FRANK Capra made some of the most beloved movies of all time. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)is surely among the greatest Christmas stories. Few political movies are as celebrated as Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Less well known is Capra’s 1941 gem, Meet John Doe, the best political Christmas movie ever made. Yet while Christmas forms the backdrop, there are numerous resonances of Easter and Christ’s passion.
Released at the end of the Great Depression and before the American entry into World War II, Meet John Doe tells the story of the most famous man of the era: ‘the forgotten man’. Who was the ‘forgotten man’? The answer is politically contested. To William Graham Sumner, the Yale sociologist who coined the term in 1883, he was the hardworking taxpayer who funded the government’s attempts to cure social ills. To Franklin D Roosevelt, who repurposed the term in a campaign speech for the US presidency, he was the man ‘at the bottom of the economic pyramid’. Roosevelt’s usage largely won out and in the 1930s the ‘forgotten man’ was widely regarded as the man eager for work and social acceptance but unjustly neglected by both public and private institutions. In Meet John Doe, Frank Capra shows what happens when you try to make incarnate this mythic figure in order to inspire hope in all the self-identified forgotten men with no one to look up to or root for: it is an impossible task. Yet far from being a depressing movie, Meet John Doe is authentically hopeful and encouraging. By putting politics in its proper context, it reveals the need of all the forgotten men in America and the world over: true friendship, a bond animated by a power higher than any human being.
The story begins with the reorganisation of a big city newspaper, the New Bulletin. Columnist Ann Mitchell, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is the victim of ruthless cost-cutting at the paper. Desperate to save her job, she invents a reader’s letter to generate ‘fireworks’. The letter purports to be from an anonymous man who goes by the placeholder name John Doe (the US version of ‘Joe Bloggs’ or ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’). Struggling to find a job and fed up with the cruelty of society, he intends to jump off City Hall in protest. The letter creates a sensation. Concerned readers call the paper insisting that John Doe be given money or a job. The governor and mayor complain that the newspaper’s publisher is orchestrating a political attack on them. The rival newspaper accuses the New Bulletin of fabricating the letter to sell newspapers.
Mitchell, the real writer of the letter, cunningly grasps the unique opportunity for herself and the paper. She persuades the paper’s editor, Henry Connell, to keep the charade alive. She proposes a series of fabricated epistles in which this same John Doe, the passionate everyman, laments the state of the world and debates publicly the merits of living in it. She imagines the ensuing controversy, in which people argue for and against his suicide. With a journalist’s flourish, she conceives his making a decision by Christmas Eve, at which point he will or will not jump off City Hall. All that is needed is a man to play John Doe, someone to give a face to the desperate correspondent.
The newspaper is not short of candidates. Hundreds of men have flooded the newsroom claiming to be the real John Doe in hope of a job or a handout. Connell and Mitchell interview them in turn, looking for the right face. After rejecting a number who are a little too gritty, they decide on a tall, shabbily dressed man by the name of ‘Long John’ Willoughby. A broken-down, semi-professional baseball player with no job or home, Long John is played by Gary Cooper, an actor who would have passed many a screen test in his day. Not only does he give John Doe a handsome face, but his manners and decency shine through. He confesses with some embarrassment that he did not write the letter but only came up to the newspaper offices because he heard jobs were available. When asked if he would play the part of John Doe, he hesitates, understanding the moral implications of participating in a fraud. Connell wonders whether he can pull it off but Ann is convinced his desperation will win out. As if on cue, Long John faints from hunger.
In the next scene John is digging into a hearty breakfast with his friend and fellow tramp, a wiry old-timer who goes by the name ‘the Colonel’. John agrees to play along with the paper for fifty bucks, a plush hotel room, and a one-way train ticket out of town on December 26. His friend is suspicious. Prizing the independence of life on the road, the Colonel, played by the wonderful character actor Walter Brennan, cautions Long John about the corrupting influence of money. Long John is insouciant. He appreciates the novel comforts of life in a grand hotel and reassures the Colonel that this is only his way to get his injured arm fixed and return to baseball. The Colonel is unconvinced, warning Long John of the dangers of comfortable living. If he is not careful, he will start ‘going to restaurants, sleeping in a bed, and having a bank account’.
To be continued
