Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur proving that no good deed goes unanswered. Photo Copyright: Columbia Pictures (1936)

Cooper stars as small town innocent, tuba playing poet, Longfellow Deeds. His distant Uncle dies and leaves him 20 million dollars. Deeds goes to New York city and is immediately the talk of the town. Everyone wants a piece of him, or at least his money. Newspapers are fighting over his story. One such newspaper has a female reporter who pretends to be hurt in front of him one rainy night. He rescues her and is soon smitten and dating her. She meanwhile, uses her time with him to gather information for stories for her newspapers.

As predicted, they fall for each other. She feels guilty for using him and he finds out in the worst way, and in Coopers best acting scene, that she is a reporter. They break up and he gets depressed. After an overly dramatic scene where a farmer, who lost his farm, pulls a gun on Deeds and gives him a lecture on the, then, current state of the nation's poor, Deeds decides to buy a huge amount of land and give it all away to the poor. Naturally everyone in the movie with any amount of money thinks he is crazy for doing that and he finds himself on trial for his sanity.

Deeds is the stereotypical swell, small town guy that appeared in all of Capra's movies. He is very patriotic and spouts lines like, “People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live.” So, of course, the money is not important to him. Only rude, mean or obnoxious people are rich in Capra's movies.

The female lead role almost went to Carole Lombard, but she went off to do My Man Godfrey instead. Arthur took the role and does a decent job, but as Patrick wrote in his G-Men review, some actresses just didn't have enough star quality to endure the test of time. She has one great line, “That guy is either the dumbest, stupidest, most imbecilic idiot in the world, or else he's the grandest thing alive. I can't make him out.”

Also of note is that Arthur's reporter nicknames Deeds, The Cinderella Man. This movie was made in 1936. From 1935-1937, James Braddock was the heavy weight boxing champion. He was nicknamed The Cinderella man and his life story is the source for the movie Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe. Damon Runyan, a writer for the New York American has been given credit for nicknaming Braddock, but I wonder if this movie had anything to do with it?

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