Capital Classics for the Fourth of July

Summer has arrived, and the Fourth of July is just around the corner. It's too hot to be outside, so why not celebrate with some classic movies set in our nation's capital? If you haven't been feeling especially optimistic about our country's politicians lately, these films might provide some relief from the debacle of modern politics, although it's important to remember that the Hays Code helped to tint those rose-colored spectacles an even softer shade. Nonetheless, here are some classic movies that memorably depict the ideals of the American experiment if not its reality.

 

MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) - Frank Capra's tale of a young Senator's political education is quintessential Capra "corn" with James Stewart and Claude Rains delivering outstanding performances, especially Stewart in the famous filibuster scene. Although some in the US took offense at the depiction of Washington insiders, the film was banned in other countries precisely because of its pro-democracy stance. Capra, Stewart, Rains, and costar Harry Carey all picked up Oscar nominations for their work, and the movie earned six additional nominations, but it only won the Academy Award for Lewis R. Foster's writing for Best Original Story. The stellar cast also includes Jean Arthur, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, and H.B. Warner.

THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943) - This wartime romantic comedy uses a housing shortage in Washington, D.C., to bring together an unlikely trio played by Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn. George Stevens directs the stars through some hilarious situations, with sizzling fireworks going off between Arthur and McCrea, but Coburn proves the scene-stealer of the lot in a performance that earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The picture garnered five additional nominations, including nods for Stevens and Arthur. It's an absolute delight from start to finish, and fans of modern rom coms will find a lot to love in this underrated classic.

 

BORN YESTERDAY (1950) - George Cukor directs the brilliant Judy Holliday in her Oscar-winning performance as Billie Dawn, a former chorus girl whose domineering and crooked boyfriend (Broderick Crawford) wants her to become more respectably well-educated now that his business has him hobnobbing with Washington politicians. William Holden plays the political writer hired to tutor Billie, and the two inevitably fall in love while touring the sights of the nation's capital. Billie's personal and political awakenings drive the picture, which was adapted from the 1946 Broadway play by Garson Kanin (in which Holliday also originated the role). 

These three classics make a great triple feature for your Fourth of July holiday, but if you prefer patriotic goodwill outside the Beltway, you can always celebrate with the beloved James Cagney musical, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942). If you prefer something darker, dive into JAWS (1975) for red blood, a Great White, and deep blue ocean with a climax that takes place over the Fourth of July weekend.

You'll find full-length reviews of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Born Yesterday, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and hundreds of other classic movies in my two books, BEYOND CASABLANCA and BEYOND CASABLANCA II, both of which are available as ebooks on Amazon. Hundreds more are posted here on my blog. Just use the labels to search for your favorite actors, directors, and genres!

Classic Films in Focus: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

The vast array of memorabilia that has sprung up around It's a Wonderful Life (1946) over the last two decades tends to support the general sense of the holiday staple as the ultimate example of director Frank Capra's corny sentimentality, strengthening that idea we have of the movie being all about angels and family values and the treacly sweetness embodied in a kid named Zuzu. There are snow globes and coffee table books, Christmas tree ornaments and talking greeting cards, all of them spouting the fuzzy warmth of the movie's ending: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings!"

These things, as ubiquitous as they are, do not go to the heart of It's a Wonderful Life; they show us only the the last glimpse of a story that has endured not because of its few bright moments, but because of its deeper understanding of the dark side of Christmas and of life, as well. It's a Wonderful Life is a Christmas story for the losers, the nice guys who finish last, the Bob Cratchits drowning in a world of Scrooges. It's a holiday film for those who find themselves miserably and helplessly depressed, not in spite of the season, but because of it. For these reasons it remains ones of the best and most truthful of seasonal films, and people who only ever catch the ending have missed everything that matters about it.

George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) is a good man, yes, but this is a story that finds him trying to commit suicide at Christmas; his life has overwhelmed him so completely that the view from the bridge looks awfully tempting. Neither his loving wife (Donna Reed) nor their brood of young children are compelling enough reasons to keep George from jumping; it takes divine intervention to interrupt his despair, and that intervention turns up in the person of a daft little fellow named Clarence (Henry Travers), who tells a skeptical George that he is an angel. George, still miserable, wishes that he had never been born, and with this utterance the action of the story gets into gear, telling both the story of George's life and the story of life without George.

The memorabilia enshrines only the final scene of the film, that of a happy George and his family beneath the Christmas tree, but the darker scenes work themselves more subtly into the viewer's memory. George, having never been born, meets the woman who would have been his mother, and of course she does not know him. Lovely Mary, a lonely spinster, runs from him in fear. The grief stricken pharmacist whom George saved from a fatal mistake now wanders the town a broken drunk, mocked and reviled. Loathsome Potter, like a fat spider, looms over this town full of flies, and in George's absence the whole scene sinks and gasps and gives itself up to despair. Without George, the town becomes like him at the beginning of the film. His suffering is replaced by that of everyone else in Bedford Falls.

