Capra, Frank

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Frank Capra

Born May 18, 1897

Bisacquino, Sicily

Died September 3, 1991

La Quinta, California

Film director

Frank Capra was one of the most famous American film directors in the twentieth century. Three times he earned Academy Awards for best director for the movies It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and You Can't Take It With You (1938). During World War II (1939–45), Capra produced the film series Why We Fight for the U.S. War Department. His military service earned him the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest American military decoration for non-combat service.

As a film director, Capra was a poet of the personal and the moral rather than the social and the political. He focused on the way individuals react to situations and each other rather than on the situation itself. People responded to his films because they were idealistic, patriotic, and full of optimism. The 1930s had been a dark decade due to the economic hardships of the Great Depression (1929–41), and people were looking to escape the despair surrounding them. Capra's war films celebrated common people and their all-American values. His films were simplistic and suited the spirit of the times.

Coming to America

Francesco Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily, at the family home facing the church of his patron saint, San Francesco di Paola. His father, Salvatore Capra, was called Turiddu, the Italian equivalent of Sammy. His mother, Rosaria Nicolosi, was called Sara or Saridda Capra. When Frank was six years old, his peasant parents took him and his three siblings to America on a French steerage ship called the SS Germania. In thirteen days the family landed at Ellis Island in New York before making the cross-country trip that reunited them with Frank's older brother in Los Angeles, California. In 1903 the city was a vast stretch of fruit orchards and vegetable fields populated by less than two hundred thousand people. The neighborhoods where the Capras settled comprised a mix of ethnic groups, including Russian Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Germans, Irish, Orientals, Mexicans, Italians, and black Americans.

Frank worked his way through grammar school and high school and then the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in June 1918. The world was at war when he graduated from college and Frank enlisted at the U.S. Army recruiting station with the hopes of serving abroad. However, he was assigned to teach ballistic mathematics to artillery officers at Fort Mason in San Francisco. When World War I (1914–18) ended, jobs were scarce and Frank could not find an engineering job. He worked around the West Coast selling books, tutoring students, and doing odd jobs for a living. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1920 and registered his legal name as Frank Russell Capra.

Hollywood

In 1922 Frank Capra talked his way into directing a one-reel, short film titled Fultah Fisher's Boarding House. This was the beginning of his rise through the ranks in Hollywood. In 1927 he went to work as a company director for Columbia Pictures, located off Sunset Boulevard on Poverty Row, where funding was severely limited. Silent films were disappearing in favor of "talkies" (movies with sound) and Capra was to make Columbia's first sound picture in 1928. He became known as a reliable craftsman of efficient and profitable productions. His comedies always contained aspects of the improbable, the fantastic, and the unexpected. Part of Capra's mastery of the film medium was his success in allowing the viewer to experience what the actors were experiencing. It left the audience with the feeling that life was both miraculous and wonderful. His genre (type of film) of choice was comedy because he always wanted happy endings.

Capra married Lucille Warner Reyburn in 1932 and the two began a family. In 1930 Capra left Columbia Pictures and formed his own production company with Robert Riskin, the principal writer with whom Capra would produce most of his major films. They called their company Frank Capra Productions. Their first film, Meet John Doe (1941), was a relative box office disappointment. The filming of the company's last film Arsenic And Old Lace, began in 1941 but, due to the outbreak of war, would not be released until 1944.

Why We Fight

On December 12, 1941, five days after the devastating Japanese surprise attack on U.S. military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Frank Capra was back in the army. He joined the Signal Corps with a major's commission. As a leading motion picture director of the time, he was called on to devote his filmmaking talent to the American effort, aimed at improving army morale. His unit of Special Services was only one of many government film units in existence at the time. His project, the Why We Fight films, would ultimately cost about four hundred thousand dollars, or less than 1 percent of the fifty million dollars the War Department spent on films during the war. Most of the army's filmmaking budget was being spent on combat photography and training films.

The Army Orientation Course was organized in 1940 in order to give the typical American GI an overview of the war. Presented in a series of pamphlets and fifteen lectures, it was a factual but rather dull approach to education that left most recruits uninspired. General George C. Marshall (1880–1959) realized that film was the best medium for providing information and affecting people. In 1942 he called on Capra, a great storyteller, to show the new draftees what they were fighting for. Capra went to the New York Museum of Modern Art and watched all of the German Nazi propaganda (information designed to shape public opinions, usually by a government) films in their collection. The most important film he viewed was Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will). The film showed the Nazi's 1934 Nuremberg Party Congress with mythic imagery. Capra considered it the greatest propaganda film anyone had ever made. Riefenstahl used staged events along with music and her editing skills to create a powerful film that was such a psychological weapon it would motivate a nation and terrify an enemy. Capra decided to copy her style.

