Meet John Doe

Meet John Doe is a 1941 American comedy drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra, and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The film is about a grassroots political campaign created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist with the involvement of a hired homeless man and pursued by the papers wealthy owner. It became a box office hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story. It was ranked 49 in AFIs 100 Years... 100 Cheers. In 1969, the film entered the public domain in the USA due to the claimants failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after release. It was the first of two features Capra made for Warner Brothers, after he left Columbia Pictures. His second film for Warners was an adaptation of the Broadway play Arsenic and Old Lace and was filmed in 1941 but not released until 1944 because the producers of the play wouldnt allow the film to be shown until the production closed.

Willoughby gets 50, a new suit of clothes, and a plush hotel suite with his tramp friend The Colonel Walter Brennan, who launches into an extended diatribe against the heelots, lots of heels who incessantly focus on getting money from others. Proposing to take Doe national via the radio, Mitchell is given 100 a week by the newspapers publisher, D. B. Norton Edward Arnold, to write radio speeches for Willoughby. Meanwhile, Willoughby is offered a 5,000 bribe from a rival newspaper to admit the whole thing was a publicity stunt, but ultimately turns it down and delivers the speech Mitchell has written for him instead. Afterward, feeling conflicted, he runs away, riding the rails with the Colonel until they reach Millsville. John Doe is recognized at a diner and brought to City Hall, where hes met by Bert Hanson Regis Toomey, who explains how he was inspired by Does words to start a John Doe club with his neighbors.The John Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a broad grassroots movement whose simple slogan is, Be a better neighbor. However, Norton secretly plans to channel support for Doe into support for his own national political ambitions. When a John Doe rally is scheduled, with John Doe clubs from throughout the country in attendance, Norton instructs Mitchell to write a speech for Willoughby in which he announces the foundation of a new political party and endorses Norton as its presidential candidate. On the night of the rally, Willoughby, who has come to believe in the John Doe philosophy himself, learns of Nortons treachery from a drunken Connell. He denounces Norton and tries to expose the plot at the rally, but Norton speaks first, exposing Doe as a fake and claiming to have been deceived, like everyone else, by the staff of the newspaper. Despondent at letting his nowangry followers down, Willoughby plans to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the City Hall on Christmas Eve, as indicated in the original John Doe letter. Mit

Source: Wikipedia