MovieChat Forums > Frank Capra Discussion > Only One Post? Ever?

Only One Post? Ever?

posted 7 months ago by roger1 (3626)
8 replies | jump to latest

(aka ecarle.)

As I post this (in April 2024) there is only one post about Frank Capra: ranking his films. And very nicely, too.

Well here is one more post:

In his time, Frank Capra was one of the greatest, most famous and most successful directors of all time.

His movies won Best Picture Oscars(It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it With You.)

One particular movie that wasn't particularly a hit in its year of release(1946) came back in the 70's and 80's with a vengeance(shown all the time on TV due to a dropped copyright) and became a Christmas classic: Its a Wonderful Life.

Capra's biggest hit decades were in the 30's and 40's. He took almost all of the 50's off "from the movies" until the very end: with "A Hole in the Head," a 1959 Frank Sinatra vehicle set in Miami Beach (looking great) with a pretty famous song "High Hopes" (1959 Oscar winner, Best Song -- adapted by JFK for his 1960 Presidential campaign.)

Came the 1960s -- opened in 1960 by fellow old-timer Alfred Hitchcock's shock horror slasher Psycho -- Capra volleyed back in 1961 with a remake of his own 1933 uplifting tearjerker "Lady for a Day." This time it was called "Pocketful of Miracles" and it was weird to see a quintessential "Capra-corn" movie from the 30s done up in wide screen Panavision and Technicolor.

Glenn Ford took a "1930s gambler-gangster" role turned down by Sinatra and Dean Martin. Bette Davis was "Apple Annie" -- impoverished near-homeless person turned into a "lady for a day" to impress her visiting daughter(Ann Margret.) The movie was populated with Damon Runyon-style gangsters(all harmless if threatening) and Peter Falk was one of them. He got an Oscar nom. Capra said Falk was his guiding light here.

And then it was over.

Within a couple of years, while Hitchcock held on(he knew the pulse of modern America with Psycho)...Frank Capra was summarily dismissed. He was fired off the movie of the political play"The Best Man' at the request of the play's author , intellectual Gore Vidal, who found Capra too square and naive for the film. And then he was fired off of an oddball John Wayne epic called "Circus World."

And that was it.

But his work lived on. Its a Wonderful Life would rule the 70s and beyond on Christmas. (Such a hard bleak movie til the happy ending -- "Frank makes you pay for that happy ending," said James Stewart.

Remakes were made of Capra's classics "Lost Horizon" (a misfired 1973 Ross Hunter musical) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (with Adam Sandler, enough said.)

I myself saw Frank Capra in person at a screening of "Its a Wonderful Life" in 1981. Full house, loved it. The old, small man gave a quiet Q and A after the screening.

Someone asked something I suppose he'd been asked a thousand times:

Q: Why didn't you have that mean old banker Potter punished or arrested at the end of this movie?
Capra: (A little disoriented, then a pause, then an answer.) Oh, I think it was punishment enough for him to BE Potter.

The audience laughed but grumbled and some "No!" answers were yelled.

Saturday Night Live remedied this years later in a sketch with the "lost final scene" of Its A Wonderful Life...in which Jimmy Stewart(Dana Carvey) leads a lynch mob to Potter's office to pull him out of his wheelchair and beat him to death with baseball bats(Well, a dummy.)

Great dialogue from Jimmy Stewart when Potter(Jon Lovitz) is cornered and thrown out of the wheelchair:

"I want a piece of YOU, Potter!"

"Hold him up!" (Stewart punches Potter in the stomach, many times.)

So well...Capra's heyday was a long, long time ago but he lived on past his final film(physcially, too -- final film in 1961, died in 1991.)

