SPEAKER 1: For here we are not afraid to follow truth,
wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
RAY BERRY: Welcome to Virginia Viewpoints.
Our guest today is one of Hollywood's most eminent
directors, Mr. Frank Capra, winner of numerous Academy
Awards and, for a long time, a man
who had more Academy Awards to his credit on one film than
had been equaled in Hollywood.
And well, that's one of the things I think
we can talk about, Mr. Capra.
You, of course, have also compiled
a very impressive record of Academy Award nominations
and an equally impressive number of wins.
Tell us about the one picture that has won more Academy
Awards than any other.
FRANK CAPRA: Well, that picture that you're referring to is It
Happened One Night.
That got let's say the five major-- well, not so much
major because all Academy Awards are
major to those that get them.
But perhaps the five most talked about awards, the Best Picture,
the Best Directing, Best Writing, the Best Actor,
Best Actress, all five of those.
The only film so far to have been honored with those five
awards in one film.
RAY BERRY: Now, you've written probably one of the best film
autobiographies that's ever been written
called Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title.
A large book, and a very, very interesting book.
One which makes great reading.
And for much of it, you have talked
a great deal about yourself and your background,
the kind of films you made, and the reason you made them.
And coming across very clearly in the book
is a great desire for Academy Awards.
This was something that, in the early days,
you were extremely interested in.
How many altogether did you win?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, I won two for Best Picture,
three for Best Directing, and one for Best Documentary.
Yes, we all had desires for an Academy Award.
Mine was not an overriding one, in the sense
that I had any more desire than anybody else.
But that, in our estimation, was the [INAUDIBLE] of applause,
when we were honored by our own peers.
RAY BERRY: The Academy Awards seemed to trace,
in some sense, the complexity of film.
Academy Awards started with approximately 12 categories,
then they quickly dropped to seven categories.
They rose to 26 categories by 1942, and a high of 28 in 1949.
And it's been about two dozen or more every year since then.
Things like, not just Best Director, Best Actor and such,
but they began to go into Best Color Work, Best
Black and White Work for photography,
and this sort of thing.
Does this indicate that films were becoming
more and more complicated, and more
and more difficult to produce?
Or does it indicate, in a sense, that they were becoming easier
to produce because there was more expertise required,
there was more equipment available?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, the equipment and the expertise
is a phenomenal thing that's happened in Hollywood.
That is probably more advancement in the science
than they have been in the arts, frankly.
And they are the greatest brains in making films work
and making films possible in Hollywood
that were never assembled in any other kind of a business
really.
So we were honoring, in a sense, the science--
the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
And the arts were always honored to begin with,
but we began to also honor the science in many categories
of sciences, camera, sound, film, and even
the manufacturing of film.
They were always doing tremendous research work
to advance the whole science of motion pictures.
So we were engaged in honoring the sciences along
with the arts.
That's why it proliferated in those kinds of awards.
RAY BERRY: A director is as a general.
And supposedly, when a general is working with privates
his authority is more easily accepted and is more absolute.
In the later days when you're working with a series of people
who, in themselves have had many, many years experience
and are experts in sound, and photography, and whatnot,
the general is working with lieutenant generals.
He's working with colonels.
Would you find that being a director in the later days
was easier or harder than in the early days?
FRANK CAPRA: Oh, I don't think so.
I think the directing has been constantly made easier
because more and more expert people helping.
The time when you had to actually invent
a great many things, like at one time
I had to make a miniature of a submarine underwater.
And I had to do it with a toy little submarine
that I found at a candy store.
Those kind of things that later on
were helped by big departments that we had-- special effects
departments.
We didn't have to go through that kind of trauma making
things do with nothing.
So the better their help, the easier it is for the director.
RAY BERRY: Inventive genius was really your stepping stone
into film, was it not?
Or gag situations for Our Gang?
FRANK CAPRA: Inventiveness, perhaps,
yes, and a lot of gall.
That helped too.
RAY BERRY: One of the things that has come up over the years
to take a more and more important role
is motion picture film.
Motion pictures originally intended
to entertain audiences and make money,
then they found their way into an academic setting
where they form the content of film-appreciation courses.
Let's talk for a minute about academic film.
From your point of view, what criteria
should students of film employ in evaluating motion pictures?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, film is an art form, perhaps the greatest
art form ever created.
