On DVD: Frank Capra's Other Christmas Classic Turns 70
Once Thanksgiving is over, It's a Wonderful Life season officially begins. But by the time director Frank Capra ventured to Bedford Falls, he had already made one of the greatest Christmas movies ever: Meet John Doe, which gets a "70th Anniversary Ultimate Collectors Edition" release this week from VCI Entertainment. And like many of Capra's little-guy-against-the-corporations movies, it feels more relevant than ever.
Barbara Stanwyck plays a columnist whose newspaper has just been bought out by a corrupt and powerful businessman. (Ahem.) In a last-ditch effort to save her job, she creates "John Doe" and claims he wrote her a letter stating that he plans to jump off City Hall at midnight to protest the Depression-era unemployment situation. The column's a big hit, and Stanwyck is forced to produce Mr. Doe; she hand-picks has-been baseball player Gary Cooper to fill the role, and before long there's a nationwide John Doe movement of regular folks... until the corporate interests try to take over to shill for their own purposes. (Double ahem.)
Watching Meet John Doe again for my new book was a real eye-opener -- this is a plotline that could play on The Rachel Maddow Show on any given evening. Timeliness aside, it's a snappy, moving little movie with terrific performances from the stars on down to the one-line bit players. And someone should slip a copy into the stockings of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers.