Cinema Civics: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

When Mr. Smith Goes to Washington came out in 1939, it infuriated politicians, the press, and fascist nations. At the same time, it delighted audiences and informed them on the legislative process decades before Schoolhouse Rock. Today we talk about the film, as well as corruption, earnestness, our families, lost causes, and hope. Listen to our episode of Hannah's visit to the Lincoln Memorial here. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:28Speaker 03

  You all think I'm late? Well, I'm not late. I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause, even if this room gets filled with flies like these.

• 1:42Nick Capodice?

  You are listening to Civics 101. I am Nikita Pichet.

• 1:45Speaker 05

  I'm Christina Phillips. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 1:47Nick Capodice?

  And today, in our Cinema Civic Series, we are talking about the big one, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  What do you know about law to making law to what the people need? I don't pretend to know. And what are you doing in this cell?

• 2:01Nick Capodice?

  Now, first off, I wanted to tell you two that this was not initially my first pick for Cinema Civics. I was going to do Network, which is one of my favorite films of all time.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Veal.

• 2:16Nick Capodice?

  But then I had a conversation with my mom, and I said, "Well, I can't decide if I'm gonna do Network or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." And she was like, "You have to do Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "'Cause it's a really hard time right now, and people need hope. They don't need media cynicism. They need a story about, you know, one person can fight against a problem or a difficulty in the government." So I followed her advice.

• 2:44Nick Capodice?

  Before we launch into the movie, Hannah, Christina, the three of us are people who love to be sarcastic. And speaking for myself and myself only, a little bit of a know-it-all from time to time, it would be easy, and it would be fun, to sort of talk about how corny and propagandist rah-rah America and completely naive this movie is. Let's just break that for like, one day, or at least for 10 minutes of one day. So I wanted to start just by asking each of you, and I'll start with you, Hannah, if there's anyone in some way or another in your life, in your childhood, or anywhere, that resembles Jefferson Smith, in terms of a person who regardless of how impossible it seems, continues to

• 3:28Nick Capodice?

  try to do the right thing, up against all of the machines.

• 3:35Hannah McCarthy?

  My father has worked in housing for 35 years, I believe, and many days of his job include things like trying to tackle the problem of waste in the building. You know, the endlessly piling up garbage, for example, or believing that he can convince the owner of an apartment to invest more money in the health, safety, and function of that apartment than in the way that apartment looks so that you can charge more money. And he does it every day. He goes back every day, and he does it even if he repeatedly

• 4:20Hannah McCarthy?

  gets pushed back down the hill, you know?

• 4:24Speaker 05

  This is gonna be so navel-gazy, but whatever. I think of some of the...

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Journalists, in particular friends that I have that are journalists, who are reporting on just an avalanche of things. And, and the reporting itself becomes just an act of witnessing. And the, like, I think with, with climate coverage, for example, whatever you may define as the lost cause, the outcome of trying is not necessarily that there is a win. The, the outcome of trying is demonstrating that he tried. Like, that, that you can try and that will actually, that matters to people, that you're trying.

• 5:11Nick Capodice?

  I feel like it's cheating, Hannah, but mine's also my dad. As somebody who is perpetually, you know, was perpetually told, you know, "Stop doing this, act quote unquote, more normal." No matter what, he would go to every social situation with like, full on love and full on excitement and attention. Never hurt anybody to the best of his ability. And he kept getting hit in the head by it over and over and over again. But he just never stopped doing it. And the, the, the line in the movie that made me think of that is when Jefferson Smith is speaking, he says, "I wouldn't give two cents for all your fancy rules if behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness.

• 5:56Nick Capodice?

  And a little looking out for the other fella, too." And we're a show about rules. So we talk, it's like what our show is, is talk about the rules, about how things operate. And this movie kinda helped me realize sometimes the rules are there for a really good reason, be it to preserve democracy or to preserve kindness or something like that. And it's easy to get cynical about it, but just for this, like, two hours last night when I watched the movie, I felt that.

• 6:26Nick Capodice?

  With that said, let's launch into it. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Directed by Frank Capra, starring Jimmy Stewart.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all.

• 6:41Nick Capodice?

  Gene Arthur.

• 6:42Speaker 07

  This is no place for you. You're halfway decent. You don't belong here. Now go home.

• 6:46Nick Capodice?

  The gentlest actor in the world, Claude Rains.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Jim, you can't come here and pull that steamroller stuff. No method will do here.

• 6:53Nick Capodice?

  The not-so-gentle guy, Kibbie.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  All my nerves are strained to the breaking point.

• 6:57Nick Capodice?

  Hollywood's resident bullfrog, Eugene Pallett.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  I haven't been able to show him a single monument, not even one that high.

• 7:03Nick Capodice?

  And last but not least, Baby Dumpling.

• 7:06Speaker 08

  Aw, heck. It's a briefcase. Yep.

• 7:12Nick Capodice?

  So Hannah, just give me your, like, first impressions of the movie. Like, what'd you think?

• 7:16Hannah McCarthy?

  I was incredibly moved by it. I was crying by the end of it. I really appreciated the fact that in this film, Washington is pretty much what we, when cynical, think Washington is, that you can have all of your rules. And it's such a civics lesson, because you've got this man-appointed senator who has to be told the very, very basics of things, like how to craft a bill, which was a brilliant scene. Yes. And he's often being told this information by cynical people who are sort of rolling their eyes at him. And then, so you've got these things. You've got the how it's supposed to work, right, which we're very familiar with here at Civics 101. And then you have

• 7:59Hannah McCarthy?

  the deep and incredibly effective corruption that has seeped into even Jimmy Stewart's, you know, most revered friend of his father, who's been a senator for decades now. Even he has been poisoned, and he won't let go of it. And I actually, you know, Nick, in terms of, like, hokey or propaganda or all of that, sure, but at the same time, to make a movie that is honest about the deep and almost inescapably powerful corruption in Washington, I think was pretty honest.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  I think my couple stray thoughts for this is that it's got a lot of really good physical comedy and the scenes are nice and long and lingering, which I really found refreshing. And I think it's interesting that the audience learns very on that Mr. Smith is being set up to fail. Because it makes me wonder what the experience would be like if we learned with him about the corruption. But we learn, you know, like, the first five minutes, there's not a lot of subtext. It's all text. Like, he's just, they're just saying straight out, "We're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this, and we need a guy that will just be