It uses most of the other classic platforms as tools.
It is so big and it has no limits whatever is an art form.
So naturally, that's the first thing you should evaluate.
Is it, as a film, an artistic creation,
or is it not an artistic creation?
But it's also a dichotomy of art and money.
Money is just as important as the artistic part of it.
Because without money, you can't do the other.
So we have an art form that is not just you
and a piece of paper and a pencil.
Not just you and some canvas and some paints.
Not just you and a hammer and chisel and some marble.
It's you and a whole army of people,
and about $4 or $5 million to spend.
That is your problem.
Your problem is how do you keep making films
when you have to spend $4 million on them?
You only keep making films by being
able to recoup that amount of money and perhaps a profit.
So there is a profit motive in making
of films that is absolutely necessary to their existence.
And this is where we have our problems because it
is a dichotomy of art and money, and they
speak different languages.
RAY BERRY: Let's touch for just a moment on what I mentioned
before, music and films.
The study of music and films has become an important thing,
almost as important today as a study
of some of the earlier films.
For instance, there's a Max Steiner film society now
which is fairly active.
FRANK CAPRA: Yes.
RAY BERRY: An international organization.
What do you feel music's purpose should be in film?
We're talking about comedy and dramatic films rather than
musicals.
FRANK CAPRA: Music's purpose is to aid the film in its moods
and its storytelling.
Lay a groundwork for storytelling.
It should help the film.
Music should not be seen or heard
on its own accord when it's made for a film.
In other words, it's not a composition that
should be played separately.
It can be played separately, and many have been played separate.
But its original intention is as an aide
to the film, not a direct performance of itself
and not to be heard without it.
And this, of course, Steiner knew very well
the reason he was so successful was
that he was the first real person in music to understand
that music was to help the film and not
the film to help the music.
RAY BERRY: He was also unusually prolific.
I understand he had more than 450 films--
FRANK CAPRA: Right, but I think because everybody wanted him
because he knew what to do with music.
Now there were many musicians who
thought the film was a vehicle for their music.
And then, of course, they found out it wasn't.
RAY BERRY: When film music buffs get together,
the score for Lost Horizon is inevitably discussed.
FRANK CAPRA: Yes.
RAY BERRY: Could you tell us how this score came to be created?
Your friend, Dimitri Tiomkin--
FRANK CAPRA: Well, I had met Dimitri Tiomkin
and he'd never scored a film in his life.
I think he had something to do with Great Waltz before that,
but not really an entire job on his own shoulders.
And this Lost Horizon was something that pretty far out.
And I wanted music that I thought would fit that
the whole Shangri-La thing, that whole Tibetan thing.
And here is Dimitri Tiomkin that knows Russian music, that
knows music with Asian sources.
And I thought, he should do it.
I thought he could do it.
Now, he'd never done a film in his life.
And this is Columbia's most important film,
and to give it to a musician to score who had never
scored a film before was really asinine, really,
to everybody else.
And it should have been and it really
was, except that I had a hunch he could do it.
And I insisted that he do it.
And I remember he tried to play the themes for me.
He wanted me to hear and I said, no, I
don't want to hear any themes.
I want this to be entirely your music, not mine.
Because then I would get my ideas in there
and would screw it up completely.
I'd had some other idea.
But I did hedge it by one way.
I mean, I cop tried to cop a bet there.
I got Max Steiner to conduct the music.
And if the music didn't fit, or if it was completely unusable,
he would be there to fill in and make the score.
So that was my cop out.
Well, they came the day when they
were rehearsing the main title.
I hadn't heard one note of the music,
and I was really on pins and needles about it.
And I was waiting for Max Steiner's opinion of it.
Now,
Max Steiner called me and he said,
we're going to rehearse the music of the first title.
You better come over here and listen to it
because it will be surprised.
So I sneaked into the music stage, hid in the shadows,
and listened to one rehearsal.
And I knew we had a tremendous score coming up.
RAY BERRY: Lost Horizon hasn't been shown in quite some time,
and there has been a rumor about that there are no existing
prints of Lost Horizon.
Do you know if this is true?
FRANK CAPRA: The prints have been recalled
because they have made a remake of Lost Horizon as a musical,
Columbia have.
And is now playing, and I suppose
when that gets finished, the original Lost Horizon
will be available again to schools and to societies
who want to see it.
