Meet John Doe

Meet John Doe is a 1941 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra, written by Robert Riskin, and starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, and Gene Lockhart. The film is about a "grassroots" political campaign created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist with the involvement of a hired homeless man and pursued by the paper's wealthy owner. The film became a box-office success and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story; it was ranked No. 49 in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers. It was the first of two features Capra made for Warner Bros. Pictures after he left Columbia Pictures, the other being Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). In 1969, the film entered the public domain in the United States because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.