One of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the Academy Awards took place on March 16, 1934. Will Rogers, the famous humorist, hosted that year, and, as he opened the envelope to announce the winner of the Best Director award for films made in 1933, he simply said, “Come up and get it, Frank.” Unfortunately, two of the three men nominated for the award that year were named Frank. Young director Frank Capra jumped to his feet and headed for the podium, thinking he had won for his film Lady For a Day. Halfway there, though, he noticed that the audience was applauding, but looking toward Frank Lloyd, who had actually won the award for his movie, Cavalcade. A red-faced Capra put his head down and slinked back to his seat. His disappointment did not last long, however, as he won Oscars as Best Director three times in the next five years.
In many ways, Capra embodied the American Dream, working his way to the top from humble beginnings. An immigrant born in Italy in 1897, he became a U.S. citizen, worked his way through college, and earned a degree in chemical engineering from Cal Tech. After struggling to find a satisfying career, he drifted into the film industry, wrote gags for the slapstick Keystone Kop films of Mack Sennett, and, eventually, became a director at Columbia Studios. His early films were silent, but he was better suited for the “talkies,” as he and frequent screen-writer Robert Riskin were brilliant at creating wise-cracking dialogue that provided comic relief to the sometimes-heavy topics.
The year after his Oscars embarrassment, Capra and Columbia struck it big, as his film, It Happened One Night, became a huge hit and swept all four major Academy awards, best picture, best actor (Clark Gable), best actress (Claudette Colbert), and, finally for him, best director. That film started a hot streak for Capra in which he directed a major hit nearly every year for the next twelve years. Even during the war, while working in the U.S. Army’s film-making Corps, he won another Oscar for Why We Fight, his series of short documentaries designed to explain to the American people why it was essential for the U.S. to step up and oppose power-hungry dictators in Germany, Italy, and Japan even though they were an ocean away from our shores. During this streak, critics dubbed his directorial touch, “Capra Magic.”
In 1936, he won his second Academy Award for directing Mr. Deeds Comes to Town with Gary Cooper. In 1938, a third best-director Oscar came his way for the film version of a comedic Broadway play, You Can’t Take it With You. Other great films in this period were Lost Horizon, Meet John Doe, and Arsenic and Old Lace. In and around those hits, Capra was nominated for an Oscar for his two best films, both starring Jimmy Stewart: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in 1939, and It’s a Wonderful Life, in 1946. When he didn’t win for Mr. Smith, Capra told the press that he was disappointed, but that he had learned a valuable lesson. When a reporter asked what lesson that was, Capra explained, “Don’t make the best film of your career the same year someone else makes Gone With the Wind.”
All of these films have stood the test of time and are still entertaining today, eighty or ninety years after they were made. Moreover, Capra masterfully tapped into the issues and concerns of the 1930s and the Great Depression. One major theme runs through most of these films: self-sacrifice and looking out for your fellow man.
In the 1920s, millionaires and businessmen were celebrated as the embodiments of the American Dream. Ruthless men such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan had built enormous fortunes while paying virtually no taxes. In that decade, Congress passed laws and created tax loopholes that were designed to preserve the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. Much was made of the fact that Rockefeller, worth over a billion dollars, often handed out dimes to children on the street. Public relations acts such as these made these businessmen heroes in popular culture, even though the truth was that their greed made them reluctant to contribute to the greater good.
Then came the Stock Market Crash in 1929. President Herbert Hoover and the conservative Republicans who controlled Congress did little to alleviate the suffering of the poor, hoping the economy would “fix itself.” The first action Hoover did take was to fire numerous federal government workers and raise tariffs designed to protect the profits of corporations and the wealthy. When other nations retaliated by erecting tariffs walls of their own, international trade came to a screeching halt. Thus, an economic downturn became a worldwide depression that lasted over a decade.
During the Great Depression, then, attitudes toward business began to change, and Capra helped to alter those opinions. Bankers, the wealthy, and big businesses were depicted as the “bad guys” in his films. In general, Capra’s films often featured an ordinary man standing up to rich and powerful adversaries. Whether it was Longfellow Deeds (in Mr. Deeds), Jefferson Smith (in Mr. Smith), or George Bailey (in Wonderful Life), the decent, “everyman” character defends the poor and downtrodden people. He is opposed, however, by corrupt, wealthy villains who simply want more: more money, more power, more of everything. In the end of these films, of course, decency wins out, and the greedy, champaign-swilling, plutocrats are defeated. Good triumphs over evil, basic goodness and self-sacrifice wins the day, and the audience goes home happy.