RAY BERRY: What about film archives?
Out here, we get the impression that many films
are just no longer available.
They've been totally lost.
Is there an original negative of all of these films in a film
archive somewhere being safe, kept at the proper temperature
and--
FRANK CAPRA: No, not of all the films.
Unfortunately, many, many films have been lost.
Many, many negatives have been burnt,
and many, many prints have been destroyed
so that there's no remaining print
or negative of many, many early films.
RAY BERRY: You've got, approximately what,
30 feature films that you've--
FRANK CAPRA: About 40.
RAY BERRY: About 40?
FRANK CAPRA: Yes.
RAY BERRY: Are all of these still existing
or are some lost?
FRANK CAPRA: No, some are lost.
Some of the early ones are lost.
RAY BERRY: Since 1931, say, dirigible,
are all of those still existing?
FRANK CAPRA: It is possible that all of them
are still existing except for one.
Lady For a Day.
The negative of Lady For a Day is lost.
There are a couple of prints existing of Lady
For a Day that might be used to make dupe negatives from.
RAY BERRY: You filmed the Lindsay Crouse play, Arsenic
and Old Lace.
FRANK CAPRA: Arsenic and Old Lace, yes.
RAY BERRY: And how did you like that film yourself
when you saw it?
FRANK CAPRA: I loved it.
It was a very funny film.
RAY BERRY: It played before a college audience recently
and the audience just loved it.
It was a full house and they laughed
until the tears rolled down.
And it was an absolutely timeless thing.
FRANK CAPRA: Yes, well that's the way it affected me, too.
But I saw the play and I wanted to do that very badly.
RAY BERRY: It brought up the very definite thought
that this kind of comedy, which was shot in what, '41?
This sort of thing is very, very adaptable today,
and of course there's nothing being made like that on films
that I know of.
The situation we're into with television and with films
today is a far different thing.
They're making a very different kind of film.
I'd like to, if I could, quote something from your book
concerning films today because I think it's--
FRANK CAPRA: That's what happens when you write a book.
It comes back to haunt you.
RAY BERRY: Well, I shouldn't think this would haunt.
But on page 400 of your autobiography,
we run across this paragraph.
"Practically all of the Hollywood filmmaking of today
is stooping to cheap, salacious pornography,
and a crazy bastardization of a great art
to compete for the patronage of deviates and masturbators.
If that isn't a slide from films,
it'll do until a real avalanche hits our film mecca."
First of all, let me say I completely agree.
You could go even further and include the sadists
because they seem to have a significant part in today's
filmmaking.
Why?
What's happened to filmmaking that the people who
put together all of this money and all of this talent
should produce that kind of film,
rather than something which is designed for entertainment?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, most of the film today
is being produced by independent producers.
That is the old studio system where they produce 40,
50 pictures in one studio is gone.
And today, the system is roughly that you
finance one picture at a time.
And when you do that, you become very conservative.
Because if you don't make profit with that one film,
you may not finance a next one.
If you don't make a profit with two films,
you have a very difficult time going on.
So profits are the principal thing today.
The films must make a profit.
And so what happens is that these so-called independent
producers, who should be very innovative
and try to make new things, new ideas, experiment, they're not.
They are following each other.
Now, along comes Godfather, a big hit.
Now we get a whole line of the Godfathers
coming out on the principle of violence.
Along comes something on I'm Curious Yellow,
a hit from Sweden, explicit sex, a big hit.
Then all we get now is explicit sex,
whether the story calls for it or not.
And they are followers today.
Trend followers, not trend makers.
And it is mostly because they think past performances will
assure them profits.
That's the last thing that will insure them
because the trend makers make the money,
but the trend followers do not.
And this is a set up today in Hollywood and all places
that is a sorry one.
They're making pornographic pictures.
And they're making savagely violent pictures
because they think, you can't get that on television.
That's why your reasonable people
go to the theaters is to see something
they can't see on television.
And that is not so.
They'll go to see a film, providing
it entertains them, and lifts them, and provided
it gives them stories about human beings, not stories
about human leperism The creep heroes, of course, are--
and they're going out of circulation.
And They should go out.
And the quicker we return to making
films that will entertain, uplift, and not
entirely degrade the human spirit,
why the better it'll be for us and for our country.
