Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Frank Capra, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in her first featured role. Based on the 1935 short story Opera Hat by Clarence Budington Kelland, which appeared in serial form in The American Magazine, the screenplay was written by Robert Riskin in his fifth collaboration with Frank Capra.
This was the seventh of 12 films on which Capra collaborated with screenwriter Robert Riskin, who played a key role in the development of Capra's directorial style.Their other collaborations included It Happened One Night (1934), for which Capra won Best Director and Riskin won Best Screenplay; You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Meet John Doe (1941).
Plot
During the Great Depression, Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), the co-owner of a tallow works, part-time greeting card poet, and tuba-playing inhabitant of the (fictional) hamlet of Mandrake Falls, Vermont, inherits 20 million dollars from his late uncle, Martin Semple. The scheming attorney of his uncle, John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille), locates Deeds and takes him to New York City. Cedar gives his cynical troubleshooter, ex-newspaperman Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander), the task of keeping reporters away from Deeds. Cobb is outfoxed, however, by star reporter Louise "Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), who appeals to Deeds' romantic fantasy of rescuing a damsel in distress by masquerading as a poor worker named Mary Dawson. She pretends to faint from exhaustion after "walking all day to find a job" and worms her way into his confidence. Bennett proceeds to write a series of enormously popular articles mocking Longfellow's hick ways and odd behavior, giving him the nickname "Cinderella Man."
Cedar tries to get Deeds' power of attorney in order to keep his own financial misdeeds secret. Deeds, however, proves to be a shrewd judge of character, easily fending off Cedar and other greedy opportunists. He wins Cobb's wholehearted respect and eventually Babe's love. However, when Cobb finds out Bennett's true identity and tells Deeds, who had been in love with her, he is left heartbroken and in disgust he decides to return to Mandrake Falls.
Just as Deeds is about to leave, a dispossessed farmer (John Wray) stomps into his mansion and threatens him with a gun. He expresses his scorn for the seemingly heartless, ultra-rich man, who will not lift a finger to help the multitudes of desperate poor. After the intruder comes to his senses, Deeds realizes what he can do with his troublesome fortune. He decides to provide fully equipped 10-acre farms free to thousands of homeless families if they will work the land for several years.
Alarmed at the prospect of losing control of the fortune, Cedar joins forces with Deeds' only other relative and his grasping, domineering wife in seeking to have Deeds declared mentally incompetent. Along with Babe's betrayal, this finally breaks Deeds' spirit and he sinks into a deep depression. A sanity hearing is scheduled to determine who should control the Deeds' fortune.
During his sanity hearing, things look bleak for Deeds, especially since he initially refuses to defend himself. Cedar even gets Deeds' Mandrake Falls tenantsâ€"eccentric elderly sisters Jane and Amy Faulkner (Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade)â€"to testify that Deeds is "pixilated," meaning odd like a pixie. That charge falls apart when the two spinsters, when questioned as to who else is pixilated, reply, "Why everyone, but us." After Babe convinces Deeds that she truly loves him, he systematically punches holes in Cedar's caseâ€"before actually punching Cedar in the faceâ€"and the judge declares him to be "the sanest man who ever walked into this courtroom."
Cast
- Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds
- Jean Arthur as Louise "Babe" Bennett/ Mary Dawson
- George Bancroft as MacWade
- Lionel Stander as Cornelius Cobb
- Douglass Dumbrille as John Cedar
- Raymond Walburn as Walter
- H.B. Warner as Judge May
- Ruth Donnelly as Mabel Dawson
- Walter Catlett as Morrow
- John Wray as Farmer
Production
Originally, Frank Capra intended to make Lost Horizon after Broadway Bill (1934), but lead actor Ronald Colman couldn't get out of his other filming commitments. So Capra began adapting Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The two main cast members, Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds and Jean Arthur as Louise "Babe" Bennett/Mary Dawson, were cast as production began. Capra's "first, last and only choice" for the pivotal role of the eccentric Longfellow Deeds was Gary Cooper. Due to his other film commitments, production was delayed six months before Cooper was available, incurring costs of $100,000 for the delay in filming.