• 9:16Speaker 05

  a body in the room." And, and so we get really clear, like, pretty straightforward corruption right on the surface. And then, to Hannah's point, this is a really great civics lesson in so many ways. And so I really loved that. I think that, that, you know, we have an episode about how a bill becomes a law. And the way that Saunders laid it out is just a really, it's so succinct and fascinating, and it has a little bit of humor to it. At one point, I muttered, "Everything Saunders says is poetry." And I didn't even realize I'd done it, but my partner was watching with me, was just like cackling. And every time she said something, he'd be like, "Was that poetry? Was that poetry?" But I stand by it. Everything she says is poetry.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  It's so good. So yeah, I think I just, yeah, it was, I didn't walk away feeling cynical at all. I walked away being like, "Yeah, people know how the government works. And also, look at all these human beings." So, that's my takeaway.

• 10:19Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, I also feel like it was one of the better love stories I've ever seen. Not to give it away, that you-

• 10:26Speaker 05

  Spoiler alert for 1939.

• 10:29Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, you never know. But you have, you have someone falling in love with, you know, sort of initially being-

• 10:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Iroly about someone's naivete and then sort of coming around to realize that it's it's almost not naivete, that it is the the necessary ingredient in the functioning of a democracy and a society. And so it's almost like she's not falling in love with the man, or she's falling in love with the man alongside falling in love with what he represents. And it's something that she lost. You know, she said she she came to Washington with blue question marks in her eyes, and now she's got green dollar signs in her eyes. And you can tell, she's constantly saying, I want to quit, because I'm over

• 11:23Hannah McCarthy?

  all this. This is terrible. It's, there is no government. It's just business guys running the world. And then he, she also sort of falls in love with the fact that he's able to bring her back into a belief, I think, in American democracy, which I found really touching.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 11:38Hannah McCarthy?

  His editor needs a little work, though. Those, some of the roughest cuts I've seen in a long time. But you know what? I didn't really care.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  I couldn't tell if they were because of restoration or what. But there were some rough cuts.

• 11:52Nick Capodice?

  I'm so glad you mentioned the sort of bad edits and the bad cuts in the movie, Hannah, because Frank Capra was sometimes kind of known for that, for his indelicacy with the camera. Later on in life, in an interview, he said, "Undisguised camera tricks are the mark of beginners who fall in love with bizarre camera angles and hand-moving camera shots. Wrong. Fall in love with your actors." So yes, that's a little self laudatory.

• 12:16Hannah McCarthy?

  I appreciate that. No, I really do.

• 12:17Nick Capodice?

  I appreciate the fall in love with your actors. Let me tell you about Frank Capra. We are a nation of immigrants. So I'm going to leave it to one to tell us about what America stands for. He was born Francesco Rosario Capra, and he comes from the land of the Cappadicei, which is Sicily, just outside of Palermo in Italy. He came to Los Angeles when he was five. He came in steerage, a 13 day trip with his family to come to America. One moment he remembered, even though he was five, was his father looking at the Statue of Liberty, grabbing his son and pointing to it and saying, "Look at that. That is the greatest light since the Star of Bethlehem. That is the light of freedom. And remember that. Freedom."

• 13:02Nick Capodice?

  He was broke. He was penniless in Los Angeles. He went to Caltech for chemical engineering, and he paid for it by waiting on tables and playing the banjo in nightclubs.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  Wow. Man after your own heart.

• 13:14Nick Capodice?

  That's right. My own grandfather played the banjo, so that really sticks to me. And he finally, how he got a gig in filmmaking was he lied to a Hollywood producer and said he had experience making movies. And this producer allowed him to shoot a one-real short film. And step by step, he becomes Frank Capra.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Incredible.

• 13:35Nick Capodice?

  His career after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is very interesting, and I'm gonna talk about it sort of at the very end. But now, let's get to the movie itself. Christina, can you sort of tell us like how we jump into the scene? Like, you know, how does this whole thing begin?

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Well, a senator has died.

• 13:50Nick Capodice?

  Senators die.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  A senator from a state that is not explained, that appears to be Midwestern, based on the Washington of it all. Not that I'm really someone who should be speaking with expertise on accents, but, and the other senator, the governor, and then the political boss, I guess we'd call him, who seems to be the media press guy, all get together and are like, who do we put in charge of this position? Because we have a very important vote coming up, and we need a body in a chair to vote. Is that about cover it?

• 14:31Nick Capodice?

  That was pretty good. For a quick civics one-to-one lesson, do either of you know how we fill a seat if that senator dies or resigns?

• 14:38Speaker 05

  The film would have us believe that the governor appoints the senator, I think, to fill the seat until there can be an election. However, I also know that senate seats sometimes sit vacant.

• 14:51Nick Capodice?

  Very good, Hannah. In 35 states, you get a temporary senator who is appointed by the governor, and then you got a special election to fill that seat the next time your state has an election. So that's what happens in this movie. Governor Hopper, Happy Hopper, is in a whole pickle. He needs to pick a senator, but as you mentioned, Christina, he is entirely in the pocket of the villain of this movie, or in my opinion, the villain, Jim Taylor. Hannah, would you tell us a little about, like, who is Jim Taylor?

• 15:22Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, so I don't know exactly what his business is, but I know that he is the person who has a hand in every newspaper and as many businesses as possible and can move and shake Congress because of all of his many connections and because of his strong-arming. But it's specific to the state that Mr. Smith is from, that he's really in control of this state. And in the case of this film, he wants a deal to go through that he will personally financially benefit from.

• 15:56Nick Capodice?

  He is basically a party boss, as much as I can find out. Yeah, he owns all the newspapers, he owns all the media in the state. And by the way, when I started to notice that I didn't know what the name of the state was, I became obsessed with it. I would like look for like license plates or billboards or anything to just give me an idea like, what state are they from? But I think it's in the West. I think it's like some sort of nearish California. Just judging by his description of the Prairies.

