1939 was quite a year for movies.
Gone with the Wind adapted the story of Scarlett O’Hara and her plantation dramatically for the big screen, telling the story with grand, sweeping visuals that took the Oscars by storm. The Wizard of Oz took the fairy tale of a girl from Kansas transported to a magical land and turned it into a classic showcase of talent and spectacle that has remained acclaimed to this day. Stagecoach re-invented the western and put an actor named John Wayne on the map of Hollywood.
And a film called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington won ‘Best Original Story’ at the Oscars, and nothing else.
By 1939, director Frank Capra was already established fairly decently in Hollywood. After inventing the modern romcom with It Happened One Night in 1934, and creating the heartwarming story of a bumbling bumpkin inheriting a fortune in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra hit it big in 1938, with his adaptation of the Broadway show: You Can’t Take It With You. By 1939, he was prepped and ready for another smash hit.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, originally meant to be the sequel to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, seemed to fit the bill well enough.
Released in October of 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was a box office success, capitalizing on Capra’s previous hits and catapulting lead actor James “Jimmy” Stewart to stardom, solidifying Jefferson Smith as one of the most iconic characters in American cinema. For years following its release in that crowded 1939 movie season, the film has been beloved as a classic Hollywood masterpiece, another triumph amidst 1939’s impressive catalog. Nominated for eleven Oscars but only winning one, the film is now heralded as an American paragon, a patriotic film, among some of the greatest films of all time, and looking back, it can be easy to see why that would be so.
Interestingly enough, at the time of its release, this wasn’t the case.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington debuted in Constitution Hall in Washington, and was immediately attacked by the press for an anti-American portrayal of politics, politicians, and Washington in general. There was even a concern about it’s showing overseas giving the ‘wrong impression’ of America, and yet, when American films began to be banned in German-occupied France, interestingly enough, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was chosen as the last film many of these theaters showed.
Although the film was considered a box office success when it first came out, (the second highest grossing film of 1939 and third highest grossing film of the 1930s, behind Gone with the Wind and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), and critical opinion (as well as audience opinion) outside of DC seemed favorable, it’s difficult to overlook the dark cloud that hung over it’s initial reception in the city it focuses the most on. Once one sees the film, it can be easy to see why there was such a ruckus raised, but still, one has to wonder, was one reaction or the other a bit extreme?
After all that hubbub, over eighty years later, the film has a reputation for being an American classic, one of Frank Capra’s best pictures, named as one of the best films of the prestigious 1939 movie season, even admitted into the United States National Film Registry in 1989 due to being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Ironically, even the government, who took the film so badly at first, eventually came to value it as a masterpiece.
So, what changed?
A lot of things. You can point to the ever-turbulent political landscape of post-Vietnam America, to the Watergate scandal’s removal of trust in America’s leaders, or the evolving tastes of the average movie-goer as to why it is that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, despite itself not changing over the years, seems to have inspired such a wild turnaround in public opinion, becoming a juggernaut representation of American ideals and optimism against all odds.
The question is, why?
Was it the film’s biting political satire? The iconic performances by classic actors? The sharp script brought to life by a director that has long since been considered a master at his craft?
These are all the questions we’re going to be taking a look at in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned, and thanks so much for reading.
Twentieth Century Fun With Film 