Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897 in Palermo, Sicily. Six years later his family moved to California, where his father worked as an orange picker. In 1918 he graduated from Caltech as a chemical engineer but (fortunately) found no work in that field.
A few years later he double-talked his way into directing a short film in San Francisco. Quickly gaining experience in his new trade, he became a gag writer and director for silent comedian Harry Langdon.
In 1928 Capra moved to Columbia, where he quickly became the most important figure in sthe history of that studio. In 1933, Lady for a Day was nominated for best picture, director, and actress. No Columbia title had ever been nominated in any of these categories. The following year It Happened One Night won all five major Oscars.
For the rest of the decade Capra directed an extraordinary series of pictures that combine superior entertainment value with a deep faith in the essential goodness of human nature: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
During WW II, Capra joined the Army and produced the documentary series Why We Fight. When the war was over he made his greatest film, It's a Wonderful Life (1946). As the cinema enters its second century, Capra's own appraisal seems increasingly plausible: “It's the greatest picture anybody ever made.”
The Stanford Theatre is dedicated to bringing back the movie-going experience of Hollywood's Golden Age. It is one of the few places where you can still watch movies on a big screen projected the way they were intended — in 35mm prints. Great classic films were not made to be watched on a video screen in your living room. They depend on a larger-than-life image, and the shared reactions of a real audience.
The Stanford Theatre first opened in June of 1925. For decades nearly every important Hollywood picture played there on its first release. The people of Palo Alto saw them all for the very first time in this theatre. In 1987 the Packard Foundation bought the theatre and restored it to its original condition. It quickly became America's most popular classic movie house. More people saw Casablanca there on its 50th anniverary in 1992 than at any other theatre in America.
The non-profit Stanford Theatre Foundation is dedicated to the preservation and public exhibition of films from the Golden Age of Hollywood. This means classic movies in a classic movie palace, complete with Wurlitzer organ rising from the orchestra pit every night before and after the 7:30 show, or providing the accompaniment to “silent” films.
Note: This is an unofficial posting of the Stanford Theatre schedules, from published information. This site is in no way connected with the Stanford Theatre nor the Stanford Theatre Foundation. Please check out the official site at stanfordtheatre.org in case this schedule isn't quite up-to-date! Programs are subject to change. For information, call (650) 324-3700.
(Showtimes in parentheses are for the Saturday and Sunday screenings.)
Ronald Colman (Robert Conway), Jane Wyatt (Sondra), John Howard (George Conway), Edward Everett Horton (Alexander P. Lovett), Margo (Maria), Thomas Mitchell (Henry Barnard), Isabel Jewell (Gloria Stone), H. B. Warner (Chang), Sam Jaffe (High Lama), Hugh Buckler (Lord Gainsford), David Torrence (Prime Minister).
Frank Capra's celebrated tale of Shangri-La, a remote community in the Himalayas where civilization is nurtured far from the violent world. Based on James Hilton's novel, this is one of the most memorable experiences offered by Hollywood's Golden Age.
"Had the High Lama been able to scour the whole world for a man to carry on his vision of Shangri-La, he would have selected Ronald Colman, beautiful of face and soul, sensitive to the fragile and gentle, responsive both to poetic visions and hard intellect" – Frank Capra
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 16, 1990; last played Jan 2014
Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly, Gavin Gordon, Lucien Littlefield, Richard Loo, Helen Jerome Eddy, Emmett Corrigan, Clara Blandick.
Megan Davis (Stanwyck), a missionary in China caught in the midst of a civil war, finds herself in the Summer Palace of General Yen, a powerful Chinese warlord.
Somewhat removed from Capra's normal subject matter, this poetic film touches on the modern theme of the "Clash of Civilizations". While now acknowledged as a masterpiece, the film lost money on its initial release. This film was banned in Britain because of the theme of miscegenation, but it was the very first film shown at Radio City Music Hall.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 16, 1990; last played Jan 2014
Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Lowell Sherman, Marie Prevost, Nance O'Neil, George Fawcett, Johnnie Walker, Juliette Compton.
A frustrated artist, Jerry Strange (Graves), meets Kay Arnold (Stanwyck), ostensibly a gold digger, and hires her as his model. His attempt to paint her as a spiritual figure of "Hope" seems in conflict with her more physical nature. When they fall in love, Jerry's mother pleads with Kay not to marry her son.
