Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Directed by Frank Capra

Film Review

Mr Deeds Goes to Town is the first of Frank Capra's great morality films that combined raucous comedy with mordant social comment.  It belongs to a quadrilogy of films - the others being  You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941) - which satirise the failings of capitalism and the political system in America in the 1930s.   Although Capra had made several impressive films before this, and some major successes such as the prototype screwball It Happened One Night (1934), this is the first of his films where that distinctive Capra-esque voice is unmistakably apparent.

So determined was Frank Capra that Gary Cooper should play the lead in this film that he held up production for six months, costing his employers, Columbia Pictures, $100,000.  Capra was right to do so - Cooper is perfect for the part of the country bumpkin Longfellow Deeds, a likeable everyman character who is transported into a world of greed, guile and deceit, the lamb taking on the wolf.   Cooper, a firm favourite of Capra and one of Hollywood's biggest names, would star in the director's subsequent Meet John Doe (1941).

Jean Arthur was a last minute casting choice, hired to replace Carole Lombard who pulled out three days before filming began on her scenes.   Arthur had starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in John Ford's classic comedy The Whole Town's Talking (1935) but it wasn't until she appeared in her three Capra films -  Mr Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You and Mr Smith Goes to Washington - that her career took off.   The actress was so nervous about appearing in this film that she was frequently sick in her dressing room and would pace up and down whilst waiting for her cues, although she acquitted herself with a performance that could hardly be bettered.

Mr Deeds Goes to Town started out as a story entitled Opera Hat by Clarence Budington Kelland, who collaborated on the screenplay with Robert Riskin, a frequent Capra collaborator.   The film was originally intended to be a pure screwball comedy, but this changed when Capra and Riskin saw an opportunity to bring in some important social themes which a contemporary audience would respond to favourably.  Made at a time when America still hadn't emerged from its worst economic crisis, the film starkly evokes the hardship experienced by many in the 1930s, and this could explain its extraordinary success at the box office, out-grossing even the phenomenally successful It Happened One Night.   The film won Capra his second Best Director Oscar and Cooper garnered his first Oscar nomination.

Like many of Capra's films of this era, Mr Deeds Goes to Town continues to have a powerful resonance.  The vices and venality that Capra portrays so vividly are things that continue to poison and weaken our civilisation, and probably will do so whilst men (and career politicians) walk upon the face of the Earth.  The only consolation is that there are men (and women) of character who somehow manage to avoid plunging into the mire of corruption and self-interest, men like Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smith, Grandpa Vanderhof and Long John Willoughby, who point the way to a better world, where individuals strive not for their own selfish gain, but for the betterment of their fellow man.  The philosophy "To thine own self be true" is one that will ruin us all if applied in a purely materialistic vein.

Many regard Capra as a cynic, a director who seemed to delight in showing us the worst that mankind is capable of - corrupt politicians, immoral newspapermen, bloodsucking bankers, unscrupulous conmen and rapacious businessmen.   In fact, he was also a sublime optimist, since virtually all of his films end on a positive note with the hero, a beacon of hope, scoring a victory over the dark forces that disfigure our society.  Capra's message is as relevant today as it was when the Great Depression, the product of flawed economics, political ineptitude and unimaginable greed, took millions to the brink of despair.  Nil desperandum, Capra says with a wry smile, the good guys will see us through.  Who are the good guys?  Why, you and me.

Film Synopsis

Longfellow Deeds is unsure how to react when he learns that he has inherited 20 million dollars from his uncle, the magnate Martin Semple.  He has no need of wealth.  He lives a contented existence in Mandrake Falls, amusing himself with his tuba playing and writing poems for greeting cards.  His uncle's lawyer, John Cedar, finally persuades Deeds to accept the legacy and to begin a new life as a millionaire businessman in New York City.  Hard-bitten newspaper editor MacWade sees a scoop in Deeds's rags to riches story and sends his star report Babe Bennett to win his confidence and extract information about his private life.  Pretending to be a hard up unemployed woman, Babe appeals to Deeds's chivalrous side and in no time she has gained not only his confidence but his friendship.  When a ruined farmer threatens him with a gun, Deeds realises that he can put the wealth he has inherited to good use.  He will create a number of farms to provide work for hundreds of men who have lost everything in the Great Depression.  His uncle's lawyers are unimpressed by this gesture of philanthropy.  A trial is arranged to establish whether Deeds is mentally deranged and therefore unfit to inherit the Semple fortune.  By this time, Deeds has discovered Babe's deception and, broken-hearted by the one person he thought he could trust, he slumps into a deep depression, which his opponents see as clinching proof of his insanity...