America Speaks Films

In addition to informational movies produced by the military for wartime needs during World War II (1939–45), such as the Why We Fight series by Frank Capra, the Office of War Information (OWI), under the guidance of playwright Sam Spewack (1899–1971) also made government informational films. The OWI films played up U.S. successes on the home front, such as the miracles of industrial production. Many of these movies proved very popular with the public. Included were fifty-two informational short films called the America Speaks series. These OWI films were also known as Victory Films. Half of the series was written by the OWI staff; Hollywood studios wrote the other half.

The America Speaks films were to be shown at movie theaters along with the regular movie features. The OWI, through its Bureau of Motion Pictures, also made 16-mm films for showing at community centers such as schools and churches. These films proved very popular and reached a large audience. By the beginning of 1943, almost five million people had seen OWI film productions at more than thirty-one thousand showings.

His experience from the early days working for Columbia Pictures on Poverty Row would come in handy during Capra's wartime service. Due to budget constraints most of Capra's films were made out of existing footage. Some came from newsreels and other propaganda and combat films, and some came from Hollywood entertainment films. There were also re-creations of newspaper headlines and animated

war maps. Capra was responsible for producing a series of motion pictures that explained the war to the common soldier while motivating each one to fight. He showed them what the enemy was capable of as well as what they stood to lose personally and as a nation, should the battle be lost. Capra used his expert editing skills in the films he was creating to simultaneously show differences between the forces of good and the forces of evil. The films provided a means of highlighting the moral battle Americans faced. Along the way, Capra received several promotions for his efforts.

Capra's Why We Fight series for the War Department began with the Oscar-winning film Prelude to War. The series originally was not intended for screening to the general public, but after General Marshall saw the rough-cut of Prelude to War in August 1942, he told Capra the film should be shown to the public. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45; see entry) agreed. Even British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) ordered that all of the films be shown in British theaters and recorded a foreword for British audiences under Capra's direction.

The films The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, and The Battle of Britain were produced in 1943. The Battle of Russia and The Battle of China followed in 1944. The series was completed when War Comes to America came out in 1945. After screening his films at the Pentagon, Capra would take them to the White House in the evening to view them with the president and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950; see entry).

Capra's film unit completed a wide variety of projects before his discharge in June 1945. However, the Why We Fight series revolutionized documentary filmmaking and military training methods. On the day before he left Washington, Marshall summoned Capra into his office and pinned the Distinguished Service Medal on him. The citation stated, "The films produced by Colonel Capra under the direction of the Chief of Staff had an important influence on the morale of the Army. Colonel Capra also rendered an important service as Chief of the Army Motion Picture Unit and as Assistant Chief of the Army Pictorial Service."

Going home

After four years in the military, Frank Capra returned to Hollywood and an uncertain future. He and a group of other prominent directors cofounded the independent production company Liberty Pictures. For its first film the company reunited director Capra with actor Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997), who was also returning to Hollywood from service as a decorated pilot in the Air Corps. Liberty Pictures produced the film It's A Wonderful Life, which continued to be shown each Christmas in the United States into the twenty-first century. It was Capra's favorite film, but it was not a commercial success when released in 1946. In 1948 Liberty Pictures was sold to Paramount.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, Capra found theaters no longer full and his optimistic spirit no longer in tune with the spirit of the times. Capra had a record of deeply felt patriotism toward his adopted country. To his personal dismay, he was investigated as a Communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was called to testify against others in the movie industry. The government feared that Communism had infiltrated America during the war and was especially concerned about Hollywood because of its influence on the nation. The elements of social criticism in Capra's films, along with his personal and professional associations in the business, cast suspicion on him during this postwar period.

Capra retired to La Quinta, California, where he wrote his autobiography and toured colleges lecturing on films. In 1982 he was awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. His beloved wife, Lucille, died in 1984. Capra suffered a stroke in 1985 and remained in poor health until his death in La Quinta on September 3, 1991.