Arthur was not the first choice for the role, but Carole Lombard, the original female lead, quit the film just three days before principal photography, in favor of a starring role in My Man Godfrey. The first scenes shot on the Fox Studios' New England street lot were in place before Capra found his replacement heroine in a rush screening. The opening sequences had to be reshot when Capra decided against the broad comedy approach that had originally been written.
Despite his penchant for coming in "under budget", Capra spent an additional five shooting days in multiple takes, testing angles and "new" perspectives, treating the production as a type of workshop exercise. Due to the increased shooting schedule, the film came in at $38,936 more than the Columbia budget for a total of $806,774. Throughout the pre-production and the early principal photography, the project still retained Kelland's original title, Opera Hat, although Capra tried out some other titles including A Gentleman Goes to Town and Cinderella Man before settling on a name that was the winning entry in a contest held by the Columbia Pictures publicity department.
Reception
The film was generally treated as likable fare by critics and audiences alike. Noted reviewer Graham Greene was effusive that this was Capra's finest film to date, describing Capra's treatment as "a kinship with his audience, a sense of common life, a morality..." Variety noted "a sometimes too thin structure [that] the players and director Frank Capra have contrived to convert (...) into fairly sturdy substance."
This was the first Capra film to be released separately to exhibitors and not "bundled" with other Columbia features. On paper, it was his biggest hit, easily surpassing It Happened One Night.
American Film Institute recognition
- 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #70
- 2006: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers #83
Awards
Capra won his second Academy Award for Directing in 1936 for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, while Cooper received the first of his five nominations for Best Actor. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Robert Riskin), and Best Sound Recording (John P. Livadary).
At the end of the year, the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review named "Mr. Deeds" the "Best Picture of 1936."
Adaptations
A radio adaptation of the film was originally broadcast on February 1, 1937 on Lux Radio Theater. In that broadcast, Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur and Lionel Stander reprised their roles from the 1936 film.
A short-lived ABC television series of the same name ran from 1969 to 1970, starring Monte Markham as Longfellow Deeds.
It was loosely remade as Mr. Deeds in 2002, starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder.
A mistaken belief is that a sequel called Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington was written and eventually became Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Although the latter has some similarities to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, including starring Jean Arthur and being directed by Capra, its 1939 screenplay was actually based on an out-of-print novel, The Gentleman from Montana and was an entirely unique and unrelated project.
The Bengali movie Raja-Saja (1960) starring Uttam Kumar, Sabitri Chatterjee, and Tarun Kumar, and directed by Bikash Roy was a Bengali adaptation of this film.
The 1994 comedy The Hudsucker Proxy had several plot elements borrowed from this film.
A Japanese manga adaption of the film was made in 2010 by Ogata Hiromi called Bara no Souzokunin.
Digital restoration
In 2013, digital restoration of the film to its original state was completed by Sony Colorworks. The digital images were digitally restored frame-by-frame at Prasad Corporation, to remove dirt, tears, scratches and other substances marring the surface.
Popular culture
The bucolic Vermont town of Mandrake Falls, home of Longfellow Deeds, is now considered an archetype of small town America with Kelland creating a type of "cracker-barrel" view of rural values contrasted with that of sophisticated "city folk". The word pixilated, previously limited to New England (and attested there since 1848), "had a nationwide vogue in 1936" thanks to its prominent use in the film, although its use in the screenplay may not be an accurate interpretation.
The lyrics to the 1977 Rush song "Cinderella Man" on the A Farewell to Kings album are based on the story of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
In Movie "Baby Boom" a babysitter refers to her hometown of Mandrake Falls.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at the Internet Movie Database
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at AllMovie
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at the TCM Movie Database
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at the American Film Institute Catalog
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at Virtual History
- Six Screen Plays by Robert Riskin, Edited and Introduced by Pat McGilligan, Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997 1997 - Free Online - UC Press E-Books Collection
Streaming audio
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at Lux Radio Theater: February 1, 1937
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at The Campbell Playhouse: February 11, 1940