Inviting a New Audience to ‘Meet John Doe’

For many families, it has become a tradition at Christmas time to watch Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but before that film came to theaters, Capra directed another movie about a man contemplating suicide at Christmas time.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, Meet John Doe received less attention than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it too has a valuable lesson for today’s society. It is particularly important as the country heads into what will no doubt be a contentious presidential election season and as the economy struggles. Salvation will not come from politicians, even the most well meaning of which will inevitably disappoint, and the answer to social ills is not found in the intervention of government but in neighbors caring for one another.

Set during the Great Depression, a recently fired newspaper woman, Ann Mitchell, played by Stanwyck, writes a bogus letter from John Doe, who claims that he will jump to his death on Christmas Eve in protest of the state of society. Due to public response, the newspaper company decides to hire back Ann and hires John Willoughby, played by Cooper, to fill the part of John Doe.

Large swaths of the public gravitate to the simple message of John Doe: it is not the government that people should turn to for relief, it is neighbors. To the surprise of everyone, the public loves John Doe and his message. Ann states that she has fallen in love with the John Doe that she writes about. Her statement acknowledges that there is a “John Doe” to whom the message, which has enthralled the public, truly belongs.

John Doe remains, throughout the movie, a person whose message seems so familiar, and yet Ann and John can’t understand why his message resonates. “Love thy neighbor” is so familiar that it seems trite, and yet John Doe’s speeches profoundly affect the public. In one scene, followers of John Doe tell John of how they have come to know their neighbors, going so far as to help get some of them off of government assistance. The John Doe Club has realized that to truly love their neighbor is not a vague or detached sentiment. It is taking the time to know one’s neighbors, even the ones that initially may seem unappealing or difficult. Loving one’s neighbor also means serving one’s neighbor. In doing so, they share an intimacy with their neighbors that can never be shared between persons and the government. The government is the opposite; its relationship with the people is by its very nature impersonal. Meet John Doe makes clear that people should not expect the government to be the solution to the problems of society, but rather persons acting neighborly.

John Doe recognized that society had largely moved away from neighborliness. People had become detached from one another, and as a result, they had turned to the government, which even when it provides temporary relief is incapable of fulfilling the deeper needs of human beings. The government, incapable of relieving their suffering, left the country feeling dejected and let down.

The temptation to turn to the government for help continues today and, with it, comes discontentment when it fails to solve the problems faced by people. It is not just that following the teaching to “love thy neighbor” helps to temper economic hardship but that it restores needed community between persons, speaking to a far deeper need within human beings.

When politicians, in bad faith, seek to use John Doe for their own political purposes, the public learns that John Doe never wrote the letter and never intended to follow through with his promise to commit suicide. Fearing that the public has become disillusioned with the message, John plans to make good on John Doe’s promise after all, believing that by committing suicide, “the John Doe movement will be reborn”. He is stopped by Ann, who tells him that he doesn’t have to die, “someone already did that once… and he’s kept that ideal alive for nearly 2000 years”.  As she cries out to God for help, she realizes just whose message she had come to love all along. John Doe’s death was never capable of saving anyone, but he is called to live out the teachings of Christ. He, like all people, is called to live out Christ’s commandment to “love thy neighbor” in its fullest sense.

Suicide can never bring about salvation, it can only compound the already existing sorrow. Christ’s death, by contrast, has brought salvation in its fullest sense, and now His followers go forward to share the gospel with a world that feels dejected and let down by all worldly things that promise relief. Christ’s followers share with the world, as Ann acknowledges, “the first John Doe”, the reason the bells ring at Christmas time, “calling to us”.

Sarah Diane Stewart is a Methodist laywoman from Parkersburg, WV who now resides in the Washington, D.C. region.