She had made three previous films, but this was the film that made it obvious that Barbara Stanwyck was destined to be a great star. Her performance, her first of five for Capra, is remarkable.
Despite being a very early sound film (a silent version also exists), this film has considerable charm. Marie Prevost is excellent, and Lowell Sherman is especially amusing as a dissipated playboy. He later directed Mae West in She Done Him Wrong.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Apr 20, 1930; last played Feb 2014
Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners, Sam Hardy, Beryl Mercer, Russell Hopton, Charles Middleton, Eddie Boland, Thelma Hill.
Florence Fallon, leader of the popular Temple of Happiness, performs fake miracles with the help of Hornsby, a slick promoter. The original play was based on the life of Aimee Semple McPherson.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 19, 1990; last played Feb 2014
Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr McIntosh, Aggie Herring, Carl Gerard, Syd Crossley.
Dennis James at the mighty Wurlitzer.
Capra's very first picture at Columbia- made in only six weeks for under $20,000- is a remarkably charming little film.
Molly Kelly, who works at a cigar stand, marries Andy Charles, the idle son of a wealthy restaurateur. This Cinderella story is shattered when Andy is disinherited. Eating a box lunch prepared by Molly gives him an inspiration to open the "Molly Box Lunch Company". This takes business from his father's restaurant, but father is so pleased with the upstart entrepreneurs that he welcomes them back into the family.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 22, 1990; last played Jan 2014
May Robson (Apple Annie), Warren William (Dave the Dude), Guy Kibbee (Judge Blake), Glenda Farrell (Missouri Martin), Ned Sparks (Happy), Walter Connolly (Count Romero), Jean Parker (Louise), Nat Pendleton (Shakespeare), Hobart Bosworth (The Governer), Barry Norton (Carlos).
Apple Annie, a member of the New York City street scene, has a daughter at school in Spain, who has always believed the fiction that her mother was a wealthy lady. The daughter unexpectedly arrives from Spain with her future husband's aristocratic family. Annie's friends rise to the occasion.
Based on the story Madame La Gimp by Damon Runyon, this wonderful film (out of distribution for decades) is one of the true jewels in Capra's long and fruitful career. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Writing, the first time that any film made by Columbia Pictures was nominated for anything. It far outshines its 1961 remake, Pocketful of Miracles.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 2, 1990; last played July 2016
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Jobyna Ralston, Mildred Harris, Philo McCullough.
Dennis James at the mighty Wurlitzer.
Jane Atwill is falsely suspected of murder in a front page scandal. Clem Rogers, the hustling cub reporter who wrote the story, helps prove her innocence.
This highly entertaining Capra silent film survives partly because of a unique print owned by the Stanford Theatre Foundation.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 1, 1990; last played Jan 2014
Lady for a Day (1933)
3:45
3 Episodes of Why We Fight
7:30
During WW II, Capra joined the army and was assigned the task of writing and producing a seies of orientation films designed to explain to soldiers (and the public) the reasons for the war.
These impressive films make use of newsreels (including enemy ones) and are crafted with Capra's genius for storytelling.
Admission will be free for this series of films.
Walter Huston, Anthony Veiller (narrators)
first played at the Stanford Theatre Dec 14, 2007; last played Feb 2014
Anthony Veiller (narrator).
first played at the Stanford Theatre Nov 17, 1943; last played Feb 2014
Anthony Veiller (narrator).
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 21, 1990; last played Mar. 1990
Jack Holt, Ralph Graves, Lila Lee, Alan Roscoe, Harold Goodwin, Jimmy De La Cruze.
This early talkie has impressive aerial sequences. To prove that nothing is new, there is a revolution in Nicaragua, with intervention by the marines.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Jan 29, 1930; last played May 1997
Jack Holt, Ralph Graves, Fay Wray, Hobart Bosworth, Roscoe Karns, Harold Goodwin.
Jack, the commander of the Navy's dirigible fleet, and Frisky, an ace airplane pilot, are friends and rivals involved in an expedition to the South Pole. They are also rivals for Frisky's wife Helen (played by the beautiful Fay Wray, two years before she met King Kong).