• 16:21Hannah McCarthy?

  Right.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  I, so I have a question. I, I sort of, once I realized they weren't going to identify the state, I just assumed they didn't want us to know. And then that made me wonder, do we know what party these people are? And are we-

• 16:34Nick Capodice?

  That was my next question.

• 16:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, sorry. We do not. We do not.

• 16:37Nick Capodice?

  No, it's good.

• 16:38Hannah McCarthy?

  No, it's very clever. We have no idea what party they are.

• 16:41Nick Capodice?

  There's no indication because we don't know what other kinds of bills they're passing. And we know, let's see, it's 1939. So like, what did Republicans and Democrats stand for in 1939? I actually don't even have the greatest idea. But we didn't know.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a curiously aligned Senate in that they all seem to agree with each other in the way that they all leave at the same time they come back. I know that's further in the plot, but there seems to be absolutely no, like, political parties in this Senate that we're shown.

• 17:12Nick Capodice?

  Taylor needs a yes man to push through this dam because this dam is a big piece of graft. And I was going to ask for one of you to tell me what graft is. But Hannah, you kind of just did it, right?

• 17:24Hannah McCarthy?

  I don't know, perhaps I did. I always thought of graft as an action you do for profit that isn't actually what it seems to be for other people. Does that make sense? Like, you're sort of tricking people. Is that correct?

• 17:36Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, well, actually, you said it earlier. The definition of graft is, in politics, is a politician using their position for personal gain, usually financial gain.

• 17:47Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay.

• 17:47Nick Capodice?

  So it's being like a senator or a president and using that power to make yourself some money. We've done episodes before on like the emoluments clause, which are things that are sort of created to prevent people from doing this, but it still happens a lot, doesn't it?

• 18:03Speaker 05

  This does make me think, I don't know if like the literal origin of the word graft is meant to be taken in the biological sense where you sort of graft onto things, but the fact that this is happening in a, what they call a deficit bill, which seems to be a large bill, is something we see strategically all the time in Congress, where there's a big bill that's very easy to sell on certain populist policies, and you sneak in things in the text of that bill or in the, like, the fine print that seem to be more targeted towards specific policy aims for individual politicians or certain parties.

• 18:43Nick Capodice?

  So Jim Taylor tries to appoint a stooge, sort of a chairwarmer, to go in and vote through his dam, but the governor, Governor Hoppy, says, "No, we can't do that. The people will revolt. The people are demanding this sort of progressive other guy." And Jim Taylor's like, "Absolutely not." That night at dinner, the governor gets no peace from his children, including baby Dumplin, who insists that there is one man only who can hold the job of senator for this mystery state. It is a wide-eyed lover of nature, head of the Boy Rangers, Jeff Smith.

• 19:15Speaker 09

  He's the greatest American we got, too, Dad. He can tell you what George Washington said by heart.

• 19:20Nick Capodice?

  The reason it's the Boy Rangers is the Boy Scouts of America refused to be involved in the movie and to have their name used, so they had to make up the Boy Rangers. So Jefferson Smith's appointed, there's a celebration party, and interestingly, they play "Old Lang Syne."

• 19:34Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, what was that about?

• 19:35Nick Capodice?

  It's just like "It's a Wonderful Life." Jimmy Stewart just has that song following him around wherever he goes.

• 19:43Nick Capodice?

  And at that party, the fellow senator of the mystery state, Senator Payne, who is played by Claude Rains, whom I love so deeply. For anyone out there who doesn't know Claude Rains, he plays Louis Rayno in Casablanca.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. You're winning, sir. Oh, thank you very much.

• 20:03Nick Capodice?

  So at that party, the corrupt Senator Payne learns that Jefferson Smith's father was a Clayton Smith. Clayton Smith was Senator Payne's best friend back in school. I love the scene where the two of them are taking the train to DC and they sort of reminisce about Jefferson Smith's dad, who was a newspaper man who took on a corrupt mining interest and eventually was murdered for it, was shot in the back over his roll top desk, still with his hat on.

• 20:32Hannah McCarthy?

  Still with his hat on. Still with his hat on.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  My note watching this was we are two minutes into this plan and it's already falling apart, that being the plan of getting Jefferson Smith there and that he means nothing, because it appears as though he means a lot as is very deeply connected to the other senator.

• 20:54Nick Capodice?

  I'd also like to note that it was two, I made a little note to myself too, Christina, two minutes in and that's the first cry.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:02Nick Capodice?

  I can't help it, Claude Rains can make anybody cry. So at the end of that train ride, finally, Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

• 21:14Nick Capodice?

  And before we get into what happens in Washington, we have got to take a quick break.

• 21:24Nick Capodice?

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• 23:00Speaker 02

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply, say yes to simple.

• 23:32Nick Capodice?

  All right, we're back. You're listening to Civics 101. We're talking about Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939." And we are here. We made it to Washington, DC. Hannah, you want to lay out Jeff Smith's arrival in the wacky, turbulent Capitol?

• 23:46Hannah McCarthy?

  So they get off the train. They're being followed around by porters, one of whom is carrying Jeff Smith's messenger pigeons that he has brought along with him.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  They have pigeons to carry messages back to the mall.

• 23:58Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, all of the other, sort of the handlers, the other senator, the other people, they just want to get Jeff to his offices. But Jeff wanders off because he sees the Capitol dome.

• 24:15Nick Capodice?

  What did you think of that part when he was wandering around DC? And this is the emotional, emotional musical part of the movie where he wanders around Washington, DC.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  So I feel two ways about it. One way, I'm like, oh, this is so lovely. And I just kept thinking, audiences of that time, this is maybe the first time you see the detail of DC through the eyes of this person. You know, you get to get a tour yourself. And at the same time, I was sort of like, this is a two-hour movie. And we got all four sides of the Lincoln Memorial in this movie. But I really loved it. I was so moved, you know, just seeing him experience these things. And then we've got that long pause for the child to read a line from something in the Lincoln Memorial, and the man is teaching him how to read. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'll be here forever. This can be five hours. I don't care.

