TCM Movie: Meet John Doe (1941)

Columbia producer Harry Cohn hired Frank Capra and Robert Riskin in 1931 for the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle "The Miracle Woman." Riskin and Capra had been collaborators ever since, resulting in 29 Academy Awards over seven years, including three for Capra and one for Riskin. But a war started brewing over in Europe and their often fraught personal relationship (Capra being a Republican and Riskin liberal) started interfering with a much more harmonious working relationship. The both of them were starting to get drained from the lack of "creative autonomy available in the studio system" and wanted to create their own production company despite their political differences.

"By October 1939, Riskin had returned to Hollywood [from Europe], and he and Capra made their play for freedom. They joined with leading Hollywood attorney Loyd Wright in filing articles of incorporation with the secretary of state for California for $1 million. The title of the new company was Frank Capra Productions; it fixed its capital at one hundred thousand shares of stock without par value, and one hundred thousand shares at $10 each. The company moved into the offices that had been vacated by William Randolph Hearst's company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, on the Warner Brothers lot, and leased stage room and storage while at the same time financing operating costs." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) 

"Capra and Riskin now had their own company and were free, in theory at least, to make their own decisions. The company's letterhead made the equity of the relationship very clear. In the top left-hand corner was Capra's name; in the top right-hand corner, Riskin's. Symbolically, at least, this was a joint venture, although the financial distribution of stock within the company told another story. 65 percent of the company was to be owned by Capra; Riskin took the other 35 percent. All they needed now was a first story and a deal for distribution of the movies they wanted to make."

Richard Connell's short story "A Reputation" was published in 1922's Century Magazine (August's Apes and Angels Edition) and Connell started adapting it with Hollywood screenwriter Robert Presnell. While his most recent collaboration, Samuel Goldwyn Production's "The Real Glory" (1939) was in production, Presnell received help from co-screenwriter Jo Swerling who also attempted to adapt Connell's short story. Swerling left his draft unfinished, titling it "The World Is an Eightball." Riskin was given both treatments by Swerling including the original "A Reputation" and gave them to Capra while he was doing publicity for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) in the fall that same year. He read them on the train back to the West Coast and took copious notes the entire time. Riskin would end up attempting to consolidate all three stories into a re-titled "Meet John Doe." "According to a pre-production news item, the title was changed to Meet John Doe in order to avoid giving the impression that the film was based on a biography." (Meet John Doe (1941) - Turner Classic Movies) 

"They got control over virtually all aspects of shooting, as well as the final cut. In fact, some within Warner Brothers felt the deal was too good; a renegotiated contact in early 1941 for distribution of the picture under the Warner Brothers banner gave the studio 25 percent of the net revenue once the picture grossed $2 million. The deal became something of an albatross to the partners, and there turned out to be little profit in the venture for such a small company, despite the film's going on to make money at the box office." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) 

Capra had known from the get-go he was going to cast Gary Cooper as Long John Wiloughby/John Doe after having already worked with him on "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936). "I had but one choice: Cooper. I wouldn't have made the picture without him. But I had no script for him to read when I asked him to play the part. Surprisingly he said:  "It's okay, Frank. I don't need a script." But the role that would end up going to Stanwyck was initially given to Ann Sheridan before Warner Brothers turned it down due to a contract dispute as well as Olivia de Havilland. Stanwyck was cast only a month before shooting began, saying yes to the experience of solely working with Capra. "Moreover, all the other star names in my first-choice dream cast [...] were available and signed up for the film. And, as with Cooper, they all accepted their roles before reading the script--which is about the highest compliment a director can be paid." (Capra. The name above the title; an autobiography : Capra, Frank . . ..) 

Shooting began August 7, 1940, the shooting schedule slated at 57 days but finished on December 9th. Exteriors were filmed at Gilmore Field and  Griffith Park in Los Angeles; Pasadena, CA; and a Los Angeles icehouse. Capra and Riskin spent the summer attempting to write the script but especially the final reel of the movie. Capra even mortgaged his home to finance the film; the fact of a writer and director putting their own money into a film being considered ""brash," "reckless"" as well as refusing to give out details about the script to the press after having written themselves into a corner and to hold Jack Warner and the Bank of America at bay. Capra even brought in his "friend and severest critic--but also my ace-in-the-hole story constructionist" Myles Connolly and then Jules Furthman. ""Hell, it's simple," he declared. "You guys can't find an ending to your story because you got no story in the first place," (Capra. The name above the title; an autobiography : Capra, Frank . . ..) "but writer and director put off this closure as unpalatable for as long as possible." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) Five different endings were constructed. 

