From the Archives: Public doesn’t want to think, says Capra, director of ‘It Happened One Night’

Wherever movies are discussed, the length and breadth of the land, the name of one recent comedy-drama is sure to come up. This is as true of Hollywood as it is of Ho-Ho-Kus — sooner or later the talk will get around to “It Happened One Night,” produced by Columbia, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Capra.

Capra and Columbia’s previous collaboration, “Lady for a Day,” was hardly less conspicuous in its success. But “It Happened One Night” cinched them for immortality.

What sort of chap is this director and where did he come from? And how does he do it? Frank Capra is an Italian — born in Palermo May 18, 1897 — youngest of seven children; he is short, 5 feet 4 inches; dark, with a mop of black hair; terse-speaking, with a grim grin … and he doesn’t know “how he does it.”

“I’m no analyst,” he said last week in answer to my question. “I can’t explain it. Maybe they (“Lady for a Day” and “It Happened One Night”) came along at the psychological moment. Maybe they had that universal something. Maybe every man pictured himself as the hero of ‘It Happened One Night’ — a happy-go-lucky tramp, feeling the wanderlust.” He shrugged.

“They prove, though, it’s the entertaining qualities that carry a picture! Certainly neither story would stand critical analysis; each was full of holes, if you wanted to look for them. So far nobody has gone to the trouble — not even the critics. Like everybody else, they seem to have just been swept up and carried along.”

“It Happened One Night” ran eleven weeks in Seattle — in these parlous times. Capra prizes a letter from a linotype operator in that city. The linotype operator wrote that he takes his family once every week to a picture show. The first week the Capra film was showing they elected it for inspection. The following week, when a vote came up, they decided unanimously on a repeat visit. The next week, the same, and for three more. Six in all. Six paying trips to see Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night.” He answered the linotype operator’s letter, thanking him. That was typical.

“People don’t want to think,” Capra went on. “Neither do they want a story to be charted for them in advance. Surprise played an important part in both our pictures — it isn’t easy to create surprise; it’s darned hard. We were lucky.

“We have one advantage at this studio. We take time to select a story, one we can get hepped up over. We don’t have to write it to fit star personalities; Columbia hasn’t enough of them for that, anyway. It’s the story, the treatment, that counts. Then we go out and get the players to fit.

“No, it isn’t easy,” he admitted.

“We’re two months late in starting ‘Broadway Bill’ — that’s our next — right now. The people we want, most of them, are under contract to other studios. So far, we’ve got Warner Baxter for the lead.”

Keeping up the company morale is important, Capra said. He does not believe in too many rehearsals: They take the edge off a scene. His scripts are written by Robert Riskin; and while together they manage to work out most of the details, some of these have a way of suggesting themselves on the spot — pure inspiration.

How inspiration works

It was like that with the “Man on the Flying Trapeze” sequence in “It Happened One Night,” for instance. The original idea was merely to have a couple of ex-vaudevillians or hillbillies — fellow bus passengers of the principals — haul out a banjo or two and strum a musical background for the main action. The community sing which subsequently reached the screen grew out of so simple a script direction as this, and provided one of the high points of the film.

“Broadway Bill” will be Capra’s third production in this inimitable vein, discovered for “Lady for a Day.” He has no intention of sticking to comedy-drama indefinitely; “I am anxious,” he explained, “to try a musical.”

Some of his best stuff, he contends, went into “The Bitter Tea of General Yen,” his last serious talkie. It was a dissertation on the diverse viewpoints of East and West, with Nils Asther as a reckless Chinese commander and Barbara Stanwyck as the righteous American missionary who falls into his clutches. Not over-successful, the fate of this picture bore out Capra’s declaration that the great mass of paying patrons are not intellectually inclined.

Attack films by name

One of the prime Capra tenets is to keep a film clean: Smut, he insists, is the way of the lazy writer, the slothful director, the misguided producer. But he holds no brief for censorship, believing that the industry at large should not be made to suffer for the sins of the few. Let critics and editorial writers attack objectionable pictures by name, indicting those involved in its making; and let them base their attacks on artistic grounds rather than moral ones — otherwise, he asserts they may defeat their purpose by attracting patronage to the very films they would condemn.

“If all else fails,” he grinned, “it should not be too hard to shame producers into reforming, they all think they’re geniuses, you know.”

Capra’s large family moved to Los Angeles in 1903. Newsboy, “pipecrawler” for Western Pipe and Steel Company, student at Manual Arts High School and Caltech, scholarship winner, second lieutenant in the Coast Artillery, tutor to Anita Baldwin’s son, and finally gag-man for Mack Sennett comedies — so Frank passed boyhood and youth.

He has directed three features starring Harry Langdon, including “The Strong Man”; an early silent film with Claudette Colbert, “For the Love of Mike”; the first Columbia talkie, “Younger Generation”; a bunch of Columbia near-epics, “Flight,” “Submarine” and “Dirigible”; Joe Cook’s “Rain or Shine”; and such Columbia social dramas as “Forbidden,” “The Miracle Woman” and “Ladies of Leisure,” all with Barbara Stanwyck. The night following the preview of “It Happened One Night,” a certain producer is quoted as having stated, “I’d give $1,000,000 for the contracts of Bob Riskin, Sam Briskin (supervisor) and Frank Capra.” But there were no takers.