• 25:08Hannah McCarthy?

  That we here highly

• 25:10Speaker 08

  Resolved.

• 25:11Hannah McCarthy?

  Resolved. That these dead do not have died in vain. What was interesting for me is the fact that although it was so terribly cheesy and drawn out and long, and I don't necessarily think that an audience member who's not like me, or perhaps like Christina, someone who's very vulnerable to that sort of thing, would be convinced of it or won over by it. But as someone who has cried in the Lincoln Memorial

• 25:42Speaker 05

  On tape.

• 25:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Every single time, including on tape, I was like, yeah, well, you know, I mean, I get it. I totally get what he's feeling. I just don't, I'm not sure about the execution. I have to be totally honest with you. But it still worked on me.

• 25:55Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, it worked on me too. It did feel a bit much, but it worked on me. And by the way, listeners, we're gonna put a link in the show notes to the episode where Hannah cries at the Lincoln Memorial. Because that's one of my favorite ones we've ever done.

• 26:05Hannah McCarthy?

  It's really sweet.

• 26:09Nick Capodice?

  Well, Jefferson Smith finally makes it to his office where he meets his hard-nosed, whip-smart secretary Hannah McCarthy. Just kidding, just kidding. Clarissa Saunders. She is cynical. She dates a reporter named Diz, who keeps asking her to marry him.

• 26:27Hannah McCarthy?

  I don't know if she's dating the reporter, to be honest with you. I think he's just, I think he's in her space. He's constantly hitting on her. And he is her closest press connection. He's the one that she's like, she tells what to do. Give me this headline, do this for me.

• 26:44Nick Capodice?

  Maybe you're right. Maybe they're not dating. They just go out and eat oysters and steak and drink a lot together. Saunders hates the fact that she has to babysit this idealistic bumpkin. So she decides to quit. She's like, I've had enough of this job. I'm out. And she's gonna go out in a blaze of glory. So she sic's the Washington reporters on Jefferson Smith. Now is where I'd like to ask you both what you think about the depiction of the media in this film.

• 27:11Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, they're utterly corrupt. Utterly corrupt. But you know, it's, what's interesting about it to me is that the media are either bought in this movie, or they are doing anything to catch someone out and to get a good headline, right? But then, at the end...

• 27:34Speaker 07

  Jeff has a paper there, boy stuff, right? They aren't letting what Jeff says get printed in the state. Now if I give you a raft of it over the phone right now...

• 27:42Hannah McCarthy?

  I thought to myself, well, there's, there's little old public radio.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Just little boy stuff for periodicals.

• 27:53Nick Capodice?

  Us, our little public radio station is getting run over by a cyber truck? Oh, sorry, that's too hard. Our public radio station is getting run over by a truck that is the complete rescission of funds already promised to us.

• 28:08Nick Capodice?

  Well, eventually Jeff Smith goes to bed and he arrives for his first ever session in the Senate the next day at noon. By the way, the Senate in the movie, that was the largest set that Columbia Pictures had built to that point.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 28:24Nick Capodice?

  It's a complete replica of the US Senate. Capra had gone to DC and filmed like every square foot of it to make sure he recreated it perfectly. And when he gets into the Senate, he is shown the ropes by a young Senate page named Richard, who he calls Dick. I love in movies where there's like some person who knows what's up, who's telling the protagonist how everything operates. That's like my favorite trope.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  There's a lot of that in this movie. There are several characters who do that for him.

• 28:49Speaker 08

  Here you are, Senator. Not a bad desk either. Daniel Webster used to use it.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Daniel Webster sat here?

• 28:56Speaker 08

  Give you something to shoot at, Senator, if you figure on doing any talking.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Hold on, I'm just gonna sit around and listen.

• 29:01Speaker 08

  And that's a way to get reelected.

• 29:03Nick Capodice?

  Then we see the swearing in of Jeff Smith by the very avuncular President of the Senate, played by Harry Carey. Next civics question, who's the President of the Senate?

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Hmm, the Vice President, right?

• 29:16Nick Capodice?

  Yeah. Do you think this guy was the Vice President?

• 29:20Speaker 05

  No, he's the President Pro Tem. Yeah.

• 29:22Nick Capodice?

  He is the President Pro Tem.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  He's gotta be, yeah. What I find so interesting about the President Pro Tem, which is the person who acts to lead the Senate in the absence of the Vice President, is it's the longest-serving Senator from the majority party and also third in line of succession.

• 29:39Nick Capodice?

  I was gonna ask for a definition of President Pro Tem, but you already got that right off the bat.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm so ready.

• 29:44Nick Capodice?

  And after that first day in the Senate, Jefferson Smith finds out all those newspaper men wrote all those horrible, salacious fake articles about them. And then what does he do, Hannah?

• 29:54Speaker 05

  He goes and punches as many reporters as he can find.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Who let you in here? Why aren't you out chasing ambulance? That guy Smith's punching everybody he meets. I just gotta wait for him. Oh, Tarzan!

• 30:06Speaker 05

  I went through the entire movie assuming that was a dream sequence. I was like, he's just imagining it, but I'm realizing he doesn't actually like, leave that dream sequence. He just ends up in the bar, but.

• 30:18Hannah McCarthy?

  No, he totally punches everyone. That's, that's real. Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  That's so funny.

• 30:24Nick Capodice?

  My favorite is when he punches a reporter out and then leaves and then the reporter's shaking his head like, what, what just happened? He looks up and it's a portrait of George Washington looking smart. Like, you deserve that. Yeah, that's what you get for messing with the stuff that I created. That is one of my favorite scenes in the movie when all the press reporters get him together and say, well, what are you doing here, man? Don't you know what an honorary senator actually does?

• 30:50Speaker 03

  The country needs men up there who know and have courage as it never did before. He's just gonna decorate a chair and get himself on.

• 30:58Speaker 09

  Or will he vote? Sure, just like his colleague tells him to.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. Like a Christmas tiger. He'll nod his head and vote. Yes, sir. You're not a senator. You're an honorary stooge. You ought to be shown up.

