Online Video Guide

Frank Capra's classic film about the plight of the little man. Meet John Doe is a 1941 comedy drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The film, about a grassroots political campaign, created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist and pursued by a wealthy businessman, became a box office hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for best original story (for Richard Connell and Robert Presnell Sr.). 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. At last everyone, even Ann, takes her creation seriously, but publisher D.B. Norton has a secret plan.