Category: 1939

Whenever Claude and I have talked about movies that were made during the Hays Code Era – specifically, movies made before and during World War II – we’ve always mentioned whenever those movies indulged in racial stereotypes that were ignored at the time but are offensive to watch today (to be sure, there were plenty of people who thought those stereotypes were wrong at the time, but for the most part, they didn’t work for the studios or for the Production Code office). However, there have also been movies from that time, or even today, that have no issues in that department but still make me feel uncomfortable in some ways because of an implicit (or even explicit) message in them that I take issue with. One such example is Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, adapted by Sidney Buchman (with uncredited help from Myles Connolly) from the unpublished short story “The Gentleman from Montana” by Lewis R. Foster, and the second movie in his so-called “Common Man” trilogy (following Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and following Meet John Doe).

James Stewart plays the title character, Jefferson Smith, who leads a group of “Boy Rangers” (since Capra couldn’t get the rights to use the Boy Scouts name) in his state (unnamed) but is unknown outside of the state. But when Sam Foley, a U.S. Senator from that state, dies, Governor “Happy” Hopper (Guy Kibbee) must appoint a replacement senator. Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), the businessman who got the governor elected, wants him to appoint Horace Miller (“A born stooge!” enthuses Chick McGann (Eugene Pallette), one of Taylor’s cronies), while various committee members from the state want him to appoint Henry Hill (whom Taylor dismisses as “that crackpot”). In desperation, the governor flips a coin, which lands on its side – right next to a newspaper article on Smith (whom his sons had talked up that night at dinner), so he decides to appoint Smith instead. Though Smith is someone who wears his patriotism on his sleeve, he’s flabbergasted at the appointment (“I can’t help but feel there’s been some mistake,” he admits at the banquet celebrating the occasion), but promises he’ll do nothing to disgrace his office. Smith also adds he feels like Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), who worked with Smith’s father when they were younger, is senator enough for both of them (Smith recalls how his father used to say Paine was the finest man he knew). Once he gets to Washington D.C., Smith is overcome by the place, though he soon gets set up by his cynical secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), who sics the press on him so they’ll make him look like a naïve fool. When Smith angrily confronts those press members about this, they – led by Diz Moore (Thomas Mitchell), a friend of Saunders – point out Smith really is naïve about how the government works. Paine tells Smith to work on a bill to create a national boys camp, like the one he talked about to the press, and Smith eagerly signs on for. What Paine doesn’t realize until the day Smith reads the bill on the floor is Smith wants to set up the camp on a piece of land that Taylor and his cronies have already bought as graft, which Paine is involved in. What Smith doesn’t realize, until Saunders, who has gone from being cynical about him to falling love with him, tells him before leaving town that Taylor will stop at nothing to make sure Smith doesn’t screw up that land deal.

On the one hand, parts of this movie still ring true today. Saunders’ speech to Smith about how hard it is to get a bill through Congress (“Yes sir, the big day (to vote on the bill) finally arrives – and Congress adjourns”) definitely still holds up. More importantly, it’s still unfortunately true that bills that will help the American people most likely won’t get passed without amendments being added that either weaken the bill or involve a bit of graft, as in this movie where Taylor, through Paine, has attached an amendment involving his land graft onto an efficiency bill meant to provide financial relief to the American public. It’s also true that a lot of people who have decided to be a politician, and who had grand ideals about what they were going to accomplish, ended up betraying those ideals, as Paine has (and have justified that betrayal like Paine does when he tells Smith he’s had to learn to compromise). Finally, the fact Smith gets framed for using his boys camp bill for graft before Smith could expose what he knew about Taylor shows how rich, corrupt men like Taylor are able to crush those who try and stop him.

However, it’s the way Smith (with Saunders’ help) decides to fight back that gives me pause today. Smith gets up right before the Senate is to vote on (a) whether to expel Smith from the Senate, and (b) before the Senate delivers its final vote on the efficiency bill, and once the Senate President (Harry Carey Sr.) allows Smith to speak, Smith filibusters the efficiency bill until he can have the people of his state expose what Taylor has been up to. As a historian, I know the filibuster has been around for a long time, and we aren’t the only country to use it. I also don’t believe this movie is solely responsible for the fact people have been reluctant to, or refused to, abolish the filibuster for so long (in its current form, if enough senators refuse to let a bill come to the floor, that’s considered a silent filibuster), as I don’t think movies have that kind of one-to-one relationship with society. Nevertheless, given how often the filibuster, either in its previous form or its current form, has been used to shut down bills that would have been helpful to people (the Civil Rights Bills of the 1960’s had to overcome several filibusters, for example, and any attempts to restore voting rights to African-Americans or pass any serious gun control laws have been stopped cold), and given how few times the filibuster has been used for good (for every Wendy Davis, there have been ten or more like Strom Thurmond), I’m uncomfortable with the fact Capra’s movie seems to romanticize the filibuster as the way one person can take on a corrupt system.

