Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) | |
Director(s) | Frank Capra |
Producer(s) | Frank Capra (uncredited) |
Top Genres | Drama |
Top Topics | Integrity, Justice, Politics, Romance (Drama), Washington D.C. |
Featured Cast:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Overview:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) was a Drama - Black-and-white Film directed by Frank Capra and produced by Frank Capra.
SYNOPSIS
Capra's enduring favorite has Stewart as the idealistic, yet naive, politician sent to Washington as junior senator who runs afoul of the political corruption in his state. Capra favorite Arthur plays his cynical secretary and Rains the powerful senior senator who expects Smith to be nothing more than a rubber stamp. As with the best of Capra's films, the sentiment and moralizing are kept in check by wonderful acting and genuine emotion. Based on Lewis R. Foster's novel The Gentleman from Montana.
(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).
.Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989.
Academy Awards 1939 --- Ceremony Number 12 (source: AMPAS)
Award | Recipient | Result |
Best Actor | James Stewart | Nominated |
Best Supporting Actor | Harry Carey | Nominated |
Best Supporting Actor | Claude Rains | Nominated |
Best Art Direction | Lionel Banks | Nominated |
Best Director | Frank Capra | Nominated |
Best Film Editing | Gene Havlick, Al Clark | Nominated |
Best Music - Scoring | Dimitri Tiomkin | Nominated |
Best Picture | Columbia | Nominated |
Best Writing | Lewis R. Foster | Won |
Best Writing | Sidney Buchman | Nominated |
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Quotes from
Clarissa Saunders: You just make up your mind you're not gonna quit, and I'll tell you what. I've been thinking about it all the way back here. It's a forty foot dive into a tub of water, but I think you can do it.
Jefferson Smith: I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
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Facts about
One reason Frank Capra made this film was to help him get over the loss of his infant son, who had died following complications from a tonsillectomy. Initially Capra wanted to make a film about Frédéric Chopin, but Columbia head Harry Cohn nixed that on the grounds that it would be too expensive. Capra and Cohn were constantly at loggerheads over budgets, despite Capra being Columbia's most successful director with - at the time - two Oscars under his belt.
The set for the Senate chamber was constructed on two newly built adjoining stages at Columbia, stage 8 and 9. The set was built almost to scale, and was at that time, the largest set built on a Columbia sound stage.
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