mmallon4 Sadly Meet John Doe appears to be an uncared about film falling into the public domain. I've previously wondered if this film could have the power to inspire real life John Doe clubs, like Fight Club inspiring real life fight clubs. Meet John Doe is the ancestor to film's like A Face in the Crowd and Network, chronicling the rise and fall of a media built character. Meet John Doe is not thought of as a conspiracy/paranoia film but is a few actions scenes away from being a conspiracy thriller. After watching you'll start feeling more like tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist untrusting of government and the establishment. John Doe is a Christ like figure; he preaches loving thy neighbour, when he is disgraced a newspaper editor proclaims "chalk one up for the Pontius Pilates of the world" and even plans to sacrifice himself on Christmas day. On top of that, Barbara Stanwyck's speech at the end in which she tells John he doesn't have to die for the idea of the John Doe movement - that somebody else already did - the first John Doe and he has been keeping the idea alive for 2000 years, all while the Christmas bells ring. Classic Hollywood films sure love their hard hitting symbolism and metaphors. Barbara Stanwyck is a phenomenon here with so much life and energy she can make any bit of exposition entertaining. As for Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan in of their many film pairings; what is it makes them a great duo? Perhaps it's just the humorous interactions of two folksy Americans. Cooper's boyish charm is on full display here, such his baseball pitching in a hotel room to his curious on look at a naked statuette. Meet John Doe is one of the finest performances he ever gave with his outburst at the dinner meeting making the hairs on my neck stand up. Walter Brennan's The Colonel on the other hand doesn't trust any media, authority or society in general. He's comically cynical in the extreme and probably be a conspiracy theorist if he had lived in later decades. Throughout the film he refers to others as "helots"; state owned serfs of the ancient Spartans ("When you become a guy with a bank account, they got you, yes sir, they got you").Although the John Doe movement claims the John Does are inheriting the Earth, the movement is funded by a corporation; so did they not see someone like D.B Norton taking advantage of them? Edward Arnold as D.B Norton is one scary, menacing guy who is complete with his own personal army force. He defiantly gives of the Hitler vibes and yes, as I write this in 2016 I also get the Donald Trump vibes. When he sees his servants listening to Doe's speech on the radio and applauding, he realises the political power he can have if he can get John Doe on his side. Under a scheme to buy his way to power he uses the John Doe movement to further his own agenda, to create a political party of which he leads in order to become President of the United States. His description that he plans to create "a new order of things" and "the American people need an iron hand and discipline" sounds like he has the intent of turning the country into a fascist dictatorship. There's no doubt that Meet John Doe among other things was an argument against American isolationism in the war.Another striking moment of Meet John Doe is the monologue given by Bert Hanson, the soda jerker (Regis Toomey) on how little we know about our neighbours and how a failure to get the whole picture leads to misconceptions of other people. It's true in real life, people you live next to for years and you never contact them: perhaps the guy next door isn't a bad egg.Many of Capra's films showcase the people's need for a leader (Mr Deeds, Mr Smith or George Bailey) and in turn they appear to be clueless and misguided with one (think of Pottersvillie in It's a Wonderful Life) in a showcase of Capra's darker side. Here the public buying up what the media tells them such as when Norton exposes John Doe for being an apparent fraud in one of the movie's most powerful scenes as the movie captures so vividly the destruction of a dream. As dark as the movie's ending is, it still remains optimistic in which the fight goes on ("there you are Norton, the people!").

donjeffries "Meet John Doe" would be the finest movie ever made, in my opinion, except for the ending. Director Frank Capra filmed several different endings, and probably chose the best one, but ultimately found them all lacking in some way. I share his view, but even without a satisfying climax, "Meet John Doe" represents the motion picture industry at its absolute best. Gary Cooper is perfect as Long John Willoughby, a homeless ex-baseball pitcher with a bum arm. Walter Brennan turns in perhaps his greatest role, as "The Colonel," a grumpy fellow who calls people "Healots" and utters the memorable line, "I know the world's been shaved by a drunken barber." Barbara Stanwyck, as always, turns in a compelling performance. Capra invariably supplied his movies with a wealth of strong background characters, and "Meet John Doe" is no exception. Regis Toomey, at one time a leading man in the early talkies, is particularly good as Bert the Soda Jerk. The script sets up one of the most intriguing premises imaginable; reporter Stanwyck, in a bid to save her job and build circulation, invents a character, "John Doe," who threatens to jump off the roof of the highest building in town on Christmas Eve, if people don't start being nicer to each other. His column "I Protest," becomes so popular that the newspaper has to produce an actual "John Doe," and Cooper wins the part. Gradually, the naive, well meaning Cooper begins to believe in what "John Doe" is saying, and falls in love with Stanwyck, who has been co-opted by powerful forces, led by the dastardly Edward Arnold, playing the evil tycoon Norton. James Gleason is great here, as the drunken editor who tries to warn Cooper that Stanwyck is a phony. He's perfect for Capra's type of movie, so it's a surprise that this is the only one he ever appeared in. The drama in this film is everywhere; Cooper's affection for Stanwyck, whose hard boiled heart begins to melt, the burgeoning populist "John Doe" political movement, and the uncertain resolution to "John Doe's" dilemma. As it becomes obvious that people are not going to start treating each other better, the question becomes- will Cooper actually jump on Christmas Eve? Does he still believe in an ideology that Stanwyck created, for dishonest and cynical reasons? "Meet John Doe" features Capra's typical dark look at humanity, as exemplified by Stanwyck's deviousness, and the ugly mob mentality of the "John Doe" supporters as they turn on Cooper. However, again as always, Capra turns that pessimistic view into a fairy tale-like optimism, as Stanwyck comes to believe in Cooper and thus her own philosophy, and the mob realizes realizes the error of its ways. In Capra's films, no matter how extensive the corruption appears, justice always triumphs and the little guy always wins. Thus, it was predictable that Capra would choose the happiest ending possible, with Cooper being saved from jumping at the last minute, by an ill Stanwyck and the mob, represented by Toomis's soda jerk and his wife, as Gleason utters the line, "There you go, Norton- the people! Try and lick that!" I suppose there was really no adequate way to resolve a plot line like this, and Capra did the best he could. Regardless, "Meet John Doe" is head and shoulders above almost any other film Hollywood has ever produced.

