Film author Richard Glazer speculates that the film may have been autobiographical, " reflecting Capra's own uncertainties.

He may be best remembered as the motor-court manager who hassles Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night ( 1934 ).

In 1941 Capra directed Meet John Doe ( 1941 ), considered by some to be Capra's most controversial movie.

The film was based on a stage play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and along with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night ( released the same year ) is considered to be the defining film of the screwball comedy genre.

The film was Capra's last feature, and although it was not the commercial success he hoped it would be, he " gushed about Falk's performance.

Capra's synopsis: " Dealt with who, what, where, why, and how we came to be the U. S. A .— the oldest major democratic republic still living under its original constitution.

Capra's first choices for Apple Annie and Henry D. Blake, Marie Dressler and W. C. Fields, could not be cast for the same reason.

Colbert was noticed by the theatrical producer Leland Hayward, who suggested her for a role in Frank Capra's film For the Love of Mike ( 1927 ), now believed to be lost.

Along with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, also released in 1934, Twentieth Century is considered to be a prototype for the screwball comedy.

* Republic took its original " Liberty Bell " logo from M. H. Hoffman's Liberty Pictures ( not to be confused with Frank Capra's short-lived Liberty Films that produced his It's a Wonderful Life, ironically now owned by Republic ).

However, the film was believed to be in the public domain at the time, and as a result Markle and Holmes responded by returning Capra's initial investment, eliminating his financial participation, and refusing outright to allow the director to exercise artistic control over the colorization of his films, leading Capra to join in the campaign against the process.

At the heart of the matter is Mr. Capra's methodology — his use of what seem to me to be accidental similarities of language as if these were somehow evidence of deeply rooted connections.

Even now, Capra's book, with its nutty denials of what has happened in particle theory, can be found selling well at every major bookstore.

These films had been produced at Columbia Pictures, Capra's studio, and had a certain quality of production that seemed to be lacking at the Monogram lot, where Taylor brought his " Cannonball " character in 1947.

Dirigible was Capra's and Columbia's first film to be given prominence with a premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, but despite high hopes, the film received lukewarm reviews.

Capra's final film, Rendezvous in Space ( 1964 ), was an industrial film made for the Martin Marietta Company and shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Capra's basic themes of championing the common man, as well as his use of spontaneous, fast-paced dialogue and goofy, memorable lead and supporting characters, made him one of the most popular and respected filmmakers of the 20th century.

During the golden age of Hollywood, Capra's " fantasies of goodwill " made him one of the two or three most famous and successful directors in the world.

In 1944, Ivens made Know Your Enemy: Japan for Frank Capra's U. S. War Department film series Why We Fight.

* In 1947, the studio acquired Frank Capra's production company, Liberty Films, which produced only 2 films in the 1940s: It's a Wonderful Life, released originally by RKO Radio Pictures, and State of the Union, released originally by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ( the latter made under Paramount ownership ).

A vaudeville performer, Taylor made his film debut in 1938, playing cheerful ex-football captain Ed Carmichael in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You.

He made his last film appearance in Frank Capra's Academy Award-nominated 1961 comedy Pocketful of Miracles.

She had a successful career at MGM, RKO and Columbia including important roles such as the tragic Beth in the original Little Women, among many other film appearances including Frank Capra's Lady for a Day and Gabriel Over the White House ; Sequoia ; Limehouse Blues with George Raft and Anna May Wong ; The Ghost Goes West, opposite Robert Donat ; and Rasputin and the Empress, with the Barrymore siblings ( John, Ethel, and Lionel ) in the only movie they all made together.

The book's issues are detectable from a slightly different perspective in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life ( 1946 ) and Scrooge is likely an influence upon Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

In Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life ( 1946 ), George Bailey ( center, played by James Stewart ) is shown by his guardian angel how the world would have been radically different for the worse if Bailey had never existed.

Capra's personal papers and some of his film related materials are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives, which allows scholars and media experts from around the world full access.

In many of Capra's films, the wise-cracking and sharp dialogue was often written by Riskin, and he and Capra went on to become Hollywood's " most admired writer-director team.

Capra's job was to head a special section on morale in order to explain to soldiers " why the hell they're in uniform ", writes Capra, and were not " propaganda " films like those created by the Nazis and Japan.

Biographer Joseph McBride argues that Capra's disillusionment was more related to the negative effect that the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ) had on the film industry in general.

Capra's directing style relied on improvisation to a great extent.

His son Frank Capra, Jr. – one of the four children born to Capra's second wife, Lucille Capra – was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios, in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007.

Film historian Richard Griffith speaks of Capra's “... reliance on sentimental conversation and the ultimate benevolence of ordinary America to resolve all deep conflicts .” “ Average America ” is visualized as "... a still tree lined street, undistinguished frame houses surrounded by modest areas of grass, a few automobiles.

Many of these stories have their backgrounds in movies, for example Topolino nel favoloso regno di Shan Grillà ( 1961 ) is based upon Frank Capra's Lost Horizon ( 1937 ); not to talk about all the stories starring Snow White or the Seven Dwarfs, obviously based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ( 1937 ).

With the sound era, films like All Quiet on the Western Front ( 1930 ) ( and its much darker German counterpart Westfront 1918 ), Howard Hawks ' Road to Glory ( 1936 ) and Grand Illusion ( 1937 ), focused on the futility of war for non-American soldiers whilst Hollywood produced American soldiers featuring in World War I comedies such as Buster Keaton's Doughboys ( 1930 ) and Wheeler & Woolsey's Half Shot at Sunrise ( 1930 ), or exciting tales of the U. S. Marine Corps putting down rebellions in Central America, China, and the Pacific Islands in films like Frank Capra's Flight ( 1930 ), The Leathernecks Have Landed ( 1936 ) and Tell it to the Marines ( 1926 film ).

The " Apple Annie " story transformed into Capra's Lady For A Day ( and Pocketful of Miracles ) has long been considered a natural source for a stage musical and a number of prominent writers, including Jerry Herman, David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr ; the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb have all worked on unfinished and unrealized adaptations.

Possibly to downplay Capra's gaffe, Rogers then called third nominee George Cukor to join the two Franks on stage.

" Joseph McBride in a later biography notes that Capra's emphasis on theme rather than people was evident in the film ; he also considered the film a financial " debacle.

She then joined Glenn Ford and Ann-Margret for the Frank Capra film A Pocketful of Miracles ( 1961 ) ( a remake of Capra's 1933 film, Lady for a Day ), based on a story by Damon Runyon.

The first film was shown on the giant screen was Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen starring Barbara Stanwyck and the Music Hall became the premiere showcase for films from the RKO-Radio Studio.

In 1993 Republic won a landmark legal decision reactivating the copyright on Frank Capra's 1946 RKO film It's a Wonderful Life ( under NTA, they had already acquired the film's negative, music score, and the story on which it was based, " The Greatest Gift ").

" After a brief stint at United Artists, Bernds quit and went to work at Columbia, where he worked as sound man on many of Frank Capra's ' 30s classics.