Frank Capra

The Germania carried the Capras out of Palermo in 1903, 13 days in steerage that Capra remembered as the most degrading place a person could be. In Los Angeles he sold newspapers after school for ten years, played banjo in nightclubs, waited tables and cleaned power-plant engines to pay for college, and took a chemical engineering degree in 1918 from the school then called Throop and now Caltech. It bought him nothing. He became a citizen in 1920, then spent years in San Francisco flophouses and on freight trains, living off poker, farm work and oil-stock commissions. In 1922 he read about a studio opening in an abandoned gymnasium, called on the owner, implied he had directed before, and left with 75 dollars and a one-reel silent to make.

Harry Cohn ran Columbia Pictures on Poverty Row, and put Capra's name above the title, a first in the business. It Happened One Night took all five major Academy Awards for 1934, the first film ever to do it. Mr Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You and Mr Smith Goes to Washington followed — three Best Director Oscars in five years. Within four days of Pearl Harbor he left Hollywood for a major's commission and spent the war on Why We Fight, seven films ordered by George Marshall to tell soldiers why they were in uniform.

Capra-corn was a critics' word in his own lifetime, and it has always fit badly. It's a Wonderful Life is a suicide narrative — a man on a bridge in the snow, wishing he had never been born — and Meet John Doe ends with its hero on a roof, about to jump. The politics fit no better. Capra was a conservative Republican who had opposed the New Deal, while the New Deal Democrat writing his sharpest dialogue was Robert Riskin. HUAC never called him, but to clear himself of disloyalty he named past collaborators to the FBI and an Army security board as suspected Communists. And his 1971 memoir, The Name Above the Title, claims an authorship that Joseph McBride's 1992 biography argues at length was never his alone.

It's a Wonderful Life lost money in 1946 and helped finish Liberty Films, the independent company Capra had built with William Wyler and George Stevens. In 1974 the American copyright went unrenewed, a clerical error at the distributor, and the picture fell into the public domain. Local stations could run it for nothing, and every December they did, until the flop had become the American Christmas. Republic Pictures clawed the rights back in 1993 on a derivative-work argument, by which time the habit was fixed. Capra had a first stroke in 1985 and died in his sleep at La Quinta, California, on September 3, 1991, at 94.

Frank Capra's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Fultah Fisher's Boarding House film
  His first film, shot in two days for 1,700 dollars and sold for 3,500 1922
• It Happened One Night film
  Written by Robert Riskin. The first film to win all five major Oscars 1934
• You Can't Take It With You film
  Best Picture, and his third Best Director award in five years 1938
• Mr Smith Goes to Washington film
  Ambassador Joseph Kennedy asked Columbia not to show it in Europe 1939
• Why We Fight film
  Seven Army orientation films. Prelude to War won the 1942 documentary Oscar 1942
• It's a Wonderful Life film
  A box-office failure that outlived every hit he made 1946

• May 18, 1897 aged 0 Born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, Sicily The youngest of seven children of a fruit grower.
• 1903 aged ~6 The family crosses to New York in steerage aboard the Germania The crossing took 13 days below deck. They settled on the east side of Los Angeles.
• 1918 aged ~21 Takes a chemical engineering degree from Throop, now Caltech He paid for it with a banjo, a laundry job and a power plant.
• 1922 aged ~25 Talks his way into directing a one-reeler with no experience Fultah Fisher's Boarding House, for a studio in an abandoned San Francisco gymnasium.
• February 27, 1935 aged 37 It Happened One Night sweeps all five major Academy Awards Picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay. No film had done it before.
• December 1941 aged 44 Quits Hollywood for an Army commission within four days of Pearl Harbor At 44 he was not required to serve. He came out a colonel.
• December 20, 1946 aged 49 It's a Wonderful Life is released and does not make its money back Nominated for five Academy Awards and beaten in every one.
• 1974 aged ~77 The copyright lapses and the film enters the public domain Television stations could run it free, and did, every December for two decades.
• September 3, 1991 aged 94 Dies in his sleep at La Quinta, California, at 94 A heart attack, six years after the first of a series of strokes.

• James Stewart 1908–1997
  The everyman of American movies, and a combat bomber pilot who rarely mentioned it. directed
• Cary Grant 1904–1986
  The definitive Hollywood leading man, and one of the first stars to break the studio contract system. directed
• George C. Marshall 1880–1959
  Army chief of staff who organized U.S. victory in World War II and later designed the Marshall Plan. served under
• John Ford 1894–1973
  Director of Westerns and Depression dramas who won four directing Academy Awards. rival for the record
• Elia Kazan 1909–2003
  Directed A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and On the Waterfront, and named names to HUAC. named names in the same years
• Walt Disney 1901–1966
  Animator and business magnate who created Mickey Mouse and built the world's largest entertainment empire. worked with in wartime