idyllic Himalayan retreat of Shangri-La failed to strike a note with Depression audiences. Moreover, it caused rifts with both Riskin and Cohn, who was aghast at the expense of the lavish production and the epic nature of the six-hour first cut that Capra submitted.

The critics were divided, with some praising the film's visual ambition and others lambasting its fortune cookie philosophising. Undaunted, Capra scaled down and bounced back with You Can't Take It With You (1938), which sought to show that beneath every rich American is a simple fellow striving to return to brass tacks. Drawn from a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, it was a cornball conceit, but the conviction of a cast that included James Stewart and Jean Arthur helped sock it across and Capra scooped another Best Picture/Director double.

Despite having told Capra, 'They'll never vote for that comedy crap you make. They only vote for the arty crap,' Harry Cohn had indulged the story and felt obliged by its success to let Capra make his most overt statement against the Roosevelt regime. With Europe on the brink of war, the political elite was nervous about a film about corrupt government besmirching the USA's reputation overseas. However, Capra insisted that James Stewart's crusade to block an underhand deal demonstrated the strength of American democracy and Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) was released to considerable acclaim.

Up against Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939), however, the film managed to convert only one of its 11 Oscar nominations, for Best Original Story. But the message that it took moral courage to uphold ideals in the face of intimidation and indifference struck a chord with European audiences about to face the might of the Third Reich. For Capra, it proved to be a pivotal project, as it was his last for Columbia. The previous year, he had kicked out against the studio system by teaming with Riskin in forming Frank Capra Productions and their next collaboration would be its sole release.

Colonel America

As America clung to its Isolationist policy, Capra and Riskin explored the state of the nation in Meet John Doe (1941). The story turns around a suicide note newspaper stunt concocted by journalist Barbara Stanwyck that gets out of hand when a grassroots political campaign forms around Gary Cooper, a onetime baseball player who has fallen on hard times and accidentally becomes the epitome of the 'common man'.

Some critics have claimed this was Capra's treatise on his own unlikely rise to prominence, but it also served as a clarion call for the country to do its bit in the fight against Fascism. Audiences of all political colours flocked to see it, but Capra concluded that independence took up too much of his time and he contracted to Warner Bros to adapt Joseph Kesselring's play, Arsenic and Old Lace.

As the show was still playing to packed houses on Broadway, the film was held back until 1944. But it was filmed in early 1942, with Josephine Hull and Jean Adair reprising their roles as the dotty spinsters whose penchant for poisoning lonely old gentleman appals nephew Cary Grant. He was cast in a role intended for Bob Hope, while Raymond Massey stood in for Boris Karloff, who opted to remain with the stage version during the eight-week window Capra received to make his picture.

However, his mind wasn't entirely on this gleefully macabre comedy, as he had secured a commission as a major in the US Army within four days of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. John Ford would make the documentary December 7th (1943) about the raid and the 44 year-old Capra was convinced that he could make himself equally useful while demonstrating his patriotic fervour for his new homeland. He also claimed to have been stricken by a guilty conscience at having got rich by chronicling the travails of the downtrodden.

Eager to avoid making hectoring propaganda, Capra sought permission from Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to make a series of actualities showing Americans 'why the hell they're in uniform'. Cinema Paradiso offers users the chance to see all seven of the films in the fabled 'Why We Fight' series, which strictly employed footage from Allied military and governmental sources. Moreover, they contained animated graphics by Walt Disney's studio to familiarise viewers with the European and Pacific theatres of war.

Capra co-directed the first three entries with French exile Anatole Litvak, with the Oscar-winning Prelude to War being followed by The Nazis Strike (1942) and Divide and Conquer (1943). The duo resumed their partnership after Anthony Veiller had been drafted in for The Battle of Britain (1943) to complete the series with The Battle of Russia (1943), The Battle of China (1944) and War Comes to America (1945).

The commentaries were translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, while Winston Churchill ordered British exhibitors to show each new release alongside the shorts being churned out by the Ministry of Information (see Lone Scherfig's Their Finest, 2016). Cinema Paradiso users can see examples of the best films on the BFI collections, If War Should Come and Ration Books and Rabbit Pies: Films From the Home Front, as well as Discovery's Home Front Britain.

As the tide of the conflict turned, Capra joined forces with British producer Hugh Stewart to make Tunisian Victory and Dutch documentarist Joris Ivens to make Know Your Enemy: Japan (both 1945). He also directed Here Is Germany, Two Down and One to Go and Your Job in Germany, while also producing Stuart Heisler's landmark study of African American gallantry, The Negro Soldier (1944). His efforts were rewarded with a raft of medals and he left the service with the rank of colonel. However, after four years away from Hollywood, Capra was to discover that not only had the film colony changed, but so also had public tastes.

