Frank Capra

Frank Capra was an Italian-born American film director whose career connected silent comedy, Depression-era Hollywood, wartime filmmaking and the postwar cinema. Born in Bisacquino, Sicily, on May 18, 1897, he came to the United States in 1903. His later films included It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. These titles offer different entry points into a career that extended well beyond a single holiday favorite.

Capra graduated in chemical engineering from Throop College of Technology, now Caltech, in 1918. He then served in the U.S. Army during the First World War. His military service qualified him for a naturalization procedure available to veterans, and he became a U.S. citizen in Los Angeles on June 4, 1920. A surviving certificate records Frank Russell Capra, formerly known as Francesco Capra, and identifies Italy as his former allegiance. The document provides a direct connection between his Italian origins and American citizenship.

His path into filmmaking included work as a gag writer and director for Mack Sennett before he joined Columbia Pictures. During the 1930s, he directed comedies and dramas in which personal conviction met wealth, public reputation or political power. His three directing Oscars were for It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can't Take It with You. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, released in 1939, belongs to the same productive period, but was not one of those three directing wins.

During World War II, Capra returned to military service and worked on the Why We Fight series. These government films were made to explain the war and support the Allied cause. They are part of the history of wartime persuasion as well as documentary filmmaking; viewing them today calls for attention to their purpose and historical setting.

After the war, It's a Wonderful Life appeared in 1946. Its development was collaborative. The Library of Congress preserves material connecting Philip Van Doren Stern's short story The Greatest Gift to the film and describes the work of screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett on the adaptation. Capra's direction was one part of that larger creative effort.

Capra received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1982 and died in 1991. His papers at Wesleyan University include annotated shooting scripts, correspondence, diaries, photographs and documentation of his military work. Those records allow readers to explore both the finished films and the choices, revisions and relationships behind them.