By JOSEPH MARCELLO
For The Recorder
“If it’s worth dying for, it’s worth living for.” —
Robert Riskind, “Meet John Doe”
My fellow Americans — at this surreal juncture in our nation’s history, and surveying the contenders, we find ourselves, as it were, between a terminally crushing rock and an excruciatingly hard place — or, perhaps more accurately — with one foot on the proverbial banana peel and the other dangling, road-runner-like, other over thin air, the earth a mile below.
If only we had someone true, good, fine and trustworthy — not to mention tender and likeable — as the presumptive nominee for president — pick any party you like — even the Whigs—what a relief that would be!
But hold on; stop the presses, It just so happens there is such a candidate, and, can you believe it, his name is none other than John Doe — you know — the one they give as the generic stand-in for Mr. America. Not only is he pure and true, but, in his humble way, a genuine hunk, and from certain angles he looks an awful lot like Gary Cooper in his radiant prime.
Although it turns out John is much too self-effacing ever to push himself forward on any occasion or for any reason, that doesn’t deter his friends, fans and lovers from seeing his inherent integrity and egging him on to share his folksy gospel with the world-at-large, from soap boxes to media center stages, eventually garnering him an ecstatic populist following.
But alas, John only stood a decent chance of winning the nation’s heart in 1940 or thereabouts — and even then, only in the never-never-land of storybook America, a folk hero straight out of the great Frank Capra’s cinematic imagination, in his 1941 classic, “Meet John Doe.” The film is Pothole Pictures’ offering — two showings and two showings only — July 22 and 23 at 7:30 p.m, preceded by live music at 7 p.m.
The film won No. 49 on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years … 100 Cheers: America’s Most Inspiring Movies,” and got writers Richard Connell and Robert Presnell a nomination for best original story. More importantly, in spite of its extremes and overboard passions, the film has never left the hearts of the world’s movie-lovers since it first hit the big screen in 1941, which can only mean that, beyond all its unlikelihoods, it harbors a deep core of truth and humanity.
Then New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther was moved to write: “Call him Joe Doakes or George Spelvin or just the great American yap, he is still the backbone of this country and as sturdy a citizen as there is. You’ve seen him at the ball parks, on buses, at county fairs and political rallies from coast to coast. You’ve even caught glimpses of him — and seen him squarely, too — in films once and again. But now, you will see him about as clearly as Hollywood has ever made him out in Frank Capra’s and Robert Riskin’s superlative “Meet John Doe,” which had its local première last evening at the Rivoli and Hollywood Theatres — you and countless other John Does. For, in spite of a certain prolixity and an ending which is obviously a sop, this is by far the hardest-hitting and most trenchant picture on the theme of democracy that the Messrs. Capra and Riskin have yet made—and a glowing tribute to the anonymous citizen, too.”
Now we all know that all Frank Capra movies go over the top by transcending all reason and likelihood and plunging shamelessly into heart-catching sentiments that unravel all our pretensions to objectivity. In other words, they’re great storytelling, sweeping us helplessly along in their tidal waves of emotion; one has only to think of Jimmy Stewart as naïve but idealistic Sen. Jefferson Smith in Capra’s, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” or Stewart again as the suicidal George Bailey in the Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” to summon examples of the maestro at his finest.
But in their “over-the-toppedness” they bring us to a new innocence — a kind of second youth — because they show us, or more truly, allow us to show ourselves and what is actually possible long after we had become too jaded or cynical to ever believe it possible of ever happening. Capra, at his best, makes believers out of unbelievers, life-lovers out of cynics, even activists out of “passivists.”
The plot is an off-the-wall delight of mis-turns:
Infuriated at being told to write one final column after being laid off from her newspaper job, a feisty newspaper columnist (Barbara Stanwyck) in her final column, prints a letter from a fictional unemployed “John Doe” threatening suicide on Christmas Eve in protest of society’s ills. The columnist schemes to boost the newspaper’s sales by exploiting the fictional Doe — creating him from scratch, as it were, by selecting an unemployed baseball player from amongst a number of derelicts who show up at the paper claiming to have written the original letter. She then proceeds to pen a series of articles in Doe’s name, elaborating on the original letter’s ideas of society’s disregard for people in need, ultimately intending to take Doe national via the radio.
While Stanwyck is being paid $100 a week by the newspaper’s publisher, to write his speeches, The John Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a broad grassroots movement whose simple slogan is, “Be a better neighbor.” But an illicit political schemer seeks to exploits Doe’s support for his own national ambitions. From hereon, everything hits the dramatic fan, and the once-innocent Doe and his users — one of whom is falling hoopelessly in love with him — are in for a win-all/lose-all confrontation (no spoilers here!)
Come, see, watch, wonder, feel, weep, exult. It’s classic America cinema. Above all, classic Capra — at their respective best.
Where and when
Date: July 22 and 23
Time: 7:30 with live music starting at 7 p.m. Whistlestop at 7 p.m. on Friday and Dick Moulding at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
Visit: www.shelburnefallsmemorialhall.org/pothole-pictures
An author and composer, columnist Joseph Marcello of Northfield focuses on music and theater. He can be reached at josephmarcello@verizon.net.