Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success [Paperback]

Joseph McBride (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2000

Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra's life resembled his beloved films: as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life, a man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs. But as Joseph McBride reveals in this meticulously researched, definitive biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra's response to being considered a "subversive" during the post-World War II Red Scare, McBride adds a final chapter to his unforgettable portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hollywood's champion of the "common man" during the Depression, director Frank Capra (1897-1991) kept the American dream alive with films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life . In this captivating biography the Sicilian immigrant filmmaker, admired for the liberal and proletarian sentiments of his movies, emerges as a deeply contradictory figure. Spurning his ethnic roots, ashamed of his parents, Capra lusted to be accepted by mainstream America. He was affiliated with conservative Republicans, spied on labor in the 1930s for powerful producers and collaborated surreptitiously with the McCarthyite witch hunt. Biographer of Orson Welles, McBride presents a man seething with bitterness, rage, self-doubt and sexual anxiety with his two wives. He analyzes Capra's reactionary idealization of small-town America and the misogynist undertones of his films. In a canvas crowded with stars like Claudette Colbert, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, McBride convincingly paints a great director who lost his touch after the late 1940s, unable to adjust to postwar Hollywood or to function independently. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Capra is largely remembered today as a director whose films champion all-American optimism in a world where good ultimately triumphs. This exhaustively researched and densely--perhaps overly--detailed biography uncovers the man behind the camera and simultaneously debunks much of what Capra wrote in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title ( LJ 4/15/71). The director's flag waving concealed shame about his Sicilian heritage, writes McBride, and he was not adverse to being one of the greedy rich his films derided. The analysis of Capra's oeuvre, including his days as a gag writer, reveals much about his psyche. The author of well-regarded biographies of Howard Hawks ( Hawks on Hawks , LJ 12/15/81) and John Ford ( John Ford , Da Capo, 1975) has written the definitive work about another major American director. For general audiences. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/91.
- Roy Liebman, California State Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 799 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Revised edition (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312263244
• ISBN-13: 978-0312263249
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,072,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Biased Attack on Capra, December 22, 2000

By 

AWA (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (Paperback)

This book, though it does have much interesting detail, is essentially an attack on Frank Capra, with many dubious conclusions drawn, and is so unrelentingly negative and unfair that it at times borders on the ludicrous. The theory of the book is that Frank Capra was a pathlogical liar and unrelenting egotist, who used the talents of others to make his films and then tried to hog all the glory himself, culminating in his famous autobiography, "The Name Above the Title," which is a "self-aggrandizing fairy tale." Capra was essentially a front man for the brilliant work of screenwriter Robert Riskin, who is the main reason behind Capra's success. When you finish this book, however, you stop and say, "How did this pathetic fraud produce such a staggering array of classic films, in such a distinctive style, and in such a variety of genres (comedy, drama, documentary, and even educational films)?" None of McBride's conclusions makes the slightest bit of sense. One key flaw of the theory is that Capra's two greatest films, "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," were not written by Riskin. McBride attempts to answer this by saying that they "followed the Riskin formula," as if by watching a few Disney Classics we could each make one ourselves, simply by following the formula, as if any decent movie was ever made by a "formula." In actuality, the brilliant screenplay of "It's a Wonderful Life" bears little resemblance to anything written by Riskin, although Capra's directorial style is easily recognizable (his style is almost as easily identifiable as Hitchcock's). The fact that Capra made many great films without Riskin (The Strong Man, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Arsenic and Old Lace, State of the Union, Why We Fight series, the Bell Science series, and the two classics mentioned above), while Riskin made none without Capra, though he was given the opportunity to direct his own material, should seem to be a telling blow.

If you read Capra's own book after reading this one, you will be surprised to discover no sense of rampaging ego, but the thoughts of a rather straightforward, idealistic, and often self-deprecating person. Capra did very little research for his own book, largely relying on his wife's scrapbooks and his own memory, and so there probably are some minor factual errors, but McBride jumps on every minute inconsistency, and if Capra says one thing and some obscure person says something contradictory, he immediately and annoyingly assumes Capra is lying and the other person is telling the truth.

As an example, Capra says in his book that he graduated high school a half year early. McBride pounces on this eagerly, and says that Capra graduated on time with his class. However, we learn that Capra graduated on January 27, and didn't start college until September, so it's very easy to see how he could remember that he graduated 6 months early when recalling the events 50 years later. Capra also then says he spent 6 months working at the Western Pipe and Steel Company to earn money for college. McBride pounces again, saying that Tony Capra claims that he was the one who worked there. Later McBride ruminates about "the mysterious missing 6 months" after Capra graduated High School and ponders what he could have done in that time. Gosh, could it be that Tony Capra is the one mistaken, and that Frank did work at the factory?-such a possibility would never occur to McBride.

McBride even somberly and absurdly quotes a certain Eugene Vale, who claims that he was the man who wrote most of "The Name of Above the Title" and that he "made" Capra, as if Capra's classic films don't speak for themselves. Capra's book is great because we get to hear Capra's own opinions on various aspects of his films, not because it's brilliantly written. We're all still awaiting with bated breath the next astonishing literary production from the great Eugene Vale.

It appears that McBride's animosity toward Capra is largely due to the fact that Capra was a Republican who believed in rugged individualism and conservative values, which seems to lead McBride to think that it was therefore impossible to care about his fellow man, and that surely there must be a liberal somewhere responsible for all these powerful films.

