Frank Capra

Frank Capra

1897-1991

Frank Capra was an American film director known for inspirational, feel-good movies about a little guy who struggles against powerful, greedy men and wins. These movies have an optimistic, humanistic quality that would come to be known as ‘Capra-esque’.  His movies have influenced many of our greatest directors include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Francois Truffaut, and Ron Howard.

Frank Capra was born in Bisacquino, Sicily.  His family immigrated to America in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles, California.  In 1918, he graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from what would become California Institute of Technology (CalTech).  During WWI, he enlisted in the Army and taught ballistics in San Francisco but was medical discharged only a few months later due to Spanish Flu.  Capra became a U.S. citizen in 1920.  In his autobiography, he described a momentous turn of fate.  Hungry and unemployed, he was on a cable car headed to an ominous meeting with shady mob connections.  Acting on his better judgment, he stepped off the cable car, and moments later, learned of a job making a short film.  Looking through the camera for The Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding House (1922), he knew what he wanted to do with his life.  Back in Los Angeles, he was soon writing pie-throwing, slapstick comedy for Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Cops.  He directed The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927) with Harry Langdon, a comedian who for a time was ranked alongside Chaplin and Keaton.  Capra moved to Columbia Pictures, quickly became their top director, and began his partnership with screenwriter Robert Riskin. 

From 1933 to 1939, Capra had a string of hits that made him one of the most popular directors of his time and one of the most revered in film history.  American Madness (1932) and Lady for a Day (1933) started the run. It Happened One Night (1934) won five top Academy Awards: Best Production, Best Director, Best Actor (Clark Gable), and Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Best Writing, Adaptation (Robert Riskin).  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) continued this remarkable run of hits.  More Academy Awards followed; he was nominated six times for Best Director and won three times.  Two of his movies from this period won Best Production (It Happened One Night and You Can’t Take It With You).

During WWII, Capra joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and made Why We Fight, a series of seven propaganda films to instruct allied soldiers on the causes and history of the war.  The first episode, Prelude to War (1942), won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.   Viewed today, it is easy to spot the techniques of emotional persuasion that Capra learned behind Columbia Picture’s camera.  There they are, hard at work for the war effort.  Capra considered Why We Fight to be his most important work. 

After the war, Capra made what many consider to his best movie, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  This wonderful movie is about a man, played by the great Jimmy Stewart, who gets to see what the world would be like without him.  Strangely, it was not a success when it was released.  The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Production but didn’t win any of them.  It’s a Wonderful Life was largely forgotten for three decades.  When I first saw it in college in 1974, I was dumbstruck.  How could a movie this good be so unknown?  I asked my friends and family if they had ever heard of it and no one had.  Soon after that, it started showing up on TV at Christmas time and by the mid-80’s it had become a Christmas tradition. When asked how he tapped into such universal truths about the human condition, Capra said there were things in that movie that he didn't put there.

Capra’s movies went downhill after It’s a Wonderful Life.   The 50’s and 60’s saw only a few movies and no hits.  Pocket Full of Miracles (1961), his last movie, was a remake of Lady for a Day (1933). Perhaps the sunny ‘Capra-corn’ of the 30’s was passé in the post-war world.  But his story doesn’t end there.  In the 50’s, Capra wrote, directed, and produced a series of science-related TV specials for AT&T: Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) and The Unchained Goddess (1958).  These little movies were shown in every school auditorium, church basement and YMCA in America for the next few decades.  As a kid, I saw Our Mr. Sun so many times I used to groan when it was mentioned.  It was years before I learned that one of my favorite directors had made it.

In 1971, he published his autobiography The Name above the Title and was suddenly in demand as a lecturer.  When I saw him speak in 1981, I was struck with how pessimistic he was about everything: the movies, the movie business, and the world in general.  He was upbeat about one thing, though; he was proud and pleased with his legacy.  He won AFI’s Life Achievement Award in 1982 and his movies always appear in ‘Best’ lists including AFI’s ‘100 years…100 movies’. 

Capra, Frank. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971.


Question of the Day: Frank Capra directed which Tracy/Hepburn movie?