Of course, the ultimate message is positive, that one person makes a difference, that people will come together and do what is right when the time comes, that it really is a wonderful life, no matter how bad it may seem in the short term. Still, it acknowledges depression and suffering as a part of the Christmas experience, and it presents George as a sympathetic protagonist even when he is most unhappy. Looking at George's life in review, we have to admit that he has plenty of things to be unhappy about, and the redemption of George's faith at the end of the film is not a correction of his erroneous attitude so much as it is a long-overdue evening of the balance. George is not Scrooge, hardened and cruel, but Cratchit pushed one last lump of coal too far. We want to see him win for a change because we feel like him, overburdened, always one step behind our dreams, never in the right place at the right time to make life work for us for once.

Most of us have days when the view from the bridge looks tempting, and it's because of that shared misery that George speaks to us. If you have been a winner all your life and are happy at Christmas then you don't need to watch It's a Wonderful Life; it's not for you. It's for those of us who doubt, who grieve, who harbor sadness in our hearts as the carols are sung. It's for those of us who need to be reminded not so much that it's a wonderful life, but that we aren't alone in sometimes feeling that it's not.

If Capra's holiday classic is your only experience with the director, be sure to see Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). George Bailey was Jimmy Stewart's first post-war role; see him in Destry Rides Again (1939) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) for more pre-war work, and then compare those with other post-war films like Rope (1948), Winchester '73 (1950), and Vertigo (1958). For more Christmas classics, try Christmas in Connecticut (1945), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and White Christmas (1954).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)

Like Star Wars (1977), The Muppet Movie (1979) was a watershed event in the formation of Gen Xers' cinematic culture. Jim Henson and George Lucas certainly recognized a common spirit in one another, and their films resonated with their youthful audiences in similarly enduring ways. By the time the first Muppet film appeared, The Muppet Show had already been on television for several seasons, but the movie was something larger and more ambitious, in terms of both puppetry and narrative. The Muppet Movie also shares with Star Wars a deep and pervasive debt to the film traditions that had come before, although The Muppet Movie celebrates its relationship to classic movies more overtly and self-consciously than Lucas' film. This playful awareness of itself as part of the great Hollywood tradition is part of the movie's charm, and it helps to set The Muppet Movie apart as a special kind of family film, both smart and sentimental, both wildly creative and instantly accessible, a film that rewards the adult viewer with different but equal pleasures from those experienced by the child.

The plot follows a classic Hollywood line: Kermit the Frog, talented, generous, and completely inexperienced, sets off for Hollywood to become a star. Along the way he picks up a menagerie of companions, including Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and The Great Gonzo. They encounter a number of obstacles on the way to realizing their dream, chiefly embodied by the greedy Doc Hopper (Charles Durning), who intends to use Kermit as the spokesfrog for his fried frogs' legs restaurant chain, whether Kermit likes the idea or not.

The plot of The Muppet Movie combines elements of two popular Hollywood genres, the show business picture and the road picture. The show business plot ties it to films like A Star is Born (pick a version), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and a host of other movies in which starry-eyed kids arrive in Tinseltown looking for their own "standard rich and famous contracts," while the road elements connect it with films like the Hope and Crosby vehicles and even The Wizard of Oz (1939). Both genres can be played as either comedy or drama, and The Muppet Movie incorporates both, although its drama is generally tinged with enough surreal weirdness to render it palatable to the youngest members of the audience. Thinking about it now, it seems to me that the classic film The Muppet Movie most resembles is Sullivan's Travels (1941), with its emphasis on the importance of making people laugh combined with its picaresque adventures and Hollywood self-reflection. There are times in Preston Sturges' brilliant comedy when Sullivan does not feel like laughing at all, becoming downcast and even in despair, and Kermit shares those moments during his own journey. Still, both stories insist on the belief that it will all come right in the end.

The Muppet characters have their own indebtedness to classic films and types, having been created to reflect the values and conventions of Vaudeville and other old school entertainment institutions, and in The Muppet Movie those relationships get more play because of the opportunities presented by the sustained narrative. While Kermit, for example, possesses a certain affinity with Sturges' Sullivan, he might rightly be called a Capraesque hero, as well. Henson could have named his picture Mr. Frog Goes to Hollywood and summed it up pretty handily. If Kermit were a human being and not a frog, he would be played by Jimmy Stewart (Roger Ebert has called him "Mickey Rooney in a frog suit," but I think he has more romantic charisma than that implies). The sense of common ground between Henson and Capra characters becomes particularly obvious in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), which more or less recreates the entire plot of It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with Kermit as its amphibian George Bailey. Miss Piggy has her own classic movie roots; with her diva's ego and talent for self-transformation, she channels the glamor and hard-edged determination of stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. In The Muppet Movie, her lust for fame causes her to abandon Kermit, the frog of her heart, but her porcine melodrama brings her back to him in time to share in his success.

