In The Times Of Class-Struggle- Not-With Barbara Stanwyck And Gary Cooper’s Meet John Doe In Mind 

 

DVD Review

 

By Sam Lowell 

 

Meet John Doe, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper directed Frank Capra, 1941

No question during the late 1930s, early 1940s before Pearl Harbor closed everything down but patriotic stuff and shoulder to the wheel beat the hellish Nips and Nazis took over (an admirable goal the question was what was to happen with this good green earth after those bastards got “tanked”) there was a certain amount of social commentary in Hollywood films reflecting an understanding that while the movie-goers wanted their plots sugar-coated they could stand up to a little good-natured fun about their desperate situations toward the end of the Great Depression. Warner Brothers for a time had serious social dramas by the score about working conditions, the plight of the average Joe and about the lives of men and woman of common clay. The serious social commentary work maybe didn’t last long once the class struggle heated up-when those of ordinary clay in places like Chicago, Detroit, Akron got angry and decided to do something about their fates instead of just talking about it on the assembly line or tool shed and the movie producers started seeing “reds under all the beds” and reined in the serious stuff. The good-natured fun of the romantic comedy if sometimes acerbic and arcane as the film under review, Meet John Doe, demonstrates in full never lost its foothold though.             

No question too lots of people who never thought they would see the unemployment line or the soup kitchen got a rude comeuppance in the 1930s. Take a guy like John Doe, not his real name, played by Gary Cooper whose wing gave out (his pitching arm gave out for those less sanguine sports aficionados) and wound up on the scape heap doing the best he could which was not too good when the deal went down. And like a lot of guys (gals too but we will concentrate on the guys here) who hit the roads during that time he ran into a guy, the Colonel, played by Walter Brennan, who became his road buddy, who tried might and main to keep him on an even keel (to no avail as one would suspect). Together they did the best they could until one day they heard, who knows how they heard but the “railroad jungle” grapevine like the teenage schoolboy and girl grapevine was pretty accurate, would be the envy of every CIA and NSA operative that a newspaper, a big city newspaper was looking for the “John Doe” anonymous author of a “suicide” note. Said in the note he was going to jump off the Empire State Building in hectic New Jack City to protest the inequities of the world. Was going to “atone” for the sins of mankind if you want top to put a slightly different spin on the matter. So penniless and not proud our John Doe (remember not his real name) showed up at the newspaper office with about ten thousand other shiftless bums to claim the “prize.”

Of course neither he nor the others knew that this “suicide note” was the dreamt up story from the imagination of a newspaper gal, Ann, who had been sacked as “redundant” by her employer’s agent and was fighting to get her job back. Her “idea” was to drive up circulation by getting the readers of the day to follow the exploits of the soon-to-be suicide John Doe-the people’s avenger (sound familiar with the doings of the lords of the fourth estate), a living symbol of what bothered and bewildered them about everyday life. So John met Ann. John agreed, pressed under by his then current bedraggled condition, to go along with the gag. And so the fireworks begun. You know the fireworks between the fetching Ann and the good-looking silent type John.

That, in the end, was the real story line but get this John started buying into the gag, decided that since people were taking him seriously he would act as a conduit for their frustrations, began some boosteristic clubs to express social solidarity. But John Doe got too big for his britches, began to take in an idea that things could change if people of ordinary clay stuck together. That however ran afoul of the intentions of the newspaper boss (played by perennial 1930s business executive heavy, Edward Arnold) to use the clubs as the springboard for his own political ambitions. One night at a big-time rally John was exposed as “fraud” and the whole thing seemed to collapse over his head. Being a stand-up guy John Doe decided to take that dreamt up leap to maintain his credibility. Go to it John, make the bosses pay.

Wait a minute didn’t you read above that this was a Frank Capra romantic comedy. No way was John leaping off anything higher that the steps of a bus. Not as long as the now smitten Ann had a breath in her body. Naturally although the class struggle took a back seat in the love business Ann stopped John in his tracks before he did anything foolish. And she did. That sounds familiar too. This one you want to watch as you see pros going through their paces in one of the top snappy and witty romantic comedies ever. Kudos Frank, Gary, Barbara, Walter and hell even Edward.