• 31:13Nick Capodice?

  Do either of you know what a Christmas tiger is?

• 31:16Hannah McCarthy?

  It's a, it's a bobblehead.

• 31:18Nick Capodice?

  How did you know that?

• 31:19Hannah McCarthy?

  Because I've seen them a million times.

• 31:21Nick Capodice?

  In England, they used to call them naughty dogs. N-O-D-D-Y. You'd put a dog like in the back of your car and it would just kind of be nodding all the time. And that's what the Christmas tiger is.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Wait, so how does that connect to Mr. Smith?

• 31:33Nick Capodice?

  Oh, because what's he actually gonna do? He's just gonna do what Senator Payne tells him to. He's just gonna be constantly nodding his head and saying, yes. So depressed and powerless, he goes to his fellow Senator Joe Payne, who says like, I gotta do something. I'm not just a Christmas tiger. And Senator Payne has the great idea of just how to keep Jeff Smith busy. He convinces Jefferson Smith to write his very own bill to create a national boys camp in his non-existent state. Now we get to the tremendous civics lesson decades before Schoolhouse Rock.

• 32:09Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, I loved it.

• 32:11Speaker 07

  Finally, they think it's quite a bill. It goes over to the House of Representatives for debate and a vote, but it has to wait its turn on the calendar.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Calendar, huh?

• 32:18Speaker 07

  Yeah. That's the order of business. Your bill has to stand way back there in line unless the steering committee thinks it's important.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 32:25Speaker 07

  What?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Steering committee.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  For me, it was the first moment where I realized that this actress is very, very, very special. The way that she plays the line between annoyed and incredibly patient.

• 32:38Hannah McCarthy?

  Was brilliant and even just like the way she holds her mouth in a straight line was remarkable. And she just delightfully is explaining to him essentially the fact that what he has just been told to do is sit on his hands and play or play in the sandbox. And then she explains to him that this thing will not happen.

• 33:02Speaker 07

  Yes, sir. The big day finally arrives and Congress adjourns.

• 33:08Hannah McCarthy?

  And he's like, great, let's get started. And, and she's like, don't you understand that I've just told you this is a play pretend project that you don't understand? And it was just, it was wonderful.

• 33:20Nick Capodice?

  One thing that caught me off guard is when she's explaining what committee is. She says, how else are you going to get 96 people to agree on something? And I was like, 96? There's 100 people in the Senate. What's up with that? And then I realized it was 20 years before Hawaii and Alaska were added to the United States.

• 33:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:38Nick Capodice?

  So Smith writes his bill with Saunders, but Saunders knows something that he doesn't, which is the site for his proposed national boys camp is where the dam is gonna be. Do you remember the dam from so long ago? Jim Taylor's graft? So Smith introduces his bill. Senator Payne runs out all flustered. Jim Taylor and Senator Payne decide they have got to get this damn legislation through toot sweet or their scandal is going to be revealed. So they use Senator Payne's attractive daughter to lure Smith out of the Senate for one day when they propose the bill.

• 34:10Hannah McCarthy?

  Wait, may I just say something quickly? Cause I know we moved past this fairly fast.

• 34:13Nick Capodice?

  Sure.

• 34:14Hannah McCarthy?

  In, in the scenes where we're first in the Senate and the very, very basics of the Senate are being explained to us, I feel like you can feel the movie already telling you, everyone in this room is pretending to abide by the rules. They all know the rules. They all look as though they're following the rules. But as has already been established, this is a place steeped in corruption. And it's almost like these rules are for naught until you bring in an individual who doesn't just follow the rules, but he believes in the power and democracy thereof.

• 34:57Hannah McCarthy?

  I just wanted to say that.

• 34:58Nick Capodice?

  That's a really good point.

• 34:59Hannah McCarthy?

  I found that really interesting, yes.

• 35:01Nick Capodice?

  Like, the senators are doing nothing but maintaining their reputations. Like, that's all they care about. They're not passing legislation, they're not impassioned about anything. They just follow the rules, step by step. Leading to, you know, back to that quote again, you know, what's the point of rules if there's not some humanity behind them? There's some reason why you have them, other than just protocol and reputation.

• 35:21Hannah McCarthy?

  Right.

• 35:22Nick Capodice?

  So, Smith is kept out of the Senate the day that bill's introduced. Do you guys remember what it was called in the movie? This bill with the dam stuff crammed into it?

• 35:29Speaker 05

  A deficiency bill, right?

• 35:31Nick Capodice?

  A deficiency bill? Have you ever heard of a deficiency bill?

• 35:34Speaker 05

  I had not.

• 35:35Hannah McCarthy?

  I had not, but I assume it's some sort of appropriations bill, perhaps? I don't know.

• 35:40Nick Capodice?

  It is. It's even, like, referred to in essays about the movie as just "the appropriations bill." But it was called a deficiency bill, which is a spending bill that asks the government to spend money to make up for some deficiency. Like, you know, Medicaid was budgeted for X billion dollars, but we're a billion short. Can we have that money? We are deficient, and that's a deficiency bill.

• 36:01Hannah McCarthy?

  Got it.

• 36:01Nick Capodice?

  And you may wonder, like, how does a building of a dam fit into that? The same way all legislation happens. Like you said, omnibus bill, things are just crammed in. So, Saunders goes out and gets drunk with Diz, eats some oysters and steak, comes back to the office while inebriated to tell Jeff Smith that he was played by Senator Payne, Senator Payne's daughter, and the big bad Jim Taylor. She spills all the dirt on the dam. And then the next day in the Senate, Jeff Smith makes a bit of a mistake. He rises and accuses members of the Senate of graft, of being corrupt and in the pocket of Jim Taylor. And he has no idea how the Taylor machine is gonna break him down.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Either he falls in line with us and behaves himself, or I'll break him so wide open they'll never be able to find the pieces. Jim, I won't stand for it.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  You won't stand for it. I don't want any part of crucifying this boy.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  What struck me about him kind of standing up and calling out the corruption and that being a problem for him is that so often, I think, in current politics, like, the way that you get attention in a way that advances you seems to be standing up and being like, "You're corrupt and you're corrupt." Like, this ends up backfiring on him in a way that I think a lot of politicians deliberately kind of go after that sort of opportunity to take out their colleagues.