This film, with truly impressive aerial action sequences of the Navy's dirigible Los Angeles, was the first Columbia picture to open at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, a new sign of prestige for the studio. It was filmed at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, and scenes of the South Pole were shot at Arcadia in the San Gabriel Valley
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 7, 1990; last played Jan 2014
Clark Gable (Peter Warne), Claudette Colbert (Ellie Andrews), Walter Connolly (Alexander Andrews), Roscoe Karns (Oscar Shapely), Alan Hale (Danker), Ward Bond (Bus Driver #1), Jameson Thomas (King Westley), Arthur Hoyt (Zeke), Blanche Federici (Zeke's Wife).
Spoiled heiress Colbert escapes from the family yacht and meets reporter Gable on a bus to New York.
MGM sent Clark Gable to make this picture at Columbia ("poverty row") as a punishment. Expectations for the picture were so low that it wasn't even booked into the Stanford Theatre!
Hollywood's first great screwball comedy won all five major Academy Awards in 1934 (best picture, director, actor, actress, writer), and put Frank Capra and Columbia Studio in the major league.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 23, 1990; last played July 2018
Jean Arthur (Alice Sycamore), Lionel Barrymore (Martin Vanderhof), James Stewart (Tony Kirby), Edward Arnold (Anthony P. Kirby), Mischa Auer (Kolenkhov), Ann Miller (Essie Carmichael), Spring Byington (Penny Sycamore), Donald Meek (Poppins), Samuel S. Hinds (Paul Sycamore), H. B. Warner (Ramsey), Halliwell Hobbes (DePinna), Mary Forbes (Mrs. Anthony Kirby), Dub Taylor (Ed Carmichael), Lillian Yarbo (Rheba), Eddie Anderson (Donald), Harry Davenport (Judge).
Capra-corn at its best, with grandfather Vanderhoff (Barrymore) and his clan pursuing the good life with creative chaos worthy of Aristophanes.
The play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1936-37 season and was still playing on Broadway when the film was released. The film received Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and was nominated in five other categories.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Dec 23, 1938; last played June 2019
Jean Hersholt, Lina Basquette, Rosa Rosanova, Ricardo Cortez, Rex Lease.
Based on the play It Is to Laugh by Fannie Hurst about Morris and Birdie Goldfish, the children of a Jewish immigrant family in New York. Morris moves into a swank apartment and tries to forget his old neighborhood, with unhappy results. Birdie stays closer to her roots.
Capra's own immigrant experience may have contributed to the film's authenticity.
This film, made in early 1929, is halfway between the silent and sound eras, with a musical soundtrack and some spoken dialogue.
first played at the Stanford Theatre June 1, 1929; last played Feb 2014
Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy, Dorothy Peterson.
A shy woman has an affair and a child with a future district attorney, who can't leave his invalid wife but adopts the child without admitting it is his. Years later, he is running for governor when an ambitious reporter threatens to expose the scandal.
Capra himself wrote the story for this soap opera (his own term) inspired by Fannie Hurst's Back Street. In this case director and stars turn soap into gold (with a little dross near the end).
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 12, 1990; last played Feb 2014
Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille, Raymond Walburn, H. B. Warner, Ruth Donnelly, Walter Catlett.
Longfellow Deeds, a tuba-playing greeting card poet from Mandrake Falls, Vermont (Gary Cooper), inherits twenty million dollars and moves to New York City, where cynical big city reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) ridicules him as the "Cinderella Man". His insanity trial is a classic.
Jean Arthur was Frank Capra's favorite actress. She had already appeared in 60 films, but her three Capra heroines ensure her immortaility.
Capra received an Oscar as best director, and the film was voted best picture of 1936 by New York Film Critics.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Mar 2, 1990; last played Feb 2014
James Stewart (Jefferson Smith), Jean Arthur (Clarissa Saunders), Claude Rains (Sen. Joseph Paine), Edward Arnold (Jim Taylor), Guy Kibbee (Gov. Hubert Hopper), Thomas Mitchell (Diz Moore), Eugene Pallette (Chick McGann), Beulah Bondi (Ma Smith), H. B. Warner (Sen. Fuller), Harry Carey (President of the Senate), Astrid Allwyn (Susan Paine), Ruth Donnelly (Mrs. Emma Hopper), Charles Lane (Nosey), Porter Hall (Sen. Monroe), Grant Mitchell (Sen. MacPherson), H. V. Kaltenborn (Broadcaster).