Still, there’s a lot to like about this movie. Certainly, from a logistical standpoint, what Capra achieved here is remarkable. Art director Lionel Banks and his staff built the Senate chamber to scale on two different sets, and the fact Capra, cinematographer Joseph Walker, and editors Al Clark and Gene Havlick are able to make all of the scenes set in the chamber flow seamlessly (in his autobiography, Capra claims part of the reason was during the close-ups he shot of particular actors, they were miming along to their recorded dialogue from the master shots instead of doing those scenes cold) is . Capra and Buchman are also able to make the workings of the Senate comprehensible to the audience without dumbing the movie down, and make the workings of the Senate (including the committee that investigates Smith’s so-called wrongdoing, which I’m going to get back to below) entertaining as well. Capra and Buchman don’t downplay the seriousness of the proceedings, but they aren’t afraid to use humor either (after Smith nervously yells out to be recognizes when he’s about to propose his bill for a boys camp, the Senate President tells him to read the bill, “but not too loud”).

Then there’s the portrayal of the press. In his autobiography, Capra would claim the press attacked him for telling “the truth” about how they operated. While it is true there were people in the U.S. government who attacked the movie (most famously Joseph P. Kennedy, father of JFK and RFK, who was ambassador to Great Britain at the time, and who thought the movie would harm America’s prestige in Europe), and the Washington press corps was also not happy with how they were portrayed, the critics were pretty much in the movie’s corner. That may be because the movie portrays the press firmly in the tradition of many movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s (most notably His Girl Friday) – cynical and hard-nosed, but ultimately on the side of good. Diz (Thomas Mitchell), Saunders’ friend on the press corps, stops Smith when he’s about to beat up Nosey (Charles Lane), the worst of the journalists (Diz calls him an “ambulance chaser”), and he and the others (including Jack Carson) school Smith on how naive he is and how useless that makes him in the Senate, but as soon as they see how crushed Smith is, they look ashamed, and Diz even tells Smith not to let things get him down. Later, when Saunders convinces Smith to filibuster the Senate, Diz works with Saunders to get the press behind him (though Taylor has the press bottled up anyway because of his connections). So, it’s clear Capra was not out to get the fourth estate, even if he sometimes claimed they were out to get him.

Another interesting thing Capra and Buchman do here is how they distinguish the movie from the other two entries in Capra’s so-called “Common Man” trilogy. All three movies follow a similar trajectory – the hero, a naive man is plucked from obscurity into fame thanks to something that happens to him, he becomes a hero to many until the bad guys reveal something about the hero that brings him down, and the hero becomes despondent until the woman he initially fell in love with (and who’s fallen in love with him) convinces him to keep going, after which he redeems himself. However, Capra and Buchman run a couple variations on the theme here. In both Mr. Deeds and Meet John Doe, when the villains reveal something about the titular heroes, they’re telling the truth, just out of context (in the former, the lawyer who wants to get Mr. Deeds reveals many of his eccentricities to make him look insane, when in fact they’re just eccentricities similar to what others have, while in the latter, the villain reveals John Doe had no intention of jumping off a building on New Year’s Eve, though he doesn’t reveal no one had any intention Doe would do such a thing). In this movie, however, what Taylor and Paine cook up to frame Smith is about what they did, and Smith had nothing to do with it. Also, in both Mr. Deeds and Meet John Doe, the woman the heroes had fallen in love with had earlier betrayed him – in the former, Babe is a reporter who had been writing stories about Mr. Deeds’ eccentricities and he found out about it after she fell in love with him, while in the latter, Ann, the reporter who cooked up “John Doe” in the first place, wrote a speech for John Doe to give endorsing the villain – until she set things right when she declared her love for him; on the other hand, in this movie, Saunders never betrays Smith, and in fact reveals Taylor’s graft to him before storming out of town, and returns later to convince Smith to fight.

Of course, Capra had a strong cast to work with that helped make the movie what it was. He had his usual stock company to work with (Arnold, Arthur, Lane, and Mitchell had all worked with Capra before, along with Beulah Bondi as Smith’s mother, Dub Taylor as another reporter, H.B. Warner as the senate majority leader, and Pierre Frechette – the only actor to appear in all three of Capra’s trilogy – as the senate minority leader) , and they’re all very good. In particular, Arthur may not have gotten along with Stewart during filming (she wanted to work with Gary Cooper, who had played the title character in Mr. Deeds, instead), but you wouldn’t know it from her performance (I especially liked the way she teasingly puts off Smith when he tries to guess her first name, and then how she reacts when Smith’s mother calls her by her first name). Rains, on the other hand, was new to Capra, but he also works well. Rains had played villains (The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and unlikable characters (They Won’t Forget) before, but Senator Paine is more of a morally compromised one, and Rains makes you believe it, so his confession at the end of the movie is all the more powerful. Carey, another new actor for Capra (he was best known for westerns), may not be the first one you’d think of to play the senate president, but he brings dignity and a wry humor. But the movie wouldn’t work without Stewart. This wasn’t his only major performance that year – he was also very good as the title character in the comic western Destry Rides Again – but this was the first to show not only was he capable of comic timing (his clumsiness whenever Susan (Astrid Allwyn), .Paine’s daughter, is talking to him), but also dramatic work, as when he reminds Paine about what he used to feel about lost causes near the end.  This was Capra’s last movie for Columbia studios, which had been his home for the decade (both he and Harry Cohn, the head of the studio,  had strong egos), but my misgivings about what I think the movie does to romanticize the filibuster aside, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remains one of Capra’s best.