McBride claims he wrote the book because after World War II "no other Director had such a precipitous decline" as Capra. For the record, after World War II Capra made possibly the greatest movie of all time, an outstanding political comedy-drama, two mediocre remakes of his earlier films, an enjoyable musical comedy, a disappointing musical comedy, and 4 Educational films (Out Mr. Sun, etc.) that have been beloved by schoolkids everywhere for the past 45 years.

In conclusion, it's especially galling that shortly before his final, paralyzing stroke, the 87-year old Capra was gracious enough to grant McBride a number of interviews, and supply him with information (such as his military records), while McBride (no doubt acting as servile and ingratiating as possible) knew full well that he intended to do a vicious hatchet job on him the second he could no longer defend himself.

Watch the films, read "The Name Above the Title," and don't bother with this book

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Ego Above The Title, June 30, 2000

By 

Alexander Ehrlich (Jerusalem Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frank Capra: Castastrophe of Success (Hardcover)

Poor Frank Capra who had to fall into the hands of a biographer who rejects the "Auteur" school of film theory. Capra is not a modest man and in his autobiography "The Name Above The Title" he should have given more credit to those talented people such as cinematographer John Walker who helped make so many of his finest films. But author Joseph McBride seems to have been so taken up with with Capra's egotism that it overcomes his appreciation of Capra's films. Some of McBride's criticism is simply petty such as his carping that Capra exaggerated his college grades over sixty years after the fact. It's almost as if McBride expected the director of "It's A Wonderful Life" to be as nice a guy as George Bailey.

Worse of all, Frank Capra is - gasp - a rich man. Maybe even a Republican. How can a great, humanistic film be directed by a Republican?

The book is not without some virtues. It does give a detailed and impeccably researched account of Frank Capra's life starting from his arrival in America until his reluctant and forced retirement.

In "Lost Horizon" Capra created a perfect world inhabited by less than perfect people who do not suffer in the words of wise old Change from an "excess of virtue". A biography written by someone who had a bit more tolerance for his subject's imperfections would have done a better job.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lots of research, questionable conclusions, December 12, 2006

By 

Harold Buchholz - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (Paperback)

Joseph McBride's biography of Frank Capra is good in the sense that he amassed painstaking research and shares a fair amount of it in this extensive tome. We can thank him for all of his hard work piecing together factual material surrounding the fullness of Capra's life.

He provides us just enough source material to clue us in that his conclusions about Capra are highly suspect. While I'm sure there is a darker side to Capra that is well documented here, the Frank Capra presented in this book remains to me a strange cardboard construct that McBride uses to argue some dubious points about filmmaking and politics.

His critique of Capra's films, which is one instance where we are on equal footing with the author in terms of source material, often come across as frustratingly uninsightful, even narrow-minded. The lack of insight is truly perplexing when surrounded by evidence that McBride spent thousands of hours analyzing Capra's life and work. In terms of Capra's films and their enduring appeal with millions of moviegoers, McBride to me in places comes across as dismissive, even slightly insulting to Capra and those who find worth in his works. I don't know if McBride intended to come off this way, but judging from other reviewers I'm not alone in my dismay.

Instead of presenting Capra as an enormously complex person who somehow managed to harness his strengths, hopes, fears, loves, and hatreds into vibrant, challenging cinema, McBride often paints Capra as small-minded and relying on the talents of others to succeed. McBride's views simply don't line up with the unparalleled body of work Capra has left us. This book feels like one of those tomes that tries to inform us how Shakespeare really couldn't have written all of those remarkable plays.

Many people consider It's a Wonderful Life to be one of the greatest films ever made, but McBride's coverage of it would lead you to believe it is the product of Capra's "anachronistic, and by then reactionary, thought pattern," an exposure of "how utterly distrustful Capra had become of the American public." McBride leaves more or less the last word on the film to William S. Pechter, who "noted that the supernatural resolution of Wonderful Life exposes the 'fatal weakness' of Capra's work... 'for those who can accept the realities of George Bailey's situation...and do not believe in angels...the film ends, in effect with the hero's suicide'...the film is a "dead end" for Capra.

It appears the fatal weakness is in McBride's and Pechter's inability to appreciate the soaring triumph and powerful lasting impact of this remarkable film, still touching and challenging people 60 years after its creation. If it was an ending to Capra's career, I can only suggest it was because he took filmic storytelling to a height no one has since matched. Where could he go from there? To my mind, *no one* has answered that film with a more powerful or compelling entertainment.

It's a frustration when a talented researcher takes over a biography with zeal and attention to detail but seems so unaware of many aspects of the subject's brilliance. Such is the case with The Catastrophe of Success. McBride is a smart research whiz who appears to be off the wavelength of what to my mind makes his subject so amazing.

To McBride, Frank Capra is in some form a model of human failure. While this must have been depressing to the author, who spent a remarkable seven years on this project, I have to respond by saying Capra was not a catastrophe, but an imperfect person like us all who still managed through his art to bravely push the boundaries of his own sense of idealism. In the process Capra made some remarkable films that continue to touch and challenge many, many people even today.

I hope that perhaps one day McBride will be able to open up his research archives to another biographer who has a different understanding and appreciation of Capra's works and can provide areas of insight that are lacking in this book.