1. The film ends after the convention and Connell's epilogue quote: "Well, boys, you can chalk up another one to the Pontius Pilates." 
2. John leaps from the top of City Hall and is shown - after his death - cradled in the arms of the Colonel who bemoans: "You poor sucker, you poor sucker."
3. After Ann pleads with him and faints (after her expression of love), John decides to abandon his suicidal plan and he carries her out to "start clean" or "start all over again."
4. When Ann encourages him not to jump, John is transformed by the Christmas spirit. He offers his Christmas wishes to Norton, who surprisingly converts and orders the Colonel to print the real suicide letter (and the true story) in the newspaper. The Colonel concludes: "Well, looks like I gotta give the heelots one more chance." ("Meet John Doe (1941)")

"Meet John Doe" was previewed multiple times throughout December and into January. "On a visit to New York to negotiate a further distribution package for the picture in January 1941, Riskin told reporters quite candidly that his and Capra's new film would have to be subjected to more test-screenings, a confession that parts of the picture, and certainly the ending were not yet right." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) Capra even admitted later in life that "for seven-eighths of the picture we had a fine, fine thing going for us there; the very end collapsed like a brick sock" and admitted that even he didn't like the fifth endingthat  much either.

The film was then released in seven theaters in four major cities on March 12, 1941, but was pulled two days later. "And then--after the film had been playing a couple weeks [...] I received a letter signed "John Doe,"" Capra explained in his autobiography, "It read: " . . . I have seen your film with many different endings . . . all bad, I thought . . . the only thing that can keep John Doe from jumping to his death is the John Does themselves . . . if they ask him." A large bell rang. I called back all the cast and shot Ending Number FIVE!" (Capra. The name above the title; an autobiography : Capra, Frank . . ..) "In addition, Capra cut a few scenes to shorten running tie but also weaken some of the inferences." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) 

"Meet John Doe" was released again in April, but this time with a huge campaign from Warner Brothers. "The studio touted it as the "glorious peak of all of the achievements that won them more awards than any other director-writer team." "Warner Brothers pulled no punches in its ingenious selling of the movie, making newspaper mock-ups with John Doe gossip and even challenging people to set up John Doe clubs" but this only "reveal[ed] how far removed this full-scale exploitation of the movie's narrative precepts was from executives' nervous expressions during the making of the picture, and how suspect they were of its contemporary reflection of events. There is, for example, among the collection of documents held about the picture, a file devoted to Meet John Doe's likeness to the moral rearmament movement that had been prominent in Southern California in the previous couple of years. The movie's convention scene, filmed at Wrigley Field, supposedly bore a striking resemblance to the movement's meeting at the Hollywood Bowl in July 1939, a gathering that Capra and Riskin might have attended, although there is no proof." (In Capra 's Shadow - Google Books) 

The hits kept coming as "...John Doe" ran in theaters. "An April 1941 letter from attorney Peter J. McCoy stated that authors Robert Shurr and Pat A. Leonard were claiming an infringement of copyright for scenes and story closely related to their play The Stuffed Shirt. In November, [...]a stage play, Washington Jitters, by Dalton Trumbo, had appeared; it was derived from a novel with a character named Chester Wiloughby, Monkey on a Stick by Henry Clune, which had appeared at almost exactly the same time as the film. The insinuation was that Riskin had somehow adopted the character as his own for Meet John Doe, but further communications from within Warner Brothers accused Clune and Trumbo of copying aspects of Capra's earlier Mr. Smith." 

In the end, "Meet John Doe" made 2 million in the box office and was a critical success despite all of its behind the scenes problems. John T. McManus's article during the first release for PM's Weekly prophesied this when he "scored the screening as a triumph and indicated that that version of the film was sure to be a success for 1941.""The reviewer who pretends to say where writing ends and directing begins is deluding only himself," The Hollywood Reporter lauded, "It's a brave thing Capra and Riskin do in allowing a character to have his full say, almost without interruption." "For, in spite of a certain prolixity and an ending which is obviously a sop," Bosley Crowther of the New York Times complimented, "this is by far the hardest-hitting and most trenchant picture on the theme of democracy that the Messrs. Capra and Riskin have yet made--and a glowing tribute to the anonymous citizen too. Mr. Capra has produced a film which is eloquent with affection for gentle people, for the plain, unimpressive little people who want reassurance and faith. Many of his camera devices are magnificent in their scope of suggestion, and always he tells his story well, with his customary expert spacing of comedy and serious drama. [...] And his cast is uniformly excellent."

But after only one film, Riskin grew exhausted of writing to please and to the audience's expectations as well as the frustrating post-production process. It didn't help that he also felt Capra had more say in the aesthetic and only highlighting the dialogue than the already established descriptions in his scripts. It may have been his intuition telling him to break it off with Capra or the personal issues or realizing they had nowhere to go creatively anymore and so, Riskin broke his decade-long business partnership in favor of going to London to work for Liberty magazine.

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