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General George C. Marshall, President Roosevelt's trusted Chief of Staff, knew a good show when he saw one, and he liked the movies of Frank Capra. Indeed, Frank Capra was Hollywood's champion of "the forgotten man"-the little fellow in the American crowd often referred to by President Roosevelt during his fireside chats. Passing over award-winning documentary filmmakers of the time, Marshall asked the leading Hollywood director to speak for the John Does and Mr. Smiths of America in a time of crisis. The seven feature-length films of the Why We Fight series would be Capra's most important artistic contribution to his adopted country, a paean to democracy and a powerful indictment of oppression. David Culbert has praised the series as "the most comprehensive set of war aims released by the U.S. government in any medium during WWII" (187). Certainly, the programs aroused wartime audiences, but they continue to inspire today as statements of America's mission in a violent world.
Frank Capra and the American Dream
Frank Capra was living evidence of the American Dream. His impoverished family moved from Sicily to California in 1903 where the three-year-old Frank was placed at the bottom rung of the ladder of success. Through intelligence and hard work, Capra worked his way through college and then into the movie industry, beginning as a technician in a developing house. At the next rung of the ladder, he worked at an editing table. True to the Horatio Alger formula, a benefactor came along in the person of Will Rogers. Rogers boosted Capra up the next few rungs; the clever young man began writing gags and scripts for Harry Langdon and then directing films at Columbia Pictures. By the 1930s, Frank Capra was Columbia's-and Hollywood's-leading Director.
Capra's comedy entitled It Happened One Night (starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) won five Academy Awards in 1935. In a famous scene aboard a bus bound from Florida to New York City, the passengers (symbolizing American Society) joined in singing "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze." Viewers went away from the film reassured that the search for individual fulfillment did not contravene America's sense of community. Capra's gift as a filmmaker was to evoke this serious idea within the context of dramatic conflict...