Frank Capra on integrity and success

People know when you haven't been honest

The director of several American classics, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra was also one of the most popular directors in the thirties and forties, praised and criticized for his “sentiment.” He tells the story of his last movie, Pocketful of Miracles, in his autobiography Name Above the Title.

Capra had been pushed into a deal that gave one of his stars, the “garden-variety star” Glenn Ford, too much power, until Ford used it to force the hiring of his “young friend” Hope Lange for the main woman’s part, which cost him Shirley Jones and Helen Hayes. Earlier in his career he would have walked out, but this time he gave in. Preview audiences, Hollywood stars, and critics all thought Pocketful of Miracles would be a big hit. It bombed. Some people blamed the marketing.

To me the real cause was deeply personal, deeply moral. No one with the enormous power to speak to hundreds of millions of his fellow men for two hours, and in the dark, should speak with a forked tongue. What he says must come straight from his heart, not his wallet.

Pocketful of Miracles was not the film I set out to make; it was the picture I chose to make for fear of losing a few bucks. And by that choice I sold out the artistic integrity that had been my trademark for forty years.

As a consequence, and by some direct perception independent of any reasoning process, those who listened in the dark sensed what my lucky elves, trolls, and leprechauns had sensed when Glenn Ford made me lick his boots — I had lost that precious quality that endows dreams with purport and purpose.

I had lost my courage. Fear had tainted the aura of the hoi polloi’s hero. His “thing” with people lost its magic, and the people said, “Capra — we’ve had it from you.”

To others that belong, or aspire to belong, to that privileged group of “one man, one film” makers, I dare to say: “Don’t compromise. For only the valiant can create. Only the daring should make films. Only the morally courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow men for two hours in the dark. And only the artistically incorrupt will earn and keep the people’s trust.”

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