---
title: "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town"
year: 1936
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/mr-deeds-goes-to-town"
fi1m_score: 82
critics_score: 78
critics_reviews: 5
published: "2026-09-19T23:16:41.520520+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-19T23:16:49.526436+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Directed by Frank Capra · 1h 55m · MPA NR · Comedy, Drama, Romance

**Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 78 (early) from 5 reviews

*In a sentence:* A tuba player inherits a fortune, New York laughs at him, and Capra spends two hours making it sorry

> Frank Capra’s fable about a decent man and a great deal of money is warmer and funnier than its reputation as a sermon suggests. Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur carry it; Robert Riskin’s script preaches when it should trust them, and the middle sags.

## Synopsis

Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) writes greeting-card verses and plays tuba in the town band of a small town, until lawyer John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille) arrives to tell him an uncle he barely knew has left him a fortune. Cedar and press agent Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander) take Deeds to New York and install him in a mansion with a staff, a long hall and an echo. Newspaper editor MacWade (George Bancroft) wants the story, so his star reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) stages a faint outside the house, tells Deeds she is an out-of-work stenographer, and lets him rescue her. Her front pages christen him the Cinderella Man. Deeds wants to know what the money is for, and which of his new friends is one.

## Review

Frank Capra and Robert Riskin made [*It Happened One Night*](https://film.one/film/it-happened-one-night) two years before this, and *Mr. Deeds Goes to Town* is what they did with the confidence it bought them. It is a fable. A good man is given a fortune, a city of clever people sets out to make a fool of him, and the film asks which side we are on. It is not a hard question and Capra does not pretend it is. What he does instead is make the good man funny, the city attractive and the woman sent to trap him worth rooting for. We recommend it warmly. It preaches in places, and around the hour mark it slows, and neither fault is fatal.

Cooper is the reason it works. He talks slowly, but Longfellow Deeds is not slow; he is watching, and Cooper lets us see him decide when to answer and when to let a fool keep talking. Left alone in his new mansion he slides down the bannister, then shouts into the hall to hear the echo, and within a minute the butlers are shouting too. We laughed out loud, and then noticed how carefully the scene had been built: Deeds is the only person in the house who has thought to enjoy it. Cooper never plays him as a rube. He plays him as a man who has not yet been given a reason to be unkind.

Jean Arthur has the harder part, because Babe Bennett is lying from her first scene and the film needs us to like her anyway. Arthur’s voice cracks on the wrong syllables, and she uses that to make Babe sound as if she is always slightly surprised by what she has just said. The scene that got us is at a bandstand in the park at night, Deeds humming a tune and Babe beating time on a rubbish bin, both of them happy. It moved us more than we expected, because she is stringing him along for a story and Capra keeps the camera on her face long enough for us to watch her realise she does not want to.

Joseph Walker photographs the mansion as a place built for someone else: long shadowed halls, a staircase that dwarfs the man on it, doors that take two servants to open. His close-ups of Arthur are soft and lit from the side, and they do a good deal of the courting the script has no time for. Gene Havlick cuts the newspaper campaign against Deeds as a rush of headlines and spinning presses, so that we feel the city’s contempt arriving all at once. Howard Jackson and Louis Silvers keep the score modest and let the town band’s farewell, and Deeds’s own tuba, carry the tune. Samuel Lange puts Arthur in a plain cloth coat for her disguise and it makes her look nothing like a woman with a byline.

The faults are Riskin’s, mostly. He has written a screenplay in which everyone with an education is a snob and everyone without one is wise, and when Deeds punches a poet at a dinner for mocking his verses the film wants us to cheer. We did not. Douglass Dumbrille’s Cedar is a villain from his first appearance and never acquires a second dimension. There is also a stretch in the middle, after the headlines and before the story turns, where the film repeats its one joke about New York and the 115 minutes begin to show. Lionel Stander’s gravel and Raymond Walburn’s unflappable butler Walter help it through.

