A depression-era touchstone, Meet John Doe is one of Academy Award winning director Frank Capra’s best films. Seizing upon all the dark feelings of resentment, poverty, and discontent of the nineteen thirties, Capra captures the Great Depression Zeitgeist and puts it directly on screen in this politically charged American film. Starring no less than the eternal Gary Cooper and sensational Barbara Stanwyck, Meet John Doe is a story of the creation of a political icon through media manipulation and public fraud. Cooper plays the American everyman who was once a baseball player but is now nothing more than a hobo on hard times. Sensing Cooper’s powerfully representative character, newspaper reporter Stanwyck teams with a fiendish politician to make Cooper into the figurehead of a new political revolution. But, in accordance with the times, Cooper finds that the politicians aren’t being honest. Taut, important, and skillfully made, Meet John Doe is a vital political film.