palmiro This movie couldn't be more salient and relevant to our times. The "John Doe Clubs" had the appearance of embodying the disgruntled sentiments of the "Little Man", just like the "Tea Party Movement" today (which one quipster rightly has called "an exercise in mass false consciousness"). These movements of the "little man" have a long history in the US and Europe (in the US, the "Know-Nothings" of the 1850s & Father Coughlin of the 1930s, in France, the "Poujadistes", in Italy the "Qualunquisti"); and all of them end up diverting attention away from the real enemies of little people, the fat cats at the top--in Capra's movie wonderfully incarnated in Edward Arnold's character, D.B.Norton (the real-life counterparts today to D.B. Norton, and who've done a fab job of manipulating "the little people", are the Koch brothers). Capra rightly sensed that the little man's rage at being buffeted about by forces bigger than himself was exploited by the fascist movements of Europe to create right-wing mass parties which, in the end, served to protect the privileges of the wealthiest social classes from revolutionary egalitarian movements.

Robert J. Maxwell It's best to think of this as a Great Depression story, when it was probably conceived. Barbara Stanwyck is a reporter who tries to keep her job by concocting a letter from a nonexistent "John Doe" who is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. So he's going to jump off a skyscraper at midnight on Christmas Eve. When the letter is published, the public reacts with excitement. They vow support for the phantom Doe. Stanwyck's editor, James Gleason, decides that the newspaper and its owner, Edward Arnold, should go with the flow and hire some bum off the street to play John Doe.They pick the friendly, innocent Gary Cooper, ex-minor-league baseball pitcher, accompanied by his equally crummy buddy, Walter Brennan. These two hobos are raggedy and hungry, the kind of people who at the time were called "bindle stiffs." The "bindle" was the bundle of personal effects they carried over their shoulders. A "stiff" was a person of no importance. You can still hear the word in the expression "working stiff." Where was I? These damned voices keep distracting me. Oh, yes.So Cooper is hired to act as John Doe. After Christmas Eve, when he has his phony date with the angels, he is to be given a railroad ticket straight out of town and disappear.Surprisingly, though, his radio speech turns the audience on. They love it. They form multitudes of John Doe Clubs all around the world. The John Doe philosophy? Nothing dangerous, don't worry. "Let's be kind to our neighbors." "Let's break down the walls separating all of us John Does." The villainous Edward Arnold, the paper's owner, gets an idea. As the John Doe Clubs spring up all over, he sees their members not as airheaded do-gooders but as voters. This leads to a bright idea. In his next radio speech, John Doe will announce that Edward Arnold is forming a third party and running for president. All those John Does out there will vote for him -- "that's ninety percent of the vote." And Arnold's philosophy is a little different from that of Cooper and Stanwyck, who has been writing his speeches. "Everybody's complaining," Arnold tells his cohort of corrupt goons, gangsters, politicians, and labor leaders. "What this country needs is a firm hand, some discipline." Does Arnold's scheme work? Of course it does. That's why he was elected president in 1944 and switched our allegiance to Nazi Germany and we lost the war and were occupied by the UN.Well, the fact is that Arnold may be evil but these targets are pretty soft ones. The film is so stripped of real-life counterparts that it almost amounts to a fantasy. The private police force that Arnold has at his disposal are all dressed as State Police but their shoulder patches read "Norton Motorcycle Squad." Something else about Arnold. He probably gives the best performance in the movie. It's really quite subtle. He has to activate several latent roles -- loudmouthed dictator, thoughtful schemer, avuncular con man, and repentant fomenter of discord. He's followed closely by Barbara Stanwyck, in one of her fine performances of the period, and by Cooper himself, who must look simultaneously stupid but sensitive. Cooper has a priceless moment near the beginning as he is shown to a fancy hotel room and allowed to order five hamburgers from room service. With a wide smile he hangs up the phone, then notices the statue of a bouquet-holding nude woman on the stand. His expression changes instantly to an exopthalmic gawk. Capra and the editor give him a full half minute to stare at it, touch it tentatively, and gulp, before Stanwyck's voice comes from behind him and he jumps. It's a small moment but an exquisitely comic one.This was the last of three films that Frank Capra directed before entering the Army for World War II -- the others being "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town." All have in common an innocent young hero who runs into greed and corruption and through strength of will manages to overcome his adversaries. Capra was an apolitical populist and humanist, and there's a good deal of corniness in these movies, but that doesn't stop them from being successful. "John Doe", unlike the others, becomes almost tragic before the improbable end. After his war service, Capra directed one more wildly successful film, "It's a Wonderful Life," perhaps the best modern Christmas story, but it too had its moments of genuine anguish.