Meet John Doe
| Meet John Doe | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Frank Capra |
| Produced by | Frank Capra |
| Screenplay by | Robert Riskin |
| Story by | Robert Presnell, Sr. |
| Based on |
A Reputation 1922 story in Century Magazine by Richard Connell |
| Starring |
Gary Cooper Barbara Stanwyck |
| Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| Cinematography | George Barnes |
| Edited by | Daniel Mandell |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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122 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
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 paper's wealthy owner. It became a box office hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story. It was ranked #49 in AFI's 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 wouldn't allow the film to be shown until the production closed.
Infuriated at being told to write one final column after being laid off from her newspaper job, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) prints a letter from a fictional unemployed "John Doe" threatening suicide on Christmas Eve in protest of society's ills. When the letter causes a sensation among readers, and the paper's competition suspects a fraud and starts to investigate, editor Henry Connell (James Gleason) is persuaded to rehire Mitchell, who schemes to boost the newspaper's sales by exploiting the fictional John Doe. From a number of derelicts who show up at the paper claiming to have written the original letter, Mitchell and Connell hire John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former baseball player and tramp in need of money to repair his injured arm (by Bonesetter Brown), to play the role of John Doe. Mitchell starts to pen a series of articles in Doe's name, elaborating on the original letter's ideas of society's disregard for people in need.
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Wikipedia