Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Frank Capra won his second Oscar® for this warm, insightful comedy about Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small-town joe who inherits $20,000,000 and decides *gasp* to give it all away to poor people. Naturally, everyone assumes he's nuts and immediately sets to work on A) having him committed and B) prying all that loot away from him. Jean Arthur cemented her stardom as the big-city reporter who smells a scoop but eventually sees things his way. Capra assembled his usual sterling supporting cast: Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille, George Bancroft, Raymond Walburn, Walter Catlett, H.B. Warner, and of course, screenwriter Robert Riskin, whose deft use of the term "pixilated" made it a household word. Decades later, it spawned a short-lived sitcom, and was remade in 2002 with Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder.