Director's Cut

By JAN HERMAN

Oct. 23, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

He adored Benito Mussolini, reviled Franklin Delano Roosevelt, supported Joseph McCarthy and championed the idealism of the American dream.

That was the peculiar world of Frank Capra, one of Hollywood’s most contradictory legends, a director whose best films trumpeted the glory of the common man and whose worst betrayed the self-indulgence of an inspired hypocrite.

“Even though the facts contradict the myth, I still find the films moving,” says biographer Joseph McBride, who did more than anyone to uncover the facts in “Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success” (Simon & Schuster, 1992).

“Ironically,” he adds, “my view of his films has not changed over the years. The contradictions even make his films more interesting.”

Eleven from the 1930s and ‘40s--some representing the peak of the director’s achievement--are on view, beginning Friday, at the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar in a Centennial Salute to Frank Capra to celebrate the anniversary of his birth.

The best include “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “It Happened One Night,” “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington;” the overrated or overexposed include “Lost Horizon,” “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”; the lesser-known are “Dirigible,” “American Madness,” “The Miracle Woman” and “The Matinee Idol.”

Additionally, the tribute will feature a documentary released earlier this year about Capra’s life and career, “American Dream.” It is narrated by Ron Howard and has interviews with filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Robert Altman and actor Richard Dreyfuss, among others.

McBride, also interviewed in the documentary, gives “American Dream” high marks for its analysis and appreciation of Capra’s pictures.

But he gives it low marks for its lack of candor regarding the director’s politics and for perpetuating myths that Capra, who died in 1991, created about himself through the press and in his autobiography, “The Name Above the Title” (MacMillan, 1971).

“The documentary’s biggest flaw,” McBride said recently, “is that it omits the fact that Capra was an informer” during the blacklist era “and that it tries to rehabilitate his image” by glossing over the real reasons for the decline of his career.

“Capra turned in his friends to save his own skin,” McBride said, recalling the 1940s and ‘50s, when Hollywood studios refused to employ members of the Communist Party or anyone accused of being a Communist. (They became employable if they renounced their affiliation, real or not, and “purged” themselves by accusing others.)

“The documentary does not level with the audience that Capra was a conservative,” McBride said. “It’s a typical attempt to make him a liberal humanist, which he really was not, even though his films are.”

The author, whose monumental biography ought to have dispelled any lingering halo, says the liberal humanism of Capra’s pictures largely came from screenwriters Robert Riskin and Sidney Buchman, who between them wrote seven of the 11 films in the upcoming tribute.

Complementing his politics, Capra’s authoritarian streak and personal insecurities--he suffered from depression--combined to turn him into a credit hog. He became so egotistical that when he acknowledged his artistic collaborators at all it was usually with faint praise.

“Capra basically exiled himself from Hollywood,” McBride said. “After he informed on people, he deliberately wouldn’t work with liberals. So he cut himself off from the best writers. And he tried to write his own scripts, which was a disaster.”

Capra’s pictures reflected the temper of their times in large measure because the director was an opportunist, McBride adds.

“He was led to the ideals his films espoused by people like Riskin. He was like Woody Allen’s Zelig, a chameleon. In the ‘40s he tried to backtrack from what he said in the ‘30s. And then in the ‘70s, with his autobiography, he was a great liberal again because that was popular. He put out a false version of himself, and the press cooperated because his stories seemed plausible.”

As harsh as that sounds, McBride emphasizes that Capra’s pictures at their best are unsurpassed in their depiction of the common man struggling against overwhelming odds. Even when they seem to vacillate, he says, they glorify the common man’s triumph by showing its difficulty.

“It’s a strange mix,” said McBride, who is scheduled to teach a course on Capra at UC Irvine beginning in January. “His films are liberal and conservative. They don’t only glorify the common man; they also distrust him. They show how the common man often becomes a mob. Politically he distrusted the average guy, but emotionally he could relate to him.”

What made Capra’s films great in the ‘30s most of all was their realistic social commentary, McBride notes, a quality his films tended to shy away from later on.

For example, despite its sharp cynicism about the ills of American society immediately following World War II, “It’s a Wonderful Life” eventually dissolves into the sentimentalism of the supernatural to save its hero, George Bailey, from suicide.

“It had nothing to do with real life,” McBride said, which may help explain why the picture, which has come to epitomize the term “Capra-esque,” met a lukewarm reception on its release in 1946.

Moreover, “once Capra was critically acclaimed, he became self-indulgent,” McBride said. “He started going over budget on all his films. That hurt his career. He liked to say he never shot a lot of film, but that was a lie.”

Capra’s profligacy became a problem as early as 1937 with “Lost Horizon,” which cost so much that it ruptured Capra’s relationship with Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohen and marked a turning point in Capra’s career.

“Nobody realized how expensive that film was,” McBride said. “ ‘Lost Horizon’ was Capra’s ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ It cost $2.6 million, an awful lot of money at the time.”

Capra tried to become an independent producer after the war, founding a short-lived venture, Liberty Films, with fellow directors George Stevens and William Wyler. But his nerve failed, along with the financing.

Although Capra tried to spread the idea that it was he who rejected the studios, the truth was nobody wanted him. Unlike George Bailey, Capra had no transforming angel to save him from himself.

“Times had passed him by,” McBride said, “and there was nothing he could do about it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Centennial Film Salute to Frank Capra

Port Theatre, 2905 E. Coast Highway, Newport Beach

$4.50-$6. (714) 673-6260

Friday

“American Dream”

“You Can’t Take It With You”

Saturday

“American Dream”

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”

Sunday