And now he has one more post.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 7 months ago

There only a handful of older posters who are aware of Capra. The majority here are zillennial culture war trolls whining about Wokeness

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 7 months ago

Capra is an interesting filmmaker I need to dive more into. I watch IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE every year during December. I think it's a masterpiece. One Capra title I was very fond of in college was THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, a pre-code romance that's extremely anti-Capra in many ways. It's about a love affair between a white Christian missionary (Barbara Stanwyck early in her star career) and a Chinese warlord (unfortunately played by a Swedish actor in yellowface-- but what else would you expect from Hollywood in 1932?). It's both very of its time and weirdly progressive, making it a fascinating production. It has this heady blend of swooning romanticism and dour cynicism that's very pre-code. I haven't seen it in years, so I don't know what I'd think of it now, but ten years ago, I was floored that this was helmed by the same guy accused of producing "capra-corn" for the masses.
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I myself saw Frank Capra in person at a screening of "Its a Wonderful Life" in 1981. Full house, loved it. The old, small man gave a quiet Q and A after the screening.
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That is an awesome story! I rather like that Potter isn't punished. Unfortunately in real life, unpleasant people like that aren't often taken down for their awfulness, but it's clear from the last scene that he will never know the love and warmth of the community. He's consigned himself to a kind of hell, so I totally get Capra's perspective.

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

Capra is an interesting filmmaker I need to dive more into. I watch IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE every year during December. I think it's a masterpiece.

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It was interesting. I think it was on local channels now and again in the 60s, but it became a "word of mouth" annual Christmas attraction at colleges(including one I went to) and that's where I first saw. I think it was in the 80's that the copyright expired and it played on MANY channels at Christmas time, many times(there was no cost to the channels.)

It is, indeed, the darkness and pain of so muich of that movie(even as James Stewart wins Donna Reed, raises a family, HELPS people) that makes the ending so...wonderful. I akin it to the even WORSE agonies and trials that befall the hero of The Shawshank Redemption in 1994...which ALSO pay off at the end with a joyous ending.

James Stewart was a bit of an acquired taste to me. Not really molded in the"suave and handsome" tradition of Cary Grant or William Holden, not overtly macho like Cooper or Gable or Lancaster, Stewart famously re-molded himself into a tough guy(for Westerns) and a weird guy(for Hitchcock) and there is a little of ALL of that in his Wonderful Life character.

Consider his WAY emotional, raging speech to Donna Reed that somehow turns into a marriage proposal and her undying love for him. And that's early in the film before things REALLY get bad for him. He's always trying to leave town, see the world, have adventures...and he has to stay. EVERYBODY has felt that burden sometime, I think. Providing for a famlly. And James Stewart plays it as a suicidal burden.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

Sidebar: Stewart's most charming performance to me is as the sweet, addled MAYBE mentally ill Elwood P. Down in Harvey. He gets a long, wistful speech to make(sitting on a wooden box in a very clean allwy) about how he "met" Harvey the 7 foot (?) tall rabbit and it seems like ONLY James Stewart could pull that off and make you like him.

But as he got older -- and thinner, and grayer(well, a gray hairpiece) --James Stewart just seemed to lose his ability to charm as a star. Oh, well. He's one of the greats.

Speaking of James Stewart and Capra -- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Accusations of Capra' "naivete"(which led to Gore Vidal getting him fired off the political "The Best Man" in 1964) surely sound in this VERY naive (but oh so inspirational) political film of 1939. Imagine -- a crooked Senator(the great Claude Rains) trying to confess his corruption and shoot himself in public all because of Stewart's emotional filibuster for "the little people." If only. (And how the once-cynical Jean Arthur lovingly calls out from the balcony in love and pain for Stewart as he MAKES that filibuster.) Well, maybe still...someday.

I've always rather enjoyed a scene in that movie where -- after reading some DC reporters' snarky mocking columns in the newspaper about himself -- in a montage Stewart PERSONALLY seeks out each and every reporter who wrote about him and ...punches each one in the face, one by one! I always remember that scene when i think about political cable news and the internet today. Again...naive. Another era. Innocent.

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

One Capra title I was very fond of in college was THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, a pre-code romance that's extremely anti-Capra in many ways.

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Yes..the funny thing about Capra is that while he was famous for about 7 versions of the same story("The little guy against the corrupt establishment") he has these "offbeat entries" on his resume as well. And some pre-code films.

I'm on record as a Hitchcock buff, but if you look at the Capra and Hitchcock careers -- (a) Capra got Oscars, Hitchcock didn't and (b) Capra's biggest decades were the 30s(while Hitchcock was still in "British indiefilms" and the 40s (where Hitchcock was competitive but Capra could get Gary Cooper for a movie when Hitchcock could not.) And yet..Capra pretty much left movies for most of the fifties, and only did one and done in the 60's...and Hitchcock took over in those decades. (Especially in the 50s.) I guess Capra was born earlier than Hitchcock? I'll have to look it up.
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It's about a love affair between a white Christian missionary (Barbara Stanwyck early in her star career) and a Chinese warlord (unfortunately played by a Swedish actor in yellowface-- but what else would you expect from Hollywood in 1932?).