The scores of cameo appearances that populate The Muppet Movie shore up these affiliations. We get, in no particular order, Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, James Coburn, and Orson Welles, just to name a few of the veteran performers who appear in the film. The presence of Welles is probably the most interesting from a classic film perspective; imagine the man who made Citizen Kane (1941), arguably the greatest movie of all time, appearing in The Muppet Movie! It's the cinematic equivalent of the Pope's blessing. Many of these stars were better known for their television careers, but all had experience in the movies, including Milton Berle, who had been appearing in silent films in Hollywood since the age of 5.

The Muppet Movie was a collaborative effort, as were all of Jim Henson's productions; director James Frawley, writers Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns, and the entire crew of puppeteers all had to share a dream as much as the Muppet characters themselves in order to make the film a success. What they also shared was a very sharp eye for what made classic Hollywood films so good, their energy and spirit, their familiar types and universal themes. They drew from the best that had been done before, and it gave their felt and fur characters a kind of gravity even when they were being the most ridiculous, the way that characters are in the films of Sturges and Capra and Hawks. In that sense, The Muppet Movie is a true classic, and it's just as worthwhile to watch it today as it was more than thirty years ago.

For more films that share the themes and spirit of The Muppet Movie, try 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Babes in Arms (1939). Round out the classic Muppet trilogy by watching The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) before moving on to films made after Jim Henson's death, including The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), and Disney's The Muppets (2011).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Postscript
My author copies of The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson just arrived today, which reminded me that it was time to revise and reprint this review of the original Muppet film. The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson is the second anthology of essays I have edited with my friend and colleague, Anissa Graham. It's now available on Amazon and through numerous other book retailers, along with our original anthology, Kermit Culture. Both books were published by McFarland. In case you're wondering, my favorite Muppet is The Great Gonzo, which might explain why I try to do so many different things "while and at the same time!"

Classic Films in Focus: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936)

Frank Capra’s favorite themes are all in play in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), which stars lanky Gary Cooper as a typical Capra hero, an all-American everyman standing in opposition to a corrupt and selfish world. Equal parts social commentary and romance, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town sets the stage for later Capra pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) but still shows a lot of the feisty chemistry of It Happened One Night (1934). In addition to Cooper, the movie features an especially effective performance from Jean Arthur as the cynical city girl whose world view is shaken by Deeds’ transparent decency.

Cooper plays the appropriately named Longfellow Deeds, a small town postcard poet who unexpectedly inherits a huge fortune and is whisked away to a life of luxury in New York City. Everyone he meets there is on the make, including the estate’s crooked lawyers and reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), who deceives Deeds in order to milk him for outrageous headlines but ends up falling for his straightforward charm. Babe inevitably throws her allegiance over to Deeds in an effort to save him from the schemes of a cabal of greedy attorneys who want his fortune for themselves.

Everything we really need to understand about the hero is included in his name, which has the same symbolic transparency as “Jefferson Smith.” Cooper really is a long fellow, but his character’s improbable given name mostly underscores his identity as a populist poet, in other words, a man who speaks for the people. In the city, however, words become the twisted weapons of the enemy, and then we literally know our hero by his deeds. These two elements of his personality play out in Deeds’ decision to give his unwanted wealth away to victims of the Depression and his eventual courtroom defense of that act, which the lawyers have seized as evidence of Deeds’ mental instability.

Cooper plays Deeds as a more formidable combatant than the Capra heroes embodied by Jimmy Stewart; he’s far more ready and able to knock his opponents down, and he does in fact punch quite a few people over the course of the picture. Jean Arthur, one of Capra’s favorite leading ladies, plays Babe as the twin sister to her character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; both are too smart for their own good but prove remarkably vulnerable to the naïve, straight arrow type. Douglass Dumbrille is always entertaining as a villain people love to hate, and his two-faced attorney is a perfect figure of every professional stereotype. Silent era veteran H.B. Warner, another Capra regular, puts in a memorable if brief appearance as the bemused judge who presides over Deeds’ insanity hearing.

Frank Capra won his second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which earned five Academy Award nominations in all. For more of Gary Cooper, see Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and High Noon (1952), as well as the hilarious screwball comedy, Ball of Fire (1941). Don’t miss Jean Arthur’s final film appearance in Shane (1953). Douglass Dumbrille can also be seen in Baby Face (1933), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Ten Commandments (1956).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.