Because I think films not only reflect the times,
but they also affect the times.
RAY BERRY: Why do you think television
has failed to fill this void?
What they've come through with, of course,
are thumb-sucking situation comedies and melodramas.
And when they attempt dramatic films,
usually they're nothing but very mechanical, mystery thrillers.
And crime shows and mystery thrillers
seem to be the only thing on television
in these years, the early 70s, which appear
to show any inventive talent.
FRANK CAPRA: Television eats up material faster
than it can be produced.
And it eats it up and the sort of material
you get on television is generally rather half-baked,
not fully developed.
Not fully developed.
Playwrights used to work on a play four years.
Now they've got two weeks to write an hour play.
And naturally it's half-baked.
Naturally it's like something else.
And so the people are not allowed enough time
with those shows that they make on television.
Now on films, that's why films seem better than that
shows you get on television.
Principally, because more time is devoted.
People are allowed to develop, polish.
A film that costs $4 million is bound
to beat something that cost $100,000 because
of just the actual time necessary to do it.
Not so much the talent, as the time and the attention
that is given.
RAY BERRY: What about the money available to writers?
For instance, the short story that became the basis for It
Happened One Night?
As I recall from your book, I think
the short story was $5,000, which is considered
a low price to pay at the time.
Today, what would they be paying for the rights
to a short story, which would be expandable?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, if they think it's something big,
the money that is paid for, say, a best-selling book
is tremendous.
A million dollars, half a million dollars.
RAY BERRY: Are short stories still being bought?
FRANK CAPRA: Short stories, you can get $100,000 from it.
If they can develop them into a film, yes, of course.
Now, that doesn't mean every short story gets that.
But I mean one that is really wanted
and somebody wanted to spend a lot of money on it.
If they're going to spend four or five million on something,
they want something that costs more than $5000.
RAY BERRY: They just feel better about spending the money?
FRANK CAPRA: They feel better about spending the money, yes.
RAY BERRY: I'd like to look into something
else in your book, which is a personal statement
on the aspects of filmmaking.
And I'm going to read this.
It's several paragraphs long.
"There is a type of writing, which some critics deploringly
call the gee-whiz school.
The authors they point out, wander
about wide-eyed and breathless, seeing everything
as larger than life.
If my films, and this book, smack here and there
of gee-whiz, well, gee-whiz.
To some of us, all that meets the eye is larger than life,
including life itself.
Who can match the wonder of it?
Despite his lean, bare prose, Hemingway was a gee-whizer.
The adrenals of all his character
were oversized, as were his own.
He lived, wrote, and died in a fireworks display.
Gauguin was a gee-whizzer.
He painted the South Seas not as he found them,
but as he wanted to find them.
He created his own South Seas.
Homer's heroes were superheroes: Paris, Helen of Troy, Achilles,
Hector, Odysseus.
Plutarch's Lives were superheroes.
And what of the prophets and apostles of biblical times:
Moses, Peter, David, and Paul?
Those were men to match anyone's mountains.
We, the gee-whizzers, euphemistically
say we are of the upbeat school, in contrast
to the down-beaters, whom we non-euphemistically
relegate to the ash-can school because their films depict life
as an alley of cats, clawing lids off garbage cans,
and man as less noble than a hyena.
The ash-canners, in turn, call us Pollyannas, mawkish,
sentimentalists, and corny happy-enders.
These are the Hollywood filmmakers:
Mr. Upbeat and Mr. Downbeat.
One hopes to be righter than right, and the other, righter
than wrong.
And in the middle is Mr. In-between.
Yet we all respect and admire each
other because the great majority freely
express their own individual artistry,
unfettered by subsidies or strictures
from government, pressure groups, or ideologists."
This was written not too many years ago.
I assume you still hold with what you said there.
FRANK CAPRA: Yes, indeed.
Yes.
RAY BERRY: Now, would I be putting you on the spot
if I asked for some examples in great directors, contemporaries
of yours who would fit into the upbeat, the downbeat,
and the in-between?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, yes, you would be putting me on the spot
because that's a critical appraisal
of my fellow directors, which I'm not really equipped
to make.
And I should not make because they all
do things in a different way.
They all see things in a different way,
and they're entitled to see things in a way.
And I'm not here to blame them or castigate them
any way for what they do.
