Frank Capra — Biographical Sketch (1927) 🇺🇸

Frank Capra, motion picture director, got a good break when he returned from service in the army following the war. He exhausted every channel through which he might get work as a chemical engineer in which he had a college degree, and he was hungry and without funds. So he started to write. It was a precarious undertaking for a hungry man, but he sold a couple of stories, and so started in pictures as a writer. And he has doubtless had a greater success in pictures than he could have achieved as a chemical engineer.

It was no easy task, this writing for the screen for the very smallest of the independent companies, but Capra stuck to it and made fair success of it until he was graduated to a director. Since properly striking his stride he has been with Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, F. B. O. and First National. His most successful pictures to date are “The Strong Man,” “Long Pants,” and “For the Love of Mike.”

Capra is a native of Italy, but his family moved from there to Hollywood when he was a youth, so he got his education in the grade and high schools in Los Angeles, and then graduated from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. This looked fairly rosy for him up to the time he went into the service. His father was noted as a church singer, and there was every prospect that he would launch on a successful career as a chemical engineer.

His return from war and his unsuccessful hunt for work had him completely discouraged for a time. It is hard for him to explain to this day how he conceived the idea of writing for the screen. But he figured that he must eat and he put everything he had in his first stories. They did not bring him much in the way of financial returns, but they fired him with a new ambition, and his persistency carried him through to success. Lately he has been most successful, and he figures he has now just fairly hit his stride. Indications are that in the future he will accomplish even bigger things in the motion picture industry than he has in the past.

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Frank Capra — Director

Recent Releases

• The Strong Man
• Long Pants

Starring Harry Langdon

• For the Love of Mike

A Robt. Kane-First National Production

Collection: Motion Picture News, October 1927 (Booking Guide and Studio Directory)