• 37:27Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, so, this is far more cynical. I think that this is pretty close to what actually goes on. Certainly, there's a lot of show in Congress lately, and I know that there's not a great deal of getting anything passed when it comes to disagreements between the parties. However, I think it's far less likely that individuals are called out for real corruption and more that they are called corrupt. I have a little bit of a hard time believing that everyone's as much of an angel as the

• 38:07Hannah McCarthy?

  lack of evidence of deep, deep corruption, at least espoused by members of other parties, would have us believe, you know? I don't know, they're just people. So I actually felt like, yeah, this is probably how it would go. Like, if someone were being sort of hamstrung by the political machine that got them the job and that keeps them the job, they would probably be like, "Fire that guy." You know, if he's revealing that something actual is going on here.

• 38:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like what you were just saying about how he's following the rules earnestly. He's like calling out corruption earnestly. And, you know, the rule that happens in the Senate is perhaps more like, no, we're all sort of like assuming these roles that we play. And he's actually coming in and being like, "Well, wait a minute. No, this is how I understand it to work on the surface."

• 38:59Hannah McCarthy?

  Right.

• 39:00Nick Capodice?

  So what they do is they just turn the tables and say, no, you're corrupt. They accuse him of graft. They forged signatures. That was really scary to me, just this notion of someone who is truly innocent can just in a blink of an eye be accused of all sorts of crimes with zero actual evidence. It's just they all, they all fall in line and...

• 39:20Hannah McCarthy?

  Happens every day, Nick.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  I have conclusive evidence to prove that my colleague owns the very land described in his bill. He bought it the day following his appointment to the Senate and is holding it, using this body and his privileged office for his own personal profit.

• 39:36Nick Capodice?

  Smith is then hauled in front of the Ethics Committee and he is asked to defend himself and he runs out without saying a word. So it looks like a lone man cannot fight for a lost cause. The odds are all against him. Hannah and Christina, what's the one way a man like Jefferson Smith can fight back against the machine?

• 39:57Hannah McCarthy?

  A dame.

• 40:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, it starts with a dame. He has to be, he goes, he goes to cry at the Lincoln Memorial, which don't we all? And, um, and he's planning to head out of town and Saunders finds him and she said, essentially says to him, you know, I was wrong in my understanding of you. Uh, she calls, she harkens back to Senator Smith saying, it seemed like Lincoln was sitting there waiting for someone. And she says to him, maybe he was waiting for you, right? Maybe you're the one. Um, and so he goes back to her place and they decided to craft a plan.

• 40:42Nick Capodice?

  And Christina, what is the tool that Saunders teaches him to use the next day?

• 40:47Hannah McCarthy?

  The filibuster.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  And I'll tell you one thing, the wild horses aren't gonna drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes all with it.

• 41:00Nick Capodice?

  Did you ever think you'd romanticize the filibuster, which is kind of like-

• 41:04Speaker 05

  That was the thing, is I was like, oh, man, what a take, that the filibuster is done for honor. But then again.

• 41:12Nick Capodice?

  Do you, one of you want to just, we've done episodes on the filibuster, but one of you want to just explain briefly, 101, what it is?

• 41:18Hannah McCarthy?

  In certain circumstances, if a senator is granted the floor by the president of the senate, or the president pro temp, then so long as that senator does not stop speaking, does not sit down, and does not leave the chambers, and does not yield their time, except in sort of like, brief interruptions, that senator may continue to hold the floor. So what that means is, that person could theoretically, although, you know, we are human beings, could talk forever.

• 41:52Nick Capodice?

  And Christina, do you know how we stop a filibuster, how you interrupt it?

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Doesn't it require 2/3 of the senate to interrupt a filibuster?

• 42:01Nick Capodice?

  Uh, yes, well, now it's 3/5, but at the time of the movie, it was 2/3 of the senate. They invoke something called cloture. Cloture is, hey, you know, we've had enough of this guy talking. So my question is, these senators all were miserable, listening to him talk, why didn't they just invoke cloture?

• 42:16Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, however, however, they do maintain a quorum in the senate, at all times.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  And that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of, well, it looks like the night shift's coming on.

• 42:32Nick Capodice?

  The current record for a filibuster in US history is Strom Thurmond, who was filibustering against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, that was 24 hours and 18 minutes. That record was recently beaten by Cory Booker, but he was not filibustering, this is very important. So, the filibuster record is still Strom Thurmond, Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes.

• 42:57Nick Capodice?

  So the people in the gallery who are, you know, visiting the Senate and watching the filibuster, they're kind of like, they like what he's saying. They're getting behind it. And he's saying a ton of good stuff. Great speeches off the cuff, and then resorting to, you know, reading the Declaration of Independence, or Letters of George Washington, or the Constitution, slowly. But Jim Taylor is stopping all of the news coming into his state unless it is anti-Jefferson Smith. So Jim Taylor runs a smear campaign, saying that the deficiency bill needs to pass right now, or people will starve.

• 43:33Hannah McCarthy?

  Keeping it vague.

• 43:35Nick Capodice?

  I don't think a deficiency bill going through is going to be something that, you know, in one day, lets people starve.

• 43:44Hannah McCarthy?

  But it's, of course, not about that. It's all about how you sell it. That's the whole point of this. And it's about who has enough power to manipulate people.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  I did just like how he started to get kind of, um, chippy. You know, like, this is the opportunity for-

• 44:01Hannah McCarthy?

  You mean like punchy?

• 44:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like, he gains confidence throughout his filibuster. Whereas before, he was so uncertain. It's like, now that he's been empowered with the knowledge of how the filibuster works, he starts being like, is it a question? I guess I'll yield for a question. Or I'll be like, ah, my favorite text. And, and so he starts, you know, actually kind of operating in the language of the Senate, in a way.

• 44:24Nick Capodice?

