OVP: Meet John Doe (1941)

Film: Meet John Doe (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason

Director: Frank Capra

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Spring Byington: click here to learn more about Ms. Byington (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about Spring Byington's long success in The Jones Family films, a B-Picture comedy series that is almost completely forgotten today despite 17 films being made in the franchise.  During the time that she was making The Jones Family, though, Byington was working on more serious or better-remembered films.  One of those movies was You Can't Take It With You, which won her her only Oscar nomination.  Despite the film being a Best Picture winner, Byington lost that statue to Fay Bainter, and I have seen it multiple times (you can read my review of it here) so it wouldn't be eligible for this month's series (all of the screenings for Saturdays with the Stars are "new to me" viewings).  But I wanted to acknowledge this period of her career, and lo-and-behold, Frank Capra (who liked to repeat his actors) made another well-regarded film a few years after You Can't Take It With You called Meet John Doe, which is our movie selection for today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a newspaper reporter named Ann Mitchell (Stanwyck), who is being fired from her job as part of a recent merger from noted millionaire DB Norton (Arnold).  In her final article, she makes up a man named "John Doe" who proclaims he is going to jump off of city hall on Christmas Eve because he is protesting society's ills.  The news story goes, to use modern parlance, "viral" and Ann is hired back to profile the guy...but the problem is he doesn't actually exist.  Ann & her editor Henry Connell (Gleason) do a casting call, and find Long John Willoughby (Cooper), a former baseball player who has become a railway tramp to take the job.  Despite the protestations of his friend the Colonel (Brennan), he does the job to get money to fix his arm so he can play baseball again, and he begins to make a pitch for a kinder, more decent America where we are friendly to our neighbors, and says that's what it'll take for him not to commit suicide.  When the John Doe movement catches on, becoming insanely popular, Willoughby & Ann find out that the whole movement, which has been paid for by Norton, is a sinister plot to launch the millionaire's presidential career, using Willoughby's goodwill endorsement as leverage to a campaign.  After Willoughby refuses, Norton outs him as a conman, and soon the John Doe Movement comes tumbling down.  Willoughby then finds himself actually trying to commit suicide on Christmas Eve, but before he can both Ann and members of the remaining John Doe clubs beg him to stop, saying that this movement is now bigger than him or Norton.  He stops, and he & Ann walk off together into the Christmas night.

Frank Capra liked to repeat himself, and just based on that description, you'll assume (correctly) that this is just an amalgamation of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the soon-to-come It's a Wonderful Life.  While generally well-regarded, this is not considered in the same league as those movies by most modern cinephiles, and for my money it's because it's a bit mucky in its politics.  It's hard to imagine the deeply conservative Barbara Stanwyck signing off on a script that is pro-union & honestly has something of a socialist message, with neighbors giving their fellow citizens part of their money or a job when they're down on their luck...this film would give Tucker Carlson a heart attack.  But it's also a bit of American propaganda, heavily implying it's the pluck & determinism of the "common" American people (and notably it's white people-the only people of color we see are servants, and not part of the "John Doe" clubs) that causes this grit.  Let's just say that the film's politics are messy, and kind of deter from the more clear-cut messaging of Mr. Smith and Wonderful Life.

The film is otherwise fine.  Stanwyck is the standout, but Cooper & Arnold are also serviceable in these roles.  Stanwyck & Cooper were having big years: they both made Ball of Fire together (for which Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar), Stanwyck was making the comedy classic The Lady Eve with Henry Fonda, and Cooper was winning his first Oscar for the biggest film of the year, Sergeant York.  Not too shabby.  You'll notice I haven't mentioned our star Spring Byington, and that's because she's not in much of the movie.  She plays Stanwyck's overly sweet mother (John Doe's spirit was largely an extension of Ann's generous-to-a-fault parents), and is only in like 3-4 scenes.  Her best scene is late in the picture with Cooper, where she convinces him that he needs to ask Ann to marry him, as she knows (even if Ann doesn't yet) that Willoughby is in love with her daughter.  Byington has a bit of melancholy in this scene (knowing she's about to lose her daughter to the next stage of her life, and as a result will enter the last stage of hers) that I really liked, and showed how she was the kind of actress who made an impression even with the smallest of parts.