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Meet John Doe

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Meet John Doe

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1941 film directed by Frank Capra

OverviewAI-generated

Meet John Doe is a 1941 romantic comedy, comedy drama and Christmas film directed and produced by Frank Capra, from a screenplay by Robert Riskin and Richard Connell. Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold and Walter Brennan star, with George Barnes as director of photography, Daniel Mandell as editor, Stephen Goosson as production designer, and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. The film is set during the Christmas and holiday season.

Shot in black-and-white in the United States, it earned a revenue of 2,000,000 and was distributed by Warner Bros. Entertainment and Netflix. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Story and is now in the public domain.

Synthesized by Vinony from 38 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, IMDb. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Film · TMDB

7.3

As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement.

Released: 1941-03-14123 minDir: Frank CapraDrama, Comedy, RomanceBox office: $2.0M

Cast

  • Gary Cooper as Long John Willoughby
  • Barbara Stanwyck as Ann Mitchell
  • Edward Arnold as D.B. Norton
  • Walter Brennan as The Colonel
  • Spring Byington as Mme Mitchell
  • James Gleason as Henry Connell

Themes

  • baseball player
  • radio broadcast
  • suicide note
  • domain
  • enchant

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Ratings

IMDb

7.6/10

16,427 votes

Year
1941
Runtime
122 min
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance

via IMDb

Key facts

Directed by
Frank Capra
Screenplay by
Robert Riskin
Story by
Robert Presnell Sr.
Based on
" A Reputation ", 1922 story in Century Magazine , by Richard Connell
Produced by
Frank Capra
Starring
Gary Cooper Barbara Stanwyck Edward Arnold Walter Brennan Spring Byington James Gleason Gene Lockhart
Cinematography
George Barnes
Edited by
Daniel Mandell
Music by
Dimitri Tiomkin
Production company
Frank Capra Productions
Distributed by
Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date
May 3, 1941 ( 1941-05-03 )
Running time
122 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Box office
$1.8 million (initial U.S. release)

via Wikipedia infobox

Internet Archive

movies

Meet John Doe

Watch at Internet Archive →

via archive.org

Wikidata facts

Instance of
film
Country of origin
United States
Original language
English language
Director
Frank Capra
Screenwriter
Richard Connell
Cast member
Paul Panzer
Producer
Frank Capra
Cinematographer
George Barnes
Duration
122
FilmAffinity ID
470333
Distribution format
video on demand
Image
Poster - Meet John Doe 08.jpg
Show 12 more facts
Commons category
Meet John Doe (film)
publication date
1941-01-01
title
Meet John Doe
film editor
Daniel Mandell
production designer
Stephen Goosson
distributed by
Netflix
assessment
Bechdel test
set during recurring event
Christmas and holiday season
review score
92%
copyright status
public domain
Sources (7)

via Wikidata · CC0

~12 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Meet John Doe (1941) Meet John Doe is a 1941 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra, written by Robert Riskin, and starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, and Gene Lockhart. The film is about a "grassroots" political campaign created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist with the involvement of a hired homeless man and pursued by the paper's wealthy owner.

The film became a box-office success and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story; it was ranked No. 49 in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers. It was the first of two features Capra made for Warner Bros. Pictures after he left Columbia Pictures, the other being Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Meet John Doe” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (5)