MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN - Trivia and Other Fun Stuff

"Everywhere the picture goes, from the endearing to the absurd, the accompanying business is carried through with perfect zip and relish." -- Otis Ferguson, The New Republic.

"Mr. Deeds is Capra's best film (it is on quite a different intellectual level from the spirited and delightful It Happened One Night), and that means it is a comedy quite unmatched on the screen. For Capra has what Lubitsch, the witty playboy, has not: a sense of responsibility, and what Clair, whimsical, poetic, a little precious and a la mode, has not, a kinship with his audience, a sense of common life, a morality: he has what even Chaplin has not, complete mastery of his medium, and that medium the sound film, not the film with sound attached to it....I do not think anyone can watch Mr. Deeds for long without being aware of a technician as great as Lang employed on a theme which profoundly moves him: the theme of goodness and simplicity manhandled in a deeply selfish and brutal world." -- Graham Greene, The Spectator.

"Gary Cooper turns another corner in a career which has slowly developed him from a wooden-faced hero of horse-operas into a sensitive player with a reticent but wholly American wit." -- Henry T. Murdock, Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger.

"Capra, like his hero, with whom he might be identified, is naive, committed, and artful. Mr. Deeds himself can be seen as a kind of Roosevelt accused by his opponents of instituting the New Deal and "wasting millions" in helping the poor and unemployed. Riskin's script is excellent: never mawkish and never merely sermonizing. And Gary Cooper, a gawky rube, fitted his role perfectly." - Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films.

"The fable of the naive country cousin thrown into New York, and the attempts of cynical people to fleece him, carries some telling comments on cosmopolitan materialism and on the force wielded by the unintimidated individual (one of Capra's recurrent themes). The film's wide popularity was helped by the intriguing casting against type of Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. One of Longfellow Deeds's Vermont traits which outraged the city slickers originated the verb 'to doodle,' a term that has now gained general currency." - The Oxford Companion to Film.

"Capra's first film to really attack the city; to show that it has deprived its people of their basic human values; as in his later films, only the uncorrupted small-town boy can lead them back to the right path. It never reflects the cynicism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe or It's a Wonderful Life - it is the only one of the four films where the happy ending seems completely natural. While enjoyable, it's not on the level of the Jimmy Stewart films." - Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic.

"Before Capra got down to Christmas card morals, he perfected the screwball comedy technique of pursuing common sense to logical ends in a lunatic situation. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is one of the best with Cooper saying nope to a $20 million inheritance, and newshound Jean Arthur going for his 'inside story'..." - Don Macpherson, TimeOut.

"Capra's is a great talent all right, but I have the uneasy feeling he's on his way out. He's starting to make movies about themes instead of about people." -- Alistair Cooke, BBC and NBC Radio. "Frank Capra destroyed Gary Cooper's early sex appeal when he made him childish as Mr. Deeds. Cooper, once devastatingly lean and charming, the man Tallulah [Bankhead] and Marlene [Dietrich] had swooned over, began to act like an old woman and went on to a long sexless career -- fumbling, homey, mealy-mouthed." -- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies.

Awards & Honors

Starting off the awards season with a bang, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town won the National Board of Review's Best Picture award.

The New York Film Critics named it Best Picture on only the second ballot. The only film to come close to it in the votes was Fritz Lang's anti-lynching drama Fury. They passed over Gary Cooper for Best Actor in favor of Walter Huston, who had re-created his stage performance in Dodsworth, and Frank Capra for Rouben Mamoulian for The Gay Desperado.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was nominated for five Oscars®: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Sound. It only won one award - for Best Director for Capra. The trade papers theorized that Warner Bros. and MGM had worked a deal whereby Warners employees voted for MGM's big film, The Great Ziegfeld, for Best Picture, while MGM's employees backed Warner's contract player Paul Muni's performance in The Story of Louis Pasteur for Best Actor. At the time he was appearing in MGM's The Good Earth, which he had made on loan from Warner's.

Some industry insiders thought Capra's selection for Best Director was a political choice. He was president of the Academy® and had been fighting against the unionization of actors and directors. When he received the award, Capra said, "I don't see how anybody could look over these nominees and pick one out." Host George Jessel quipped, "Well, they all may be president of the Academy someday, and they can select whom they please."

At the time, the Academy® revealed the voting order for the awards. Muni had beaten second-place Cooper by a wide margin, but Capra had only bested his closest competition, W.S. Van Dyke for San Francisco and Gregory La Cava for My Man Godfrey, by a few votes.

Compiled by Frank Miller & Jeff Stafford