Webster's Dictionary defines satire as "a work in which vices, follies, stupidities, abuses, etc., are held up to ridicule." Among TCM's lineup of classic satires is Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), in which director Frank Capra's target is the corrupt, grasping attitude of city slickers. Gary Cooper plays Longfellow Deeds, an innocent from Mandrake Falls, Vermont, who inherits $20 million and, because he wants to give it away to the needy, is accused by the urban vultures of being insane. At the heart of every good satire is a message, and Capra later wrote that Mr. Deeds is this: "A simple, honest man, driven into a corner by predatory sophistication, can, if he will, reach deep down into his God-given resources and come up with the necessary handfuls of courage, wit and love to triumph over his environment."

A biting look at America's mass media and its impact on average citizens, A Face in the Crowd (1957) mixed satire with the earthy realism for which its director, Elia Kazan, was famous. Andy Griffith, in a fierce performance that surprised fans of his homespun humor, plays Lonesome Rhodes, a cracker-barrel philosopher from Arkansas who rises to national stardom on television but abuses the power he holds over gullible viewers.

Satire doesn't come any blacker than Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), since its subject is the prospect of, as Slim Pickens' bomb-dropping cowpoke character puts it, "nookular combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies." Even the names of Kubrick's characters are rich with satirical overtones: President Merkin Muffley, General Jack D. Ripper, General Buck Turgidson and, of course, Dr. Strangelove himself.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967) adds music to its satirical look at corporate America in the 1960s. This film version of Frank Loesser's Broadway smash again stars Robert Morse as J. Pierpont Finch, a window-washer who rises through the ranks of a New York firm by posing as a graduate of the boss's alma mater. Typical of the movie's exuberant cynicism is the fact that Morse sings the score's most heartfelt love song, "I Believe in You" to himself!

by Roger Fristoe