Frank Capra is remembered for his inspiring movies about ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Like many directors, he had certain actors with whom he enjoyed working, so he would feature them in many of his films. One of these actors was Gary Cooper, a “strong silent type” star of the 1920s through the 1950s. Capra said of him: “Gary Cooper is the finest actor I ever worked with. He was a man of great integrity and honesty, both on and off the screen.”
The two movies Capra made starring Cooper were “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936) and “Meet John Doe” (1941). Both films proved to be defining steps in Cooper’s and Capra’s careers. It’s interesting to compare these two movies and Cooper’s titular characters.
Average Joe in the Public Eye
Both plots are stories of simple men who are unexpectedly thrust into the limelight, one through fortune and the other through notoriety. In “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Cooper plays Longfellow Deeds, a well-liked resident of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. His life changes when he inherits $20 million from his uncle in New York City.Deeds is summoned to New York by former newspaperman Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander), right-hand man to the late uncle’s lawyer, John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille). Cedar charges Cobb to keep reporters away from Deeds, but one clever newspaperwoman, Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), circumvents the tough security by posing as a damsel in distress. While Deeds innocently opens up to her, she sneakily betrays that trust by writing humiliating articles about him, giving him the nickname “Cinderella Man.”
“Meet John Doe” begins with Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), a cynical newspaperwoman who is fired. She takes revenge by writing a sensational final column. When her column causes a ruckus, editor Henry Connell (James Gleason) is forced to hire Ann back. Because of her story, he realizes the paper must choose someone to be John Doe.
From the group of hobos who claim to have written the letter, the paper chooses ‘Long John’ Willoughby (Cooper), a former baseball player-turned-tramp because of an arm injury; Willoughby needs surgery so he can return to the game. Now with a face to match the name, Ann writes as John Doe, expressing the downtrodden man’s frustration about society’s abandonment of the “forgotten man.”
Frank Capra on Gary Cooper
If you’re familiar with Frank Capra’s most beloved films, you might think of James Stewart as his ideal everyman. Stewart played a noble young hero in three of Capra’s most famous films: “You Can’t Take It with You” (1938), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), and “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946).However, Cooper was the first to fill that role for Capra. Speaking on his casting choice for the Deeds character, Capra later said, “As soon as I thought of Gary Cooper, it wasn’t possible to conceive anyone else in the role. He could not have been any closer to my idea of Longfellow Deeds, and as soon as he could think in terms of Cooper, Bob Riskin [the screenwriter] found it easier to develop the Deeds character in terms of dialogue. So it just had to be Cooper. Every line in his face spelled honesty. Our Mr. Deeds had to symbolize incorruptibility, and in my mind Gary Cooper was that symbol.”
“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” was Capra’s biggest success to date, so it’s no surprise that he wanted to continue it with a second film about the character. The sequel was to be based on an unpublished story, “The Gentleman from Montana,” and follow Longfellow Deeds’s adventures into politics. It would be called “Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington.” When Cooper was unavailable to make this film, Capra changed the hero’s name to Jefferson Smith and cast Stewart, his leading man from “You Can’t Take It with You.” Reteaming Stewart and Arthur, the film was called “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
Despite Stewart’s success in Capra’s two later films , Cooper was his first choice to play Willoughby. As a 40-year-old, Cooper embodied the embittered, battered drifter more than the fresh-faced 33-year-old Stewart would have. Capra was especially impressed that Cooper accepted the part without even reading the script. He enjoyed his previous experience working with Capra and wanted to work with Barbara Stanwyck.
Newspapers in the Depression
Both these films are about a rather naïve man pulled into a deception by an enterprising, hard-bitten newspaperwoman. But Willoughby isn’t as innocent as Deeds. Willoughby knows he is being hired to play a role, while Deeds truly believes that Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) is Mary Dawson, a poor worker looking for a job.Ann Mitchell’s deception is less calculated. When she writes the original John Doe column, she does it as a parting blow to her newspaper’s managerial staff. She’s persuaded to continue the farce when the publication wants to hire her back, seeing the stir her letter has caused. On the other hand, Babe is a star reporter who just wants to get a scoop on all the other writers. She gains Deeds’s confidence to write about him in a series of highly successful articles.
Both female characters are transformed and redeemed by Cooper’s respective characters. Deeds’s simple sincerity and heartfelt affection for her quickly breaks down Babe’s tough exterior. When he writes a beautiful poem as a proposal, she’s filled with guilt and decides to quit her job. Ann is similarly transformed by getting to know and falling in love with John Doe. Willoughby soon becomes that character and makes John Doe a real person, imbuing his own struggles, ideas, hopes, and fears into the fictional man Ann had created.
Capra instilled his cinematic masterpieces with his philosophy of traditional Americanism and old-fashioned decency. Both films dramatized the hardships of the Depression. The stories show us that hard economic times, like what we’re facing now, are the times when we must come together and help each other.
Selfish tyrants, whether lawyers seeking a personal fortune like Cedar or powerful publishers hungry for political domination like Norton, are powerless against the people when everyone works together for the common good.