This theme is best illustrated by Longfellow Deeds when speaking to a judge about wealthy relatives who want him found insane for trying to use his money to help people in need: It’s like I’m out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who’s tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who’s drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar, who’s just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any ten-year-old child will give you the answer to that.
More important, building on the new attitudes toward the rich, President FDR ushered in a series of reforms designed to help those on the bottom. A minimum wage, banking restrictions, legalization of labor unions, Social Security, and tighter rules on income taxes ensured that the wealthiest Americans would pay their fair share for the first time in U.S. history. These reforms, along with Medicare and affordable health care, which came later, made it possible for the working class to share in the nation’s prosperity and the country enjoyed a period of unparalleled economic success.
By the late 1940s, however, Capra had lost his magic touch. Post-war economic success brought a degree of complacency and sensibilities began to change again. Corporations had helped win the war and were no longer seen as villains. Also, during the Red Scare and McCarthy Era of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, paranoid minds looked suspiciously on anyone who portrayed capitalists in a negative light. Capra’s theme of ordinary people sticking together to oppose wealthy power-brokers sounded like communism to some. His popularity waned, and he made few major films after 1946.
Even worse for his reputation, many of his films suffered the indignity of being remade by filmmakers who didn’t “get” Capra’s message. It Happened One Night was redone in 1956 as You Can’t Run Away From It, with the ultra-masculine Clark Gable replaced by the vaguely feminine Jack Lemmon. My favorite film, Mr. Smith, was remade as Billy Jack Goes to Washington in 1976. In case you missed that particular classic, Tom Laughlin portrays Billy Jack, the subject of several cult films of the ‘70s. Billy Jack was a half-blood Navajo who espouses peace and non-violence, but is always forced to use martial arts, guns, and other weapons to kick-ass on his enemies in a bloody manner. That particular remake was so bad that it was never released to theaters. It Happened One Christmas was a 1977 TV movie starring Marlo Thomas in the Jimmy Stewart role of It’s a Wonderful Life. Finally, in 2002, another remake, Mr. Deeds, won a Razzie Award for Adam Sandler (in the Gary Cooper role) as the worst acting performance of the year. These abysmally bad films helped to illustrate the importance of a good director in turning decent stories into classic films.
By the 1980s, film critics who had earlier hailed Capra’s movies as “Magic,” now referred to them as “Capra Corn,” and disparaged them as overly sentimental claptrap. Despite this, in 1982, the American Film Institute awarded Capra the Life Achievement Award for his films. At that same time, however, the country was changing again, following President Ronald Reagan even further away from the values portrayed in Capra’s films. Reagan embraced corporate power and used his office to cut taxes for the rich and subtly celebrate the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. This attitude was personified in the 1987 film Wall Street, in which the main character, Gordon Gekko proclaims “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good!” The image of millionaires and corporations as heroes returned to popular culture, having come full circle since the 1920s.
Now today, we have a president who embodies every negative stereotype of the wealthy, power-hungry villains who care nothing about ordinary people and use all of their energy to operate like reverse Robin Hoods: stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Worse, Trump is assisted by Elon Musk, an evil puppeteer who was elected to nothing but clearly wants to use the power of our government to create an American version of the Apartheid system in which he grew up in South Africa. Under that system, a handful of powerful white males controlled everyone else. You can practically see a 16-year-old Musk standing up in a movie theater in 1987 and applauding Gordon Gekko’s declaration. Together, Trump, Musk, and the Republican Party have attacked all of the things that made this country economically powerful and allowed working people to enjoy financial security from the ‘40s to the ‘80s. They have indicated they want to eliminate labor unions, Social Security, Medicare, affordable health care, and the IRS. Eliminating or crippling the IRS is an obvious objective coming from a convicted tax cheat like Trump: he never believes he should have to pay his fair share. Like John D. Rockefeller handing out dimes while hoarding billions, the Musks and Trumps of the world want a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy while making empty promises to the gullible middle-and lower classes.
Frank Capra’s films helped to define an era and molded attitudes in which people cared about others and were willing to sacrifice to help those on the bottom. In a popular song from the 1960s, Paul Simon lamented the absence of heroes in America with his line, “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Today, we could easily substitute Frank Capra’s name for that of Joe DiMaggio. Capra and his films were produced in an era of economic collapse and widespread suffering. I sincerely hope it won’t take another catastrophe of that magnitude to make Americans wake up and see the danger looming in the dark shadows of Washington.
The question, then, is where are the Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smiths, and George Baileys of today’s world?