From Publishers Weekly
Hollywood's champion of the "common man" during the Depression, director Frank Capra (1897-1991) kept the American dream alive with films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life . In this captivating biography the Sicilian immigrant filmmaker, admired for the liberal and proletarian sentiments of his movies, emerges as a deeply contradictory figure. Spurning his ethnic roots, ashamed of his parents, Capra lusted to be accepted by mainstream America. He was affiliated with conservative Republicans, spied on labor in the 1930s for powerful producers and collaborated surreptitiously with the McCarthyite witch hunt. Biographer of Orson Welles, McBride presents a man seething with bitterness, rage, self-doubt and sexual anxiety with his two wives. He analyzes Capra's reactionary idealization of small-town America and the misogynist undertones of his films. In a canvas crowded with stars like Claudette Colbert, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, McBride convincingly paints a great director who lost his touch after the late 1940s, unable to adjust to postwar Hollywood or to function independently. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Capra is largely remembered today as a director whose films champion all-American optimism in a world where good ultimately triumphs. This exhaustively researched and densely--perhaps overly--detailed biography uncovers the man behind the camera and simultaneously debunks much of what Capra wrote in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title ( LJ 4/15/71). The director's flag waving concealed shame about his Sicilian heritage, writes McBride, and he was not adverse to being one of the greedy rich his films derided. The analysis of Capra's oeuvre, including his days as a gag writer, reveals much about his psyche. The author of well-regarded biographies of Howard Hawks ( Hawks on Hawks , LJ 12/15/81) and John Ford ( John Ford , Da Capo, 1975) has written the definitive work about another major American director. For general audiences. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/91.
- Roy Liebman, California State Univ. Lib., Los AngelesCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
