Frank Capra: Life and Times

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Frank Capra, a leading figure in the film industry, had created many remarkable masterpieces from the era of the Great Depression all the way through the Second Great War. Not only did he face the innovating changes of movie life, such as the change from silent to sound film-making, he had has made a great impact on the lives of Americans.
Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897. Capra, was initially named Francesco Rosario Capra, changed it after he had immigrated to America with his family from Italy. As Frank puts it: “It all began with a letter. A letter from America - when I was a big-eyed child of five. It was the first letter Papa, my forty-seven-year-old peasant father, Salvatore Capra, had received from anywhere (3). He settled in Los Angeles, California in what was known to him as an Italian ghetto. Though times were tough, he attended the California Institute of Technology, majoring in chemical engineering. After finishing college, he enrolled in the U.S. Army to fight in the First Great War. This would later influence his implementation of his political perspectives such as, American individualism, into his movie making. He married actress Helen Howell, but later divorced, and married Lucille Warner later on, together they had three sons and a daughter.
After the war, he participated in many odd jobs, some of which included farm-working, oil stock selling, and book vending. Capra faced hard times, but with one phone call to a new San Francisco theater, he had ignited his career into the world of the film industry.
Frank was at first an amateur with silent film-making, but working as an apprentice with producer Henry Cohn, he began more adept at it. He started with gags and comedy humor movies, but the emergence of fil...

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Works Cited

"A Certain Cinema." A Certain Cinema. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. .
"Frank Capra." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. .
Capra, Frank. The Name above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Da Capo, 1997. Print.
"Frank Capra at the BFI - Review." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 18 Dec. 2010. Web. 04 May 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/dec/18/frank-capra-bfi-season-review. Barson, Michael. "Frank Capra (American Film Director)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014. .
"Frank Capra." - New World Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2014. .

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