Yesterday's Man

Arriving back in Hollywood with a sense of pride, but no contract, Capra formed Liberty Films with John Ford and George Stevens in a bid to retain the independence he had striven for before the war. For all its good intentions, however, the first non-aligned company of directors since United Artists in 1919 only managed to complete two films. Both were directed by Capra, but the market into which It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and State of the Union (1948) were released was top heavy with films noir and problem pictures that presented the world with a postwar cynicism that was very much at odds with Capra's patented brand of feel-good dramedy.

A dark undercurrent ran through James Stewart's travails in Bedford Falls, but It's a Wonderful Life flopped and only became a festive favourite through repeated screenings on television. Similarly, even though Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay's play had won the Pulitzer Prize, its satire seemed to slip through the fingers of screenwriters Myles Connolly and Anthony Veiller. Nevertheless, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn excel as the estranged couple who put on a show of unity during the former's bid to land the Republican nomination for the presidency.

Capra would later aver, 'I think State of the Union was my most perfect film in handling people and ideas.' But there were no Oscar nominations and Capra's disillusionment with Hollywood prompted him to volunteer for action in the Korean War. He was rejected, but played his part in the Cold War struggle by travelling to India to ensure that Kremlin influence was kept out of Bollywood and by covertly naming names to the National Security Resources Board and the FBI rather than testifying in public to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during its investigation into Communism in the American entertainment industry.

His efforts weren't rewarded by his peers, however, as Capra found himself remaking Broadway Bill as Riding High (1950) and reuniting with Bing Crosby on the musical comedy, Here Comes the Groom (1951), which sees a foreign correspondent strive to persuade his fiancée to marry him so he can adopt the children he found in a Parisian orphanage. Robert Riskin and Liam O'Brien received an Oscar nomination for their script, while Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer's 'In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening' went up for Best Song. But most critics agreed that this slick entertainment was beneath Capra and some began to wonder if his best days were behind him.

Hurt by the fact that he no longer seemed to fit in a studio system experimenting with widescreen, colour and stereophonic sound to lure in patrons and reluctant to take what he felt was a step down into television, the 55 year-old Capra returned to his alma mater (now named the California Institute of Technology) to make educational films for the Bell System Science Series. Sadly, however, it's not currently possible to see Our Mr Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent, The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (both 1957), and Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958). The same is true of Rendezvous in Space (1964), an industrial film sponsored by the Martin Marietta Company that was shown at the New York World's Fair.

Cinema Paradiso users can, however, rent Capra's last two features. Filmed in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope, A Hole in the Head (1959) was adapted from an Arnold Schulman play and paired Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson as brothers who dream of opening a theme park in Florida. Despite the optimism of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's Oscar-winning song, 'High Hopes', the story was edgier than usual, as Capra used long takes for the first time to capture Sinatra's restless energy. But the tills didn't ring and two years passed before Capra directed again.

A remake of Lady For a Day, Pocketful of Miracles (1961) saw Bette Davis take over the role of Apple Annie that had originally been played by May Robson, while Glenn Ford and the Oscar-nominated Peter Falk stepped in as Dave the Dude and Joy Boy. the New York gangsters who put on a show to prevent Annie's daughter (Ann-Margret) from discovering she isn't wealthy socialite Mrs E. Worthington Manville. The wit of Damon Runyon's source story shines through, but the script lacked bite, hence Sinatra's decision to drop out and Kirk Douglas and Dean Martin's disinclination to get involved. Jean Arthur, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes and Shirley Booth similarly shied away and Davis only agreed to return to films after five years because she needed a cash injection.

Such shenanigans would never have happened when Capra was at the height of his powers and he decided to call it a day after failing to raise the budget to adapt Marooned, the Martin Caidin novel about three astronauts stranded in space that was eventually filmed by John Sturges in 1969. Relocating to La Quinta, Capra worked on his memoir and lectured at various festivals and college campuses (often about the fact that Hollywood had been reduced to peddling 'cheap salacious pornography') until a series of strokes in the 1980s confined him to home.

He died of a heart attack in his sleep on 3 September 1991 at the age of 94. Very few film-makers have coined their own adjective and, despite the posthumous revelations about the flaws he had striven to conceal, this champion of the little people deserves to be fondly remembered.