Frank Capra: Mr. Capra Goes to America

Frank Capra's rise to fame as one of early Hollywood's most acclaimed directors. We learn about his birth in Bisacquino, Sicily, his arrival in the United States, and his engineering studies at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Details his service in the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe during World War I and an accidental meeting with a former instructor that led him into silent films as a technician with Mack Sennett. Explores how Capra learned every aspect of filmmaking—including lab work, editing, and splicing in San Francisco—before joining Columbia Pictures and turning the studio from "Poverty Row" into a major competitor during the talkie and Depression eras. This episode features one of director Frank Capra's final interviews, recorded in 1988 for Italian television.