I think drama is just as dramatic as comedy.
Comedy is just as dramatic as drama, and just as important,
by the way.
And so because I'm an upbeat man,
I'm not going to say he's a downbeat,
and therefore I downgrade him.
No, I do not.
I may not like the Bergman, the Swedish.
I think he deals too much with death and decomposition
of the human spirit.
But that doesn't mean that I don't
have to admire him because he can
do that stuff better than anybody else in the world.
So I love everybody, and I admire everybody,
and I take off my hat to everybody that
can make a film of any kind.
It's a big job.
RAY BERRY: All right.
Let me approach this from a different way.
Of the directors who were contemporaries of yours
in the 30s and 40s, was there any director, or were there
any directors whose work you particularly enjoyed?
FRANK CAPRA: I enjoyed, yes, a great many directors.
I enjoyed the films of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Leo McCarey,
Henry King.
You want anymore?
I can give you lots of them.
RAY BERRY: Yes.
FRANK CAPRA: These were all giant film makers in a way.
And I enjoyed everyone, whatever kind of film they made.
And they weren't all upbeat and they weren't all downbeat,
but there were two expressions of themselves.
RAY BERRY: Are you willing to cite
a director you think might be, perhaps,
the finest director who ever worked?
FRANK CAPRA: The finest director that ever worked?
Well, I think the finest and the most versatile director that
ever worked was John Ford.
RAY BERRY: What were some of the strengths in his approach?
FRANK CAPRA: What were some of the strengths of his approach?
Well, he had a great figure, and a great ability to tell a tale,
and his heroes were bigger than life,
and there was great entertainment in his films
and great poetry in his films.
RAY BERRY: One of the things that comes through
in your films, and I believe in your book,
is an unusual ability on your part to measure a person,
whether he was an actor or someone working
with you, to know what his strong points and weak points
were.
And not only to want to be able to bring out the strong points,
but to actually be able to do it.
To have the talent to work with him as man-to-man
and to bring these out.
Was this a natural talent that you had,
or was it something that you learned how to do
and perfected?
FRANK CAPRA: Well, I would suppose it is a natural talent.
I mean, I didn't go around and go to school to learn anything.
But I did recognize that the situation as it was.
And the situation in the film is this.
Stars put their whole career on the line
on the judgment of one man, the director.
Therefore, it is a director's medium.
He's the only one that they can look to for judgment
and they can look to for help.
And if that association between that star and the director
is a happy one, then it's a symbiotic thing.
We help each other.
But if it is an unhappy one, then the stars
become a little worried about their own careers,
and you get spotty things when they
don't agree as to exactly how to play the part.
So therefore, one of my principal virtues
was that I tried to understand that actor,
how to get the best performance out of that particular actor.
And no two are alike, but my job was
to get the best performance out of that person that
was possible for that particular part.
RAY BERRY: Sometimes it appears that the general has
to be a director, sometimes has to be a bit self-sacrificial
in sacrificing, certainly his own ego,
and sometimes other things in order
to get the most out of a star.
FRANK CAPRA: Because he understands
that this is a people-to-people communication.
Audiences come into theaters, not
to get ego-massaging curiosities from the director,
or from the writer, or from the cameramen.
They don't care less about gimmicks, about up shots,
down shots, zoom shots.
They don't mean a thing to them.
Those are just gimmicks.
But they do care what happens to those people.
The actors are the direct communicators to the people.
It's the lives of those actors and the characters
they represent that is interesting to people.
People are interested in people, not in gimmicks, not in things.
If you understand that, then as a director, get out of the way.
As a cameraman, you get out of the way.
As a musician, you get out of the way.
You help the actors tell their tale.
RAY BERRY: All right, fine.
Thank you very much.
I wish we had more time, but this is, unfortunately,
just a half hour interview.
We've been watching Virginia Viewpoints.
Our guest today, the eminent film director, Mr. Frank Capra.
My name is Ray Barry.
Mr. Capra, thank you very much.
FRANK CAPRA: Oh, thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here with you.
RAY BERRY: [INAUDIBLE] get into it, but we didn't have time.
And it happened one night in the--
Has to be a director, sometimes has to be a bit self--
be a bit self-sacrificial.
And stands that in order to get the most out of a star.
FRANK CAPRA: Because he understands
that this is a people-to-people communication.