Edna May Oliver as Hildegarde Withers and James Gleason as Inspector Oscar Piper in the supremely enjoyable Withers series.

Meet John Doe (1941) Frank Capra

November 28th 2023

James Gleason, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper and director Frank Capra on the set of 𝑴𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝑱𝒐𝒉𝒏 𝑫𝒐𝒆 (1941).

The night of the hunter, 1955

Films Watched in 2023:

08. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) - Dir. Frank Capra

Oscar Nominee of All Time Tournament: Group A, Round 1

(info about nominees under the poll)

MARE WINNINGHAM (1959-)

NOMINATIONS:

Supporting- 1995 for Georgia

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JAMES GLEASON (1882-1959)

NOMINATIONS:

Supporting- 1941 for Here Comes Mr. Jordan

James Gleason-Zasu Pitts "El detective y su compañera" (The plot thickens) 1936, de Ben Holmes.

Lily Collins and James Gleason. Rules Don't Apply (2016)

Down to Earth (1947)

Walter Brennan, Gary Cooper, Irving Bacon, Barbara Stanwyck, and James Gleason in Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941)

Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod LaRocque, Irving Bacon, Regis Toomey. Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell Sr. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Stephen Goosson. Film editing: Daniel Mandell. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.

Meet John Doe opens with reporters and editors at a newspaper being fired because the owner wants it to be, as the paper's new slogan says, "streamlined ... for a streamlined age." And the plot involves a very wealthy man who uses a phony populist approach to try to get himself elected president. Who says an 82-year-old movie isn't relevant today? But the movie eventually falls apart because Frank Capra can't get his story to make sense. I never watch a Capra film without wanting to throw something at the screen, and that includes the beloved It's a Wonderful Life (1946), which makes me faintly nauseated. Meet John Doe has a few wonderful things going for it, principally the opportunity to see Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper at their starry prime. (Though they were much better in a movie they made together in the same year, Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire.) Experience tells, and by 1941 Stanwyck had been making movies for more than a decade, and Cooper had been in films since the mid-1920s. They had the kind of easy, spontaneous, natural manner on screen that could steady even the most wobbly vehicle. Meet John Doe starts to wobble about halfway through, when it becomes apparent that there is no easy way Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin can handle the director's muddled populist sentiments: Capra always wants to celebrate the "common man" in his movies, but it was clear to anyone on the brink of the entry of the United States into World War II that the common man was a dangerous force to work with. So what we have in the film is an odd mix of sentimentality and cynicism. Stanwyck's character, Ann Mitchell, starts as a cynic, concocting a sob story about a "John Doe" who threatens to commit suicide because he's fed up with a corrupt society. She does it to save her job at the newspaper, and the equally cynical managing editor Henry Connell (James Gleason) decides to run with it. That's when they find a homeless man (Cooper) to pretend to be the real John Doe. When he turns out to be an inspiration to the "common man" of Capra's fantasies, bringing about peace and harmony across the land, the sentimentality takes over, converting Ann and Connell, but also playing into the hands of the paper's owner, D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold) , who tries to use John Doe's followers for political gain. And when John Doe is exposed as a fake, the adoring millions suddenly turn into a raging mob. If Capra weren't so invested in making things turn out all right, he could have created a powerful satire, but he couldn't find an ending to the film that would satisfy both his Hollywood-nurtured sentimentality and the logic of the plot.

The Night of the Hunter

1955. Film Noir Thriller

By Charles Laughton

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden, Don Beddoe, Peter Graves, Gloria Castillo, Paul Bryar

Country: United States

Language: English

James Gleason (May 23, 1882 – April 12, 1959)

Suddenly (1954) Lewis Allen

February 25th 2024

Round 1, match 30

James Gleason vs Verna Felton

The Last Hurrah (1958) dir. John Ford