Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was a Sicilian American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American dream personified."

Quotes

• I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.
  • 1001 quotations to inspire you before you die, Quintessence Editions Ltd., 2016, ISBN 978-1-84403-895-4

Quotes about Capra

• Shortly after the United States entered World War Two, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall summoned Frank Capra, the Hollywood director, and asked him to prepare a series of orientation films for viewing by American troops. When Capra demurred on the grounds that he had never made a documentary before, Marshall retorted: "Capra, I have never been Chief of Staff before. Thousands of young Americans have never had their legs shot off before. Boys are commanding ships today, who a year ago had never seen he ocean before." The director apologized, and promised "The best damned documentary films ever made."
  • John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 15

• The films subsequently produced for the Army by Capra and his team survive as classics of wartime cinematic propaganda- a remarkable accomplishment, in retrospect, since each script had to be approved by some fifty military and civilian agencies in Washington. One of the primary objectives of the series was to combat the isolationist sentiments that lingered in the United States, and with this in mind the seven core films that Capra directed were given the collective title Why We Fight. President Franklin Roosevelt was so impressed by the first of these documentaries that he urged it to be shown in public theaters as well as to recruits. This was done, and Prelude to War went on to win an Academy Award as the best documentary of 1942. During the course of World War Two, the Why We Fight films were required viewing for millions of American soldiers. The series was also distributed abroad, with soundtracks in French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
  • John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 16

• To be inspired with the will to win, Capra told his associates as they embarked on this work, Americans needed to be shown that they were fighting for the existence of their country, and at the same time were carrying the "torch of freedom" for a better postwar world- a world in which conquest, exploitation, and economic evils had been eliminated, and peace and democracy prevailed. This seemed a clear line, and a familiar one to anyone who recalled the idealistic Allied propaganda of World War One.
  • John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 16

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