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"Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't
around he leaves an awful hole."
~Frank Capra, "It's a Wonderful Life"
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"Maybe there really wasn't an America,
maybe it was only Frank Capra."
-John Cassavetes
(Capra was asked where he would have ended up if he had not become a
film director):
"With [Dr. Edwin]
Hubble. As an astronomer. I could study the stars and
the planets forever. I always wanted to know why, why... Pictures
changed my
mind. I was too far along in the movie business. But when I go back to
[Capra's
college] Caltech now and hear about things I'm not familiar with, like
black
holes, goddamn! I get mad. How the hell I ever refused that I don't
know... But it
seems like motion pictures have a terrible hold on me. I don't know
what it is..."
(Quoted in McBride's Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, page
655. )
Best known for
his movie "It's a Wonderful Life," starring Jimmy
Stewart and Donna Reed. Inititually "It's a
Wondeful Life" was ignored for years. It is now an
enduring classsic with a message of hope, love and
forgiveness.
Go
to "It's a Wonderful Life Links"
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Go to
Biography Links
Pronounced As: kapr , 1897-1991, American film
director, b. Bisaquino, Sicily. One of the preeminent Hollywood
directors of the 1930s and 40s, he produced idealistic populist movies
that, sometimes amusingly and sometimes sentimentally but nearly always optimistically,
celebrate the virtues of the common American. His family emigrated to
the United States in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles. Starting in the movies in the early 1920s, he became a feature
film director with Harry Langdon comedies, achieved commercial
success with Platinum Blonde (1931), and won his first Academy Award with the "screwball
romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934).
Capra's naively decent American heroes triumph over the forces of greed, cynicism, corruption, or self-doubt
in such films as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936; Academy Award), Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and the richly textured classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Among
his movie-making innovations were accelerated pacing, conversational
and sometimes overlapping dialogue, and previews that gauged audience
reaction. Capra's many other films include Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938; Academy Award), Arsenic and
Old Lace (1944), State of the Union (1948), A Hole in the Head (1959), and his last, Pocketful of
Miracles
(1961).
BIOGRAPHY LINKS
Frank
Capra 1876-1991
The Name Above
the Title
Frank
Capra Quotes
Frank Capra's
America
The Films
of Frank Capra
Frank Capra's
American Dream
Sicilian
Culture - Frank Capra
LINKS
FOR "ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE
It's
A Wonderful Life Homepage
"It's
a Wonderful Life" by Roger Ebert
Capra's
Story of a Good Man in a Bad Town
Other Frank Capra Sites
Novel
Entertainment History
Frank
Capra
Think Different
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"WHY WE FIGHT" CAMPAIGN
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Commissioned as a Major in the US Army Signal Corps; produced
all, and directed some,of the films in the "Why We
Fight" and "Know Your Ally/Know Your Enemy"
documentary series; discharged after W.W.II with rank of Colonel.
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9/40 Selective Service Act, but new draftees "haven't the
slightest enthusiasm for this war or this cause. They are
not grouchy, they are not mutinous, they just don't give a
tinker's dam." (Kansas newspaper editor William Allen
White to White House adviser Lowell Mellett)
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Army Morale Branch failed to improve morale due to the
"deadly effects of prepared lectures indifferently read to
bored troops. (George Marshall)
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Harold Ickes, Frank Know, Henry Stimson wanted to create a
national propaganda agency, but FDR opposed until after Pearl
Harbor.
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FDR on 12/18/41, appointed Lowell Mellett as Coordinator of
Government Films to officially mobilize Hollywood for war.
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Office of War Information created in June 1942, but slow to do
anything about soldier education; Mellett's film office became the
Bureau of Motion Pictures, but its World at War in 1942, the
"first officially sponsored feature length motion
picture" of the government was a failure; OWI review power
over studio productions (Robert Riskin worked for overseas OWI
branch in 12943 and was told to ban Meet John Doe, the film he
wrote for Capra in 1941, was "unsuitable for foreign screens
at this time. (Doherty p.51)
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Major Frank Capra assigned to the Morale Branch in 2/42, ordered
by Marsahll to "make a series of documented,
factual-information films - the first in our history - that will
explain to our boys in he Army why we are fighting, and the
principles for which we are fighting." (Marshall quoted by
Capra)
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Capra saw Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, a film that
"fired no gun, dropped no bombs, but as a psychological
weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as
lethal." (Capra) used clips from this film and other
Nazi films.
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Released 10/30/42, shown to war plants in 4/43, to the general
public 5/27/43.
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By 1943, War Dept. had developed a large and significant program
to bring movies to all soldiers on every battlefront; next to
guns, what "the boys need most is movies and more
movies" (Ike) and 2400 picture shows were shown each night in
European/Mediterranean theaters. By 1945; films were
designed to be "educational, inspirational,
recreational." (Will Hays)
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The seven films in the "Why We Fight
Series," include: Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike,
Divide and Conquer, The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Russia,
The Battle of China, War Comes to America.
source: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/whywefight.html
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