The second half takes a turn we will not describe, except that it hands H. B. Warner’s Judge May the job of listening, and Warner listens beautifully. Set against Capra’s own work this is gentler than *It Happened One Night* and less angry than [*Mr. Smith Goes to Washington*](https://film.one/film/mr-smith-goes-to-washington), and it sits between them in quality too. The reviews so far agree with us, more or less.

Adam Sandler remade it in 2002. You may safely stay here.

*Fi1m score 82, published 19 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (5)

- **Empire**, David Parkinson (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the electric chemistry between Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in Capra's sweet comedy-drama about a small-town man inheriting a fortune. He highlights Cooper's nuanced performance and the memorable supporting turns by the Faulkner sisters. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/mr-deeds-goes-town-review/)
- **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): Frank Capra has made an excellent job of a good story which is allowed to unfold itself in a restrained manner. Gary Cooper as Mr. Longfellow Deeds never becomes a simpleton or a buffoon and the gradual ripening of Jean Arthur's affection is excellently done. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimatefilm/chart/details.php?ranking=88)
- **The New Yorker** (70/100, inferred): The review notes the film's simple amiability and credits Capra's handling of the story about a country boy inheriting a fortune; it singles out Gary Cooper's surprising turn as a quiet, easygoing funny man. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1936/04/25/1936-04-25-061-tny-cards-000017868)
- **The New York Times**, Frank S. Nugent (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a shrewd and lively comedy from the Capra-Riskin team, highlighting Gary Cooper's engaging performance as the tuba-playing poet who inherits a fortune. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1936/04/17/archives/the-screen-mr-deeds-goes-to-town-another-merry-comedy-from-capra.html)
- **Variety** (70/100, inferred): The review finds the film good-humored farce with strong performances from Cooper, Arthur and Bancroft under Capra's direction, though it notes some thin structure and midriff lapses that strain credulity at times. [Read](https://variety.com/1935/film/reviews/mr-deeds-goes-to-town-1200411204/)

## Details

- **Director:** Frank Capra
- **Director:** Frank Capra
- **Screenplay:** Robert Riskin
- **Cinematography:** Joseph Walker
- **Editor:** Gene Havlick
- **Music:** Howard Jackson, Louis Silvers
- **Costume design:** Samuel Lange
- **Producer:** Frank Capra
- **Cast:** Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds; Jean Arthur as Babe Bennett; George Bancroft as MacWade; Lionel Stander as Cornelius Cobb; Douglass Dumbrille as John Cedar; Raymond Walburn as Walter; H. B. Warner as Judge May; Ruth Donnelly as Mabel Dawson
- **Runtime:** 1h 55m
- **Certificate (MPA):** NR
- **Release (the US):** 12 April 1936
- **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance

## Where to watch in the US

- The Roku Channel: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $1.99, sd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $7.99, sd

*Checked 2026-09-19.*

Also available in: AT, BE, BG, BR, CA, DE, ES, FI, GB, HR, IE, LT, NL, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1937: Best Actor (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Director (won)
- National Board of Review Award for Best Film 1936: National Board of Review Award for Best Film (won)

## If you liked this

- *It Happened One Night* (1934), Fi1m 88: Capra and Riskin two years earlier, faster and less inclined to preach — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/it-happened-one-night.md)
- *The More the Merrier* (1943), Fi1m 82: Jean Arthur at her best, sharing a flat and a wartime Washington with two men — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-more-the-merrier.md)
- *Sullivan's Travels* (1941), Fi1m 88: Preston Sturges on the same question of rich men and the poor, with fewer speeches — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sullivans-travels.md)
- *Being There* (1979), Fi1m 84: Peter Sellers as an innocent the powerful mistake for a sage; the sour cousin of Deeds — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/being-there.md)
- *Local Hero* (1983), Fi1m 86: Money arrives in a small place and the small place quietly wins; Scottish, dry, lovely — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/local-hero.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/mr-deeds-goes-to-town