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Yeah. Its just what was done. How about Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto and Warner Oland as Charlie Chan? Those movies were shown a lot in my youth on TV.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

It's both very of its time and weirdly progressive, making it a fascinating production. It has this heady blend of swooning romanticism and dour cynicism that's very pre-code.

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I need to see more pre-code movies! I've seen a few and they are fascinating in both what they DO get away with and how they still remain a bit self-censored.

One of my first "movie books" was Frank Capra's autobio. It was quite a fun read and I'm very angry that I lost my copy some time ago -- I wanted to quote from it here. (Of course, I can always try to buy another copy on th net...unless it is out of print.)

A combination of reading that book(in the 70s) and befriending a guy in college who was a real Capra fan(to my Hitchcock) allowed me to immerse a bit in Capra way back then. I even attended a few Capra movies at a revial house festival in LA. I recall that The Bitter Tea of General Yen played but I couldn't make that screening. I focussed on the Stewart and Cooper pictures.

Capra's book had a nice rough voice to it for such a nice guy. I remember him writing about how some critics dissed one of his movies. He wrote: "The critics sprayed that movie with their bladder juice." Bladder juice! Quite a term.

He also wrote something very simple and true(for our times, too): "What the right wing and the left wing have in common is: no sense of humor. They never laugh. They can't."

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I haven't seen it in years, so I don't know what I'd think of it now, but ten years ago, I was floored that this was helmed by the same guy accused of producing "capra-corn" for the masses.

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Well, maybe Capra got "trapped" in his genre (Capra-corn -- a phrase he acknowledged in his book) as much as Hitchcock got trapped in his (suspense.) And then you've got Howard Hawks -- Westerns, war movies, musicals(headed by Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell!) , comedies, romances....

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

I myself saw Frank Capra in person at a screening of "Its a Wonderful Life" in 1981. Full house, loved it. The old, small man gave a quiet Q and A after the screening.
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That is an awesome story!

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I rather lucked into a historical period -- and lived in Los Angeles near the studios -- at a time when these old-timers(ha) just sort of popped up at various events. I shook John Ford's hand. I went to a Q and A with Vincente Minelli(directed some masterpieces, including my late mother's favorite, "Meet Me in St Louis") and found him very nice...with, like, nothing to say except "I don't remember," "Oh, I don't know..." (I finally told my companion about Minelli "well, his job was to make great movies. He did that. Nobody said he had to talk.")

And I attended the world premiere of Hitchcock's Family Plot at the now-defunct FILMEX film festival. I marvelled at how that tiny, rotund man had given us that whole WORLD of movies.

The Capra night was great. It is ONE thing, at a revival theater, to see a great old classic and applaud at the end in general with the appreciative crowd around you. It is ANOTHER thing, at a revival theater, to see a great old classic and applaud THE MAN WHO MADE IT, right in front of you.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

I rather like that Potter isn't punished. Unfortunately in real life, unpleasant people like that aren't often taken down for their awfulness, but it's clear from the last scene that he will never know the love and warmth of the community. He's consigned himself to a kind of hell, so I totally get Capra's perspective.

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Yes, I know that Capra felt that way,and I GET it, for sure. Its the easiest way in real life, to TRY to deal with "the bad people who get away with it." Of which I've met many by this age. (And also some really GOOD people.) I tell you though -- I always wondered if Capra rather developed that take on Potter after perhaps realizing that maybe he SHOULD have had Potter punished (there WAS reason to arrest him for fraud, I think.)

Oh well, SNL took care of Potter real good!

Another Potter thing: As I recall, near the end, Potter sneers at Jimmy Stewart about how the townspeople are running on his savings and loan. Potter says something like "...and you thought these people were your friends. Don't you know...they will ALWAYS turn on you?"

Well, I'm a fairly cynical fellow raised by a fairly cynical father and he and I watched that movie together one time and on that line, my father nodded and said to me: "Remember that. He's right. They WILL turn on you." I actually think my father was kind of joking. But kind of not.

Myself, I'm not so sure...