Frank Capra's story about an idealistic junior senator who discovers the truth about Washington has lost none of its power after more than 85 years as an American classic. Indeed, the Library of Congress now presents special educational screenings for newly elected senators!
first played at the Stanford Theatre Dec 13, 1939; last played Dec 2019
Robert Williams, Loretta Young, Jean Harlow, Halliwell Hobbes, Reginald Owen, Edmund Breese, Donald Dillaway, Walter Catlett, Claude Allister, Louise Closser Hale.
Ace reporter Stew Smith marries wealthy Ann Schuyler (Harlow); but the marriage soon falters and he discovers that he really loves Gallagher (Young), his best pal at the office.
The actor who plays the reporter (Robert Williams), died a few days after the film opened:
"He was thirty-two, with a striking resemblance to Scott Fitzgerald — lazy, sexy, a great talker, a wit. How good was he? Well, good enough to make us realize quite forcefully that... the rapport between Williams and Loretta Young is the most interesting thing on view." David Thomson
"The film's considerable attractions include Robert Riskin's uninhibited dialogue and ravishing Loretta Young, who as a tough-minded girl reporter is a natural aristocrat." Pauline Kael
first played at the Stanford Theatre Feb 23, 1990; last played Jan 2014
Walter Huston, Pat O'Brien, Kay Johnson, Constance Cummings, Gavin Gordon.
Bank president Tom Dickson (Huston) believes that lending money to those in need will help end the depression. The board of directors nearly fires him, but in a crisis the loyalty of his small clients saves the day. This film presages many of the themes of It's a Wonderful Life.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Oct 26, 1932; last played Mar 2014
Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Van Johnson, Angela Lansbury, Adolphe Menjou, Lewis Stone.
Wealthy industrialist Grant Matthews (Tracy), intending to run for president, asks his estranged wife (Hepburn) to come back for appearances' sake during the campaign. When he begins to drift from his true values his wife's integrity brings him back to his senses.
Angela Lansbury is marvelous as the wealthy newspaper publisher backing Tracy's campaign.
first played at the Stanford Theatre May 16, 1948; last played July 2016
Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, James Gleason, Spring Byington.
Reporter Ann Mitchell (Stanwyck) forges a letter to the editor from "John Doe" protesting the plight of the little guy and threatening to jump off the roof of City Hall on Christmas Eve. Reader response is so great that she hires out-of-work minor league pitcher Long John Willoughby (Cooper) to play the role.
"You make other pictures to live, but you live to make a Capra picture." Barbara Stanwyck
first played at the Stanford Theatre May 25, 1941; last played Feb 2014
Cary Grant (Mortimer Brewster), Raymond Massey (Jonathan Brewster), Priscilla Lane (Elaine Harper), Josephine Hull (Abby Brewster), Jean Adair (Martha Brewster), Jack Carson (O'Hara), Edward Everett Horton (Mr. Witherspoon), Peter Lorre (Dr. Einstein), James Gleason (Lt. Rooney), John Alexander ("Teddy Roosevelt" Brewster), Grant Mitchell (Rev. Harper), Edward McNamara (Brophy), Garry Owen (Taxi Driver).
Two lovable old ladies serve a special elderberry wine to help old men forget their loneliness.
Capra borrowed Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, and Jonathan Alexander from the wildly successful Broadway play and made the film in 1941. (Unfortunately he was unable to secure Boris Karloff, who played the role of Jonathan on stage.) For contractual reasons, the film could not be released until the play closed (after nearly four years) in 1944. Capra had to change the ending of the play because the preview audience would not accept the death of the beloved character actor Edward Everett Horton.
first played at the Stanford Theatre Nov 5, 1944; last played Aug 2023
James Stewart (George Bailey), Donna Reed (Mary Hatch), Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter), Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billie), Henry Travers (Clarence), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Bailey), Frank Faylen (Ernie), Ward Bond (Bert), Gloria Grahame (Violet Bick), H. B. Warner (Mr. Gower), Frank Albertson (Sam Wainwright), Todd Karns (Harry Bailey), Samuel S. Hinds (Pa Bailey), Mary Treen (Cousin Tilly), Virginia Patton (Ruth Dakin), Bobby Anderson (Little George Bailey), Jean Gale (Little Mary Hatch).
Another opportunity to watch George Bailey's Odyssey in what Frank Capra modestly called "the greatest movie anybody ever made."
first played at the Stanford Theatre Apr 27, 1947; last played Dec 2024