Mr Smith Goes to Washington ***** (1939, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi) – Classic Movie Review 1224

Legendary director Frank Capra’s perfectly honed, much-loved 1939 classic Mr Smith Goes to Washington is a politically-minded comedy drama follow-up to his triumphant 1936 Gary Cooper movie Mr Deeds Goes to Town. Mr Smith centres on another shy, ordinary and straightforward but dogged and stalwart all-American hero, played this time by James Stewart, and the theme again is how one good, honest man can change essentially corrupt or indifferent American politics.

After five years of movie graft, it deservedly turned the 31-year-old Stewart a major movie star. And Stewart is of course perfect casting as Jefferson Smith, who is first manipulated and then triumphant in his just cause against his manipulator.

Politicians Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state political boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) and Governor Happy Hopper (Guy Kibbee) get him elected to the US Senate, give him a secretary (Mr Deeds star Jean Arthur again, this time as Clarissa Saunders) and expect him to be totally weak, pliable and amenable to all their demands. But instead he sets off on the path of reform against the greedy and wicked Senator Paine’s corrupt dam building scheme.

Stewart gives a stupendous performance in one of his defining roles, creating a commendably real and involving man-of-the-people character, which is appealing and effective throughout, but particularly in the famous climactic hoarse-throated filibuster speech. Stewart’s throat was swabbed with mercury to gain the effect. 

Top-billed star Arthur is excellent as always, though she is slightly overshadowed by the barnstorming Stewart, and the finest of star character actors, Rains, Arnold, Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell (as Diz Moore), Eugene Pallette (as Chick McGann) and Beulah Bondi (as Ma Smith) are all brilliant in support.

Sidney Buchman writes an ideal screenplay, based on Lewis Foster’s unpublished story The Gentleman from Montana, which won an Oscar for Best Original Story. Foster said he wrote the story specifically with Gary Cooper in mind. Strange as it seems now, the film was controversial in its day, as some right-wing politicians at the time mistook its message and thought that it attacked democracy or was anti-American.

It was controversial abroad too, and banned in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and Stalin’s USSR. Joseph P Kennedy, American Ambassador to Great Britain, wrote to Capra and Columbia head Harry Cohn to say the film would damage America’s prestige in Europe and should be withdrawn from release in Europe. That didn’t stop it being a hit: on a $1,500,000 budget it earned $9 million.

Mr Smith Goes to Washington was nominated for 11 Academy Awards but won just the one as alas it was trumped at the 1939 Academy Awards by the Oscar-winning success of Gone with the Wind. Oscar nominated Stewart surprisingly lost to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr Chips but won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor.

The nine Watson children and their mother (right).

Billy Watson plays one of Governor Hopper’s sons who persuade their father to nominated Jefferson Smith for senator.

Former child actor Billy Watson died on 17 February 2022, aged 98. He was in four John Ford films, DOCTOR BULL, MARY OF SCOTLAND, THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS and YOUNG MR LINCOLN.

The Watsons are an American family of nine sibling actors known as ‘the first family of Hollywood’. They all started as child actors in silent movies. As of March 2022, Garry Watson (born 1928) is sole survivor. He debuted at age one in the 1929 film Drag.

Also in the cast are Harry Carey, H B Warner, Astrid Allwyn, Ruth Donnelly, Charles Lane, Porter Hall, Jack Carson, Grant Mitchell, Pierre Watkin, William Demarest, Dick Elliott, Billy Watson, Garry Watson, Larry Simms, H V Kaltenborn, Erville Alderson, Stanley Andrews, William Arnold, Sam Ash, Frank Austin, Harry A Bailey, Wade Botelier, Ed Brewer, Al Bridge, Harlan Briggs, Tommy Bupp, Frederick Burton, Ken Carpenter, Jack Carson, Burr Caruth, Maurice Cass, Allan Cavan, Eddy Chandler, George Chandler, Dora Clement, Edmund Cobb, Dorothy Comingore, Hal Cooke, George Cooper, Jack Cooper, Nick Copeland  Anne Cornwall, Gino Corrado, Maurice Costello, Alec Craig, Beatrice Curtis, Dulcie Day, Vernon Dent, Clyde Dilson, Neal Dodd, Ann Doran, Helen Jerome Eddy, Jack Egan, Douglas Evans, Eddie Featherstone, Mabel Forrest, Byron Foulger, Michael Gale, Jack Gardner, Frances Gifford, June Gittelson, Mary Gordon, Lorna Gray, Harry Hayden, Louis Jean Heydt, Olaf Hytten, John Ince, Lloyd Ingraham, Frank Jaquet, Dickie Jones, Eddie Kane, Robert Emmett Keane, Donald Kerr, Milton Kibbee, Joe King, Evalyn Knapp, Wright Kramer, Vera Lewis, Arthur Loft, Hank Mann, Margaret Mann, Philo McCullough, Matt McHugh, George McKay, Lafe McKee, James McNamara, Robert Middlemass, James Millican, Charles R Moore, Gene Morgan, William Newell, Alex Novinsky, Frank O’Connor, Frank Puglia, Ed Randolph, Jack Richardson, Russell Simpson, Walter Soderling, Harry Stafford, Wyndham Standing, Paul Stanton, Count Stefenelli, Craig Stevens, Carl Stockdale, Dub Taylor, Ferris Taylor, Arthur Thalasso, Fred Toones, Victor Travers, Laura Treadwell, John Tyrrell, Robert Walker, Myonne Walsh, Lloyd Whitlock, Dave Willock, and Florence Wix.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1224

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