Meet John Doe (1940)
During this period, two forms of news media ruled: the newspapers and the radio. But, who owned the newspapers and who owned the radio stations? Frank Capra and Robert Riskin delves into this landscape. Radio and newspapers were the messenger of and for the "vox populi" Or was it? Then, as it is now, the media that's free can have messiahs and despots vying for airtime. This is the setting of Meet John Doe.
The movie opens with a jackhammer removing an old name plate on a newspaper's building.
The Bulletin (established in 1862) with its declaration:
"A free press means a free people!"
It is replaced with a newer name plate and a newer mission:
THE NEW BULLETIN
A STREAMLINED NEWSPAPER FOR A STREAMLINED ERA
Changes are going on inside as well. The new editor at the paper, Henry Connell (James Gleason), is busy cleaning out the "deadwood" and they appear to be brutal about it, taking out reporters, copywriters, and columnists. Among them is Miss Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), who is within a few minutes disheartened, determined not to be stepped on, pleading, then returning to her office, resigned and frustrated.
Suddenly, when asked again to complete her final column, she becomes defiant and lashes out the only way for her voice now to be heard, as a representative of the vox populi - she writes her column and threatens (as a totally fabricated person (male) writing anonymously to the newspaper) to jump off the top of the CIty Hall Tower at Christmas Eve and signs the short manifesto with the unidentifiable John Doe. Her final column gets published as she leaves the office.
Her last column creates a sensation across the town and across the state. Politicians and businessmen, society and community leaders are talking about it -they really want to help this John Doe- and Connell has to hire Ann back. It's then that Ann Mitchell freely admits to Connell that John Doe is a fake and Ann has the better idea rather than admit publically to the fable she's created. Make John Doe real.. a real person to be John Doe.
In the meantime, their front office is being crowded with desperate men, all claiming to have written the letter, hoping the public sympathy for the man who wrote the letter will make them employable. Out of this hapless lot, Ann and Connell find a small-time league baseball player, "Long John" Willoughby (Gary Cooper) washed-out for a arm injury, who is perfect for their purposes. What seems to be a problematic complication for John is his tagalong fellow traveller, the cynical anti-philosopher, "the Colonel" (Walter Brennan). who's always around and always complaining.
We are just getting warmed up here. The setup is amazing for the drama to come. The real antagonist, D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold), is the extremely wealthy businessman who is the owner of the newspaper.
- Ann has her sights set on making John Doe the platform for righting the moral and ethcial corruption she sees around her.
- Connell has his sights set on making the New Bulletin a major newspaper in readership
- D.B. Norton has his sights set on other goals for John Doe entirely, totally opposite from Ann's hopeful message
- John Doe, thrust into the spotlight, finds he has to have some ideals of his own if he is to stand a person and finds Ann Mitchell's words give him the honesty (while being fabricated character!) to do just that.
Meet John Doe puts out concepts of rightness, but adding the very human weakness of the idolization of mere mortals, it shows us our best natures through our foibles.
One of the great moments in the movie (there are many) is Connell's "Lighthouses" speech.
Henry Connell: I get mad for others, Washington, and Jefferson... and Lincoln... Lighthouses, John, lighthouses in a foggy world"