Mr Deeds Goes to Town

Buy This Item Mr Deeds Goes to Town by Sony Pictures  Available from Amazon  $14.95  on 8-28-2008     <I>Mr. Deeds Goes to Town</I> is Frank Capra's classic screwball comedy about a village innocent who inherits $20 million, only to discover it's more trouble than it's worth. The screwball in question is Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small-town greeting-card poet and tuba player transplanted to the big city to administer his newly inherited wealth, where fast-pattering, wised-up cynics, sneering society denizens, and corrupt lawyers lord it over the ingenuous and straightforward. Deeds's idiosyncrasies are amply magnified in the tabloids by journalist "Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), dating Deeds as a cover, only to discover she's the sap when she falls irresistibly for him. But the damage has been done, when Babe's column is used by a pack of corrupt lawyers, Cedar, Cedar, Cedar & Budington, to prove Deeds mentally unfit. The miracle of this unforgettable comedy is how it embraces dark material, calling into question some common assumptions about capitalism while maintaining an approachable atmosphere of light comedy, and deceptively so. You'll be so pixilated by its charm, you won't rest until you've doodled your way to a rhyme for "Budington." <I>--Jim Gay</I> Reader Reviews This is "Capra-corn" at its most sublime as this 1936 comedy is still one of the legendary director's best works due primarily to the sterling, career-defining performances of Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. In the 1930's and 40's, Frank Capra's oeuvre was the humanistic picture, inspirational to the common folk reeling from the Great Depression and later World War II. Written by his frequent (and later quite embittered) collaborator, Robert Riskin, this was his first film fully in this direction after his Oscar-winning success with the quintessential runaway heiress comedy, 1934's It Happened One Night. It's intriguing to know that Capra only made this film because he could not start production on the far more ambitious Lost Horizon as scheduled and fit this in only when Cooper became available for the title role. Cooper portrays Longfellow Deeds, a young poet and volunteer fireman in a small Vermont town who suddenly inherits $20 million, a huge fortune at the time, from a distant uncle who died in an automobile crash in Italy. Having never been outside of his hometown, Deeds is thrust into the limelight and moves to Manhattan to take care of his uncle's estate and related business interests. The first half has all the trappings of a "fish out of water" situation (which Capra pretty much perfected with this film), but it doesn't take Deeds long to figure out that the people around him are not as sincere as they want him to think. One exception, he believes, is Mary Dawson, a small-town girl looking for a job before she faints from hunger. He falls in love with her not realizing that she is really ace reporter Babe Bennett out to land a juicy newspaper story about Deeds' "Cinderella Man" exploits. Tired of the selfish cynicism surrounding him, Deeds gives away his fortunes to establish a program to help poor farmers. In response, his advisors attempt to have him put away for insanity. Previously a stoic straight arrow in primarily westerns and female-oriented weepies, Cooper emerges here as a multi-dimensional leading man with a deft comedy touch, while the throaty-voiced Arthur (in a role abandoned by no less than Carole Lombard) shows her natural élan as a tough newspaperwoman who discovers her vulnerability thanks to Deeds' magnanimous gestures. It's no wonder these two returned to Capra's hands in subsequent features - he in Meet John Doe, she in You Can't Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The top-notch supporting cast is headed by Lionel Stander as Deeds' confidante (a role similar to the agent he played in the 1937 A Star Is Born); H.B. Warner as the sympathetic Judge May (who would later return to Capra for Lost Horizon as the wizened Chang and for It's A Wonderful Life as the drunken druggist who slaps George on his deaf ear); and Douglass Dumbrille as the nasty Cedar. The 2006 DVD has a scene-specific commentary track, fairly interesting, from the director's son, Frank Capra, Jr., who is also featured in a ten-minute short about the film. Several vintage trailers of the senior Capra's films are included though surprisingly not one for Deeds.

Mr Deeds Goes to Town Available from Amazon Price: $14.95 Updated on 8-28-2008.

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