  Like, we've created a monster.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 44:27Nick Capodice?

  Somebody who knows the rules, but actually cares about things.

• 44:30Hannah McCarthy?

  But he's still, he's utterly reliant on Saunders to give him cues for everything. Because she knows exactly what to do and when to do it.

• 44:37Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, she's like the real hero of this movie, I think. So since Jim Taylor owns the media, nobody in the state hears anything that Smith is saying to defend himself. But then Saunders remembers that Jefferson Smith ran a little paper for the Boy Rangers. So she and Diz dictate copy over the phone to Smith's mother. And these plucky little kids, they write their own coverage, and they bike and wagon these papers all over the state.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  Boy stuff.

• 45:06Nick Capodice?

  Oh, yeah, boy stuff.

• 45:07Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and then Taylor, Taylor attacks them.

• 45:10Nick Capodice?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, he runs, he runs children who are inexplicably driving. It's, it's actually kind of shockingly violent.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:18Hannah McCarthy?

  That he, he would basically kill people. Children. And that's, I think, the point is that it's sort of illustrating, no, you don't get how much this guy doesn't care about human beings.

• 45:30Nick Capodice?

  And Taylor is telling the kids, you don't get to be a journalist because that's me. I am in charge of what people learn. I'm in charge of the truth. You don't get to share your truth with the people.

• 45:44Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Nick Capodice?

  And it was a heartbreaking moment, that scene. I got very emotional when the kids were getting beaten up and knocked off the road and stuff. I like the David versus Goliath, man versus machine thing. The little kids with their tiny little press, putting a paper together, contrasted and juxtaposed against the spinning iron wheels of Jim Taylor's press machine. I love it when things like that happen. So, boys get beaten up. It's very sad. And finally, Jefferson Smith passes out after about 24 hours of filibustering.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  And the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place. Somebody will listen to me.

• 46:33Nick Capodice?

  When Jefferson Smith falls, Senator Payne runs out of the Senate. And this part was always confusing to me. I think to shoot himself. I don't see a gun, but you hear gunshots?

• 46:43Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes, that's my understanding.

• 46:45Nick Capodice?

  So he runs in again and shouts that everything Smith has been saying is true and that he, Senator Payne, is the corrupt one. He's not fit to serve. He's not even fit to live.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Every word about Taylor and me and graft and the rotten political corruption of my state. Every word of it is true. I'm not fit for office. I'm not fit for any place of honor.

• 47:06Nick Capodice?

  And after that, it's pretty much the fastest ending in Hollywood history.

• 47:13Hannah McCarthy?

  That's the, yeah, that's it. You don't even get to see Jeff Smith wake back up.

• 47:17Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, that's a really good point.

• 47:20Hannah McCarthy?

  He's just, he's passed out cold at the end of it. But you know what? I really, really liked that. Because while you had this turnaround, while you have, the crowd is cheering and the president of the Senate doesn't even try to call order any longer. And, you know, Saunders yells, yippee. He's still passed out cold after. Completely draining himself in the name of democracy and representation of the people. And I do think we're meant to say to ourselves, look at what it takes. And usually even this is not enough, you know? Look at what they make you give.

• 47:55Nick Capodice?

  I was just about to say, look at what they make you give. So are you too curious how audiences reacted?

• 48:01Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, deeply curious.

• 48:03Nick Capodice?

  We're gonna talk about it after a quick break.

• 48:09Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing, there are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 48:54Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

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• 49:44Speaker 02

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• 50:14Nick Capodice?

  All right, Hannah, how do you think "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" was received?

• 50:18Hannah McCarthy?

  I don't have a very good reason as to why I believe this. My guess is that it was initially poorly received and that now people think it's a masterpiece. That's my guess.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  I'm gonna guess that the public loved it because we love a movie that tells us how to feel and it's funny and I think it's accessible. I'm gonna guess, and I hope I'm wrong, but I'm gonna guess that a lot of politicians and journalists were real grumpy about this one.

• 50:53Nick Capodice?

  All right, so here's what went down. The film premiered in the Constitution Hall on October 17th, 1939. This premiere was sponsored by the National Press Club. About 4,000 people came, including 45 of the 96 senators. And this movie was absolutely eviscerated.

• 51:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, gosh.

• 51:18Nick Capodice?

  Just like you said, Christina, politicians said that it showed DC as a bunch of crooks that are rife with corruption. And it was also accused of being communist and socialist propaganda. Now, again, this is coming out right before involvement in World War II. So saying there are problems with America because senators are corrupt. That was considered communist.

• 51:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:44Nick Capodice?

  Also, the fact that anybody can stand up and speak their mind about whatever they think, even if it harms the country, is a danger to the United States.

• 51:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 51:53Nick Capodice?

  Senate Majority Leader Alvin Barkley, he called the film, quote, "silly and stupid." Uh, he said that the film was, quote, "a grotesque distortion of the Senate, as grotesque as anything ever seen." And the last line of his that I appreciated was, uh, Barkley said the film showed the Senate as the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on the record.

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 52:18Nick Capodice?

  In addition, newspaper reporters despise the film. One from the Washington Star said that it showed, quote, "the democratic system and our vaunted free press in exactly the colors that Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin like to paint them."

• 52:33Speaker 05

  Ah. Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry, but this, this feels a little bit like the Streisand effect where you just, um, if you make a big deal about a thing about you, it never works well.

• 52:46Nick Capodice?

  Uh, the biggest complaint from the press at large was that it depicted them all as, uh, drinking too much.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  Really?

• 52:52Nick Capodice?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 05

  Oh, that's what they're upset about.

• 52:54Hannah McCarthy?

  You know, it, it is interesting, members of the press are often shown, well, I guess if you're going to depict the press and you need them to be chatting with-

• 53:03Nick Capodice?

  Smoking, highball, drinking.

• 53:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, yeah, but if you need them to be talking to one another, they need to be at like a bar in Washington where people rub elbows and they're drinking and smoking. Yeah, you see that a lot, I guess, yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 05

  It's much less interesting to see them like hunched over their phone or like in a, in a corner somewhere.

