Mr.Smith Goes to Washington

    Many of you probably won't know what this movie is, unless you are some person that was searching for it, and stumbled upon my site.  This movie was made in 1939.  It was directed by Frank Capra, and starred the late Jimmy Stewart (the same director/actor team that created the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life").  This is my second favorite movie of all time.
    The box says its about, "an idealistic, small town senator who heads to Washington and suddenly finds himself single-handedly battling ruthless politicians out to destroy him."  This is pretty much the gist of this movie, but of course, there is much more to it than that.
    Jimmy Stewart plays a young senator who has been chosen by the machinations of machine politics to take the spot of a deceased senator.  He is a boy scout and a ture patriot.  When he gets to Washington, he goes around, and tours the nations monuments and such.  He enjoys going to Monticello and Mt. Vernon, etc.  Stewart also has a pretty secretary, that has become jaded by the corruption of politics.  She is somewhat amused by Stewart's idealism.  Stewart also meets his Dad's friend, another senator, who tries to help out Stewart, but is really working for the high up political bosses.
    The conflict in the story begins when Stewart decides to build a national camp, where all the little boys in the nation can go in the summer to learn about nature and the American way.  This land is to be purcahased using the nickels and dimes that boys across the US send in.  One of the best parts of the movie is when Stewart gets these first letters with money in them.  He is choke pleased with his haul, and is all happy about it.  But things turn sour fast.  The place where he wants to build this reserve is the same place where the political bosses want to build a dam.  The bosses first try to lead Stewart out of the Congress on the day the vote is taking place, but he finds out about the plan.  He refuses to cooperate, so the bosses are forced to eliminate him, and destroy him politically.  They claim Stewart owned the land he was going to buy, and said he was planning to steal the money of all the little boys across the nation, when they sent it in.
    Stewart fights back.  He tries to convince the Congress that this is not so.  But in order to prove this, he needs the people of his home state to send in letters saying that he is a good person, and would never do this.  In order to buy time for the letters to come, he philibusters the Congress for a good two days, reading from the Constitution and various American tomes.  The picture on the top of this page is at the end of the movie, when the letters finally come.  The bosses have got to the letters, sabatoged them, and sent in fake letters saying Stewart sucks.  He is all sad, and is heartbroken, when his dad's old buddy (the senator working for the bosses), runs in and reveals the plot.  He can't bear to see a good man like Stewart take the fall.  The movie then ends, rather abruptly, with Stewart kind of passing out on the Congress floor, and the dad's friend being restrained and yelling.  Old movies like to end that way.  They are not all tidy such as movies nowadays.
    But that is the movie.  I enjoy it very much, and I obviously think it is a good movie.  The AFI named it around 30 or so in the best movies ever made in America.  So someone agrees with me.