Screenshot for the Week of 22 March 2021: "MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN" (1936)

Lionel Stander and Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Gary Cooper plays Longfellow Deeds, a smalltown businessman and gentle soul.  This film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Director Frank Capra won the Oscar for Best Director, his second win.  (His first was for It Happened One Night [1934]).

Cooper was Capra's only choice for the role of Longfellow Deeds.  But when filming was scheduled to begin, Cooper was unavailable.  Never veering off his path, Capra waited six months for the actor and incurred a cost overrun of $100,000 ($2.2 milion in 2023).

The instant Capra conceived the Deeds character, he pictured Cooper.  The actor became a visual ear worm, first for Capra and then for his screenwriter Robert Riskin.  They became obsessed with him. Riskin began to use  Cooper for his muse.  And then the writer had a breakthrough: Deeds was Cooper, Cooper was Deeds.  It was this breakthrough thought that launched Riskin on his way.

Ernest Hemingway—who went from devoted fan to one of Cooper's closest friends—once said, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it.  He's just too good to be true."  Joel McCrea, another close friend said, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."

Among his other close friends were James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, and directors William Wellman, Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, and Fred Zinnemann.

Like Longfellow Deeds, Cooper was a man of few words but when he spoke, those few words spoke volumes.  Unlike Deeds, however, Cooper was a man of the world.  His father was a Montana Supreme Court justice.  Young Cooper was educated at a posh grammar school in England, and when he returned to the U.S. he pursued an art education.  He was conversant on many subjects including art, history, horses and horsemanship, film production, guns, and automobiles, especially sports cars.

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Screenwriter Robert Riskin was one of  the greatest screenwriters of the Golden Age. Among his credits: Platinum Blonde (1931); Lady for a Day (1933); It Happened One Night (1934); Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936);  Lost Horizon (1937); You Can't Take It With You (1938); and Meet John Doe (1941).  He was nominated five times for an Oscar and won once, in 1935, for It Happened One Night.  Among the movies he wrote, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was his favorite.

This is no longer a little-known fact: In his screenplay, Riskin coined the word "doodle" (to draw impromptu circles or squiggles, aimlessly or casually), which entered the English language when this film was released.

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Jean Arthur is one of my two favorite female actors (the other is Barbara Stanwyck), based almost exclusively on her performances in two films—Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).  [SPOILER ALERT!] In both films, Arthur plays the Barbara Stanwyck role—the ambitious, tough-as-nails, streetwise antagonist who falls for the central character.

The sequel to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town—Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington—was set to have Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur reprise their roles.  But a funny thing happened on the way to this sequel: Gary Cooper became unavailable.  This time, Capra didn't wait.  He cast James Stewart in the leading role and renamed the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).