• 53:18Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, I think that all the time. I, I, I often think like-

• 53:22Nick Capodice?

  What real journalism looks like.

• 53:23Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, if, if members of the, if they tried to make a movie about what we, so many of us spend so much of our time doing, it would be, you know, no one would, no one would watch it.

• 53:39Nick Capodice?

  So last thing I want to say is that Frank Capra at the premiere was seated next to a senator from Montana. And Frank Capra said, quote, "That night was the worst shellacking of my professional life."

• 53:52Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 53:53Nick Capodice?

  So, American politicians despise this movie. Interesting. But you know who else did? Fascist countries. Hitler's Germany, Franco's Spain, Italy, they all banned this movie because it showed America and democracy in a positive light.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 54:12Nick Capodice?

  Isn't that interesting? There was one theater in occupied France during the war, there was, the theater was told it's not allowed to show any American movies whatsoever. So they put on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for 30 days, nonstop, until the government shut the movie theater down.

• 54:29Speaker 05

  Love it.

• 54:30Nick Capodice?

  And as to the question of the public, the public loved it. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. It made $3.5 million in the box office. The third highest grossing film of the 1930s, beaten only by Gone with the Wind and Snow White.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  That's a tough year.

• 54:49Nick Capodice?

  What fascinated me most, sort of at the end of this story, is something to do with Frank Capra himself. So he made a lot of movies, he made a lot of money, he was the president of SAG for a while. December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor, Frank Capra quit directing entirely. He gave up his SAG presidency, he stopped making films, and he enlisted in the US Army. And he wrote, he wrote this line about it. He said, "I had a guilty conscience. In my films, I championed the cause of the gentle, the poor, the downtrodden. Yet I had begun to live like the Aga Khan. The curse of Hollywood is big money.

• 55:31Nick Capodice?

  It comes so fast, it breeds and imposes its own mores, not of wealth, but of ostentation and phony status." He was 44 years old when he enlisted after Pearl Harbor, and he was told, buddy, you know, you're too old to fight. So Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall asked Frank Capra to come to the Pentagon for a special meeting. And this general told Capra, he was worried about soldiers in the US Army. He was worried about them being unwilling to fight because they're overseas. Right? You're not at home defending your house or defending your country. You're fighting a war overseas that mainly is dealing with other countries and other people.

• 56:14Nick Capodice?

  Frank Capra was asked by this general to make a film that told soldiers, in Frank Capra's own words, quote, "Why the hell they're in uniform." And Frank Capra made a seven film series, a series of documentaries that is titled, "Why We Fight."

• 56:31Hannah McCarthy?

  Wow.

• 56:32Nick Capodice?

  The first one came out, President Franklin Roosevelt said, quote, "I want every American to see this motion picture." Winston Churchill ordered the films to be screened in British theaters. And the very last quote of Frank Capra's, he was asked in an interview, "Why he made movies to inspire soldiers?" And he said, quote, "Because for two hours, you've got 'em. Hitler can't keep 'em that long. You eventually reach more people than Roosevelt does on the radio."

• 57:04Nick Capodice?

  Do you guys have any last thoughts on the movie? What was the part that made you cry the most?

• 57:09Hannah McCarthy?

  I, I, probably about halfway through, I was just sort of tearful.

• 57:16Hannah McCarthy?

  I think, I think that earnestness is important. And I think that in so many ways, we have become a nation and a world that looks at earnestness as reflective of a lack of intelligence or an ability to swan around with other people or, or a sign that you don't carry the cultural capital that would make you useful.

• 57:50Hannah McCarthy?

  And I think that's generally not good for the world. And so to have a character who is not just earnest, but quite intelligent, played by someone who can also make that character very charming and very enigmatic, I think accomplishes a kind of beautiful feat.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  I think that the moment that made me tear up unexpectedly, and then now that I think about it, makes a lot of sense, is after Saunders lays out how a bill does or does not become a law. And Jefferson Smith says, okay, so should we order food first or should we get started? And she says, I think, let me go get a pencil. And I thought, because I'm cynical, unfortunately.

• 58:44Hannah McCarthy?

  That she was gonna leave?

• 58:44Speaker 05

  I was like, that she was gonna leave.

• 58:46Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, I thought so too.

• 58:47Speaker 05

  And then, yeah, and then she comes back. The next scene, you just see her sitting there. And also, what happens next is that he opens his mouth and he just starts like he's on it. Like it's, it's like they're like, okay, we're doing it. And then they just start doing it.

• 59:06Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, Christina, I agree with you. That moment for me was, I guess, and you know, you know that the bill is supposed to be doomed either way, but I think also a reminder that you can choose to do something even if it's, you know, as you asked at the very beginning, Nick, a quote unquote lost cause, right? And then I think so often, when it comes to American politics, there's a lot of throwing up of hands and saying that will never happen. And I think that that is really dangerous for things actually happening. Because if everyone agrees, oh, no, that'll never get done, then someone has won and it is not the people.

• 1:00:08Nick Capodice?

  Well, Mr. Smith went to Washington and look what happened. Be earnest, everybody. We need it. This episode was made by me, Hannah McCarthy. This episode was made by me, Nick Capodice, and I'm joined with Christina Phillips and Hannah McCarthy. Our additional producer is Marina Henke, and Rebecca Lavoy is our executive producer. She also was upset that I didn't explain anything about Baby Dumpling. So if you want to know who Baby Dumpling is, you know, just look him up. It's a child actor named Lee Sims, who is in a bunch of movies about, based on the cartoon strip Blondie, Dagwood, Bumstead, and all that. And he initially was called Baby Dumpling. I don't know why. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound, Halizniko, Blue Dot Sessions, Young Karts,

• 1:00:52Nick Capodice?

  and the only musician in the Creative Commons I could listen to for 24 hours without falling to my knees, Chris Zabriski. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. Wait, did I go this whole episode without doing a Jimmy Stewart impression? How is that possible? Now, wait a minute. I wish I had a million dollars. Hot dog. I don't want to hit him with a gun. I want to get him with a book of law. Sounds more like Owen Wilson.

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