5 Movies | January 19, beginning 8 p.m.
Director Frank Capra (1897-1991) had a special connection with certain actors, casting them repeatedly in his films. He had a particular affinity for performers who embodied a down-to-earth, relatable Americanness, men like James Stewart (three Capra pictures) and Gary Cooper (two). Barbara Stanwyck, the most honest, earthy, natural actress of Hollywood’s Golden Age, often credited the early rise in her career to Capra and the five movies she made with him between 1930 and 1941, including her breakout films The Miracle Woman (1931) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932).
Jean Arthur was another frequent collaborator, the populist heroine of three of his best-known features, all of which are showcased on this special evening. The two worked well together, despite the almost crippling shyness and insecurity that led other directors to consider her “difficult.” With a firm but tender hand, Capra guided her to earnest, self-assured performances. The respect and professional regard between them was mutual. He once called her “one of the best damned actresses I ever worked with,” while she said he was “a great director, and he does it seemingly without any effort.”
Arthur is paired with Stewart in two of the night’s offerings. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) she’s a jaded Washington, D.C. veteran who takes the newly elected naïve bumpkin under her wings and gradually falls for him, softening her own hard political edge in the process. You Can’t Take It with You (1938) features a sterling ensemble cast (among them Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Spring Byington, Ann Miller) in an adaptation of a hit play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Stewart is the son of a wealthy banker in love with office worker Arthur, daughter of a wacky extended family of misfits and dreamers.
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) casts Arthur as another cynical big-city woman, a reporter trying to get the goods on yet another innocent rube (Gary Cooper in his first Capra film) until his simple, honest ways turn her head and her heart.
The evening concludes with two other Capra pictures, sans Arthur. It Happened One Night (1934), a comedy neither of its stars, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, wanted to make, is famous for being the first Big Five winner at the Academy Awards (Picture, Director, Screenplay and Best Actor and Actress for its reluctant leads). It held that record until the 1976 awards when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) walked off with the Big Five. Only one other film has been so honored: The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Lady for a Day (1933) is a Cinderella story about a down-and-out aging street vendor (May Robson) aided by gangsters to masquerade as a society matron for the sake of her daughter’s (Jean Parker) future. Capra returned to the material to direct a remake later in his career, Pocketful of Miracles (1961).
