Word: doe
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Next week Warner Brothers releases the biggest Capra-Riskin picture to date, Meet John Doe. Capra-Riskin produced it independently, spent seven months on it and $1,100,000. They sat down at a great Hollywoodian organ, used every last stop, smote every key on every manual. Yet they built their music around one of the simplest and oldest of themes: LOVE THY NEIGHBOR...
...Story. Adapted by Writer Riskin from an old Century magazine story called A Reputation by Richard Connell, Meet John Doe begins modestly enough in the office of a newspaper which is firing many tried & true employes. A young girl columnist (Barbara Stanwyck) angrily invents as her last column a letter signed John Doe stating that he will protest against civic and general corruption by jumping from the top of City Hall on Christmas Eve. When the fake is about to be disclosed, the girl gets her job back by suggesting that an appropriate John Doe be hired and interviewed daily...
...Doe finally sells himself on the cause when confronted by one of the dozens of mushrooming John Doe Clubs. In a small town he hears the local soda jerker (Regis Toomey) tell how Love Thy Neighbor really works. In this scene a number of Hollywood types give Capra-Riskin some of the best character acting on film. Thereafter Doe makes a nationwide tour, falls in love with the girl writer, acquires such a nationwide reputation that his face appears on the cover of TIME...
...appears that the newspaper publisher, a bulky, sinister, pince-nez-polishing fascist (Edward Arnold), has always intended to use the John Doe Clubs to get himself elected President and regiment the U. S. people into some sense. Doe learns this from the newspaper editor (James Gleason), a patriot who has got drunk with the horror of the idea. The notion of having the prime patriotic appeal of the picture delivered by a soused journalist (and ex-soldier) is a crowning piece of Capra-Riskin-Gleason virtuosity...
...When Doe tries to warn his convention, the publisher exposes him as a fake and his private storm troopers turn the crowd against Doe. Outcast, Doe decides that he can only convince his following of his sincerity by really jumping off the City Hall tower on Christmas...