The best films of James Stewart: #1 "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)

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Perhaps the most iconic image of Stewart is as the exhausted young senator Jefferson Smith pulling a filibuster on the senate floor. Some 80 years later, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” remains fresh and contemporary as the most potent condemnation of corrupted American politics and media ever produced in Hollywood. No way this universally acknowledged classic film would get made today. Yet another Frank Capra masterpiece, the film was based on the unpublished short story “The Gentleman from Montana.” Capra intended the film to be a sequel to “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” with Gary Cooper but Cooper was not available. Then little known rising actor James Stewart got the role launching him to major stardom. Jean Arthur is top billed as a Washington hardened secretary to a powerful senator who becomes sympathetic to the underdog. A senator has died in office. Instead of appointing the corrupt party choice or social reform choice, the governor compromises with unknown Jefferson Smith who is leader of the Boy Rangers. The young man is naive and in over his head thus deemed easy to control. A powerful senator takes Smith “under his wing” in order to set him up in taking the fall for a bill loaded with buried graft measures. The film is about Smith’s fight to save himself meaning Smith is a metaphor for America itself. The terms “swamp” and “fake news” did not exist then but that is what Capra clearly depicts. The Washington establishment is a cesspool of cronyism working hand in hand with the media (newspapers back then). Smith is mocked and ridiculed as a country bumpkin by an elitist media. The political establishment uses the media to smear Smith’s name with false accusations. The media refuses to print facts or allow Smith to defend himself. Sound familiar? This was 1939. The reaction to the premiere of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” speaks volumes. The Democratic Senate majority leader condemned the movie as a threat to America. Media members urged congress to pass a bill giving government the power to ban films like this. Democrat and Hitler sympathizer Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy (the family patriarch) wanted the film pulled from theaters as a detriment to American image in Europe. On the plus side those important European “leaders” Kennedy felt America needed to impress banned “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” in their countries: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Joseph Stalin. In what would be inconceivable today, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” received 11 Academy Award nominations including Stewart’s first.