CELEBRATING A CAPRA-FUL CENTENNIAL.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

If George Bailey's suicidal Christmas Eve brought tears to your eyes, if the earnest patriotism of Jefferson Smith tugged at your heartstrings, if the falling Walls of Jericho made your heart go pitty-pat, Los Angeles has just the movie series to brighten your summer.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Oscar-winning director Frank Capra's birth - he died in 1991 after a movie career that spanned 40 years and yielded dozens of movies - some of Capra's greatest films, including the multi-Oscar-winning ``It Happened One Night,'' have been remastered and are being re-released for both home and theater viewing.

A series of 16 of his best films will run Aug. 4-11 at the Nuart theater in West Los Angeles, preceded Friday through Sunday by screenings of ``Frank Capra's American Dream,'' a 108-minute documentary that includes clips from Capra films, plus interviews with actors, technicians, producers and directors who worked with and were influenced by the director. The Capra documentary also will be shown on TV's American Movie Classics on Sept. 24, and 13 of Capra's films will be shown Sept. 23 and 24.

Capra's two sons, Frank Jr. and Tom, executive-produced the documentary as a kind of posthumous birthday present for their father, and will introduce the film in person at the Nuart. The documentary made its theatrical debut in New York on May 18, the 100th anniversary of Frank Capra's birth.

``I was surprised at the reaction that night in the theater,'' said Tom Capra, a Woodland Hills resident. ``People loved it. Afterward, a big birthday cake was wheeled out on stage and the audience all stood and sang `Happy Birthday.' I was just covered with goose bumps.''

New generation of viewers

Charles A. Duncombe Jr., the documentary's producer, said the retrospective series is a good chance for fans to see Capra films in theaters, as they were meant to be viewed. It should also attract a new generation of viewers who have never before seen some of Capra's lesser-known films, the filmmakers said.

Even though the films are decades old, ``the values in them are everlasting,'' said Tom Capra. ``Most of Dad's films are about the America we would like to see. When he talks about one person making a difference, that's something that everybody knows doesn't happen every time, but everybody wishes it would sometime. They represent this belief that we all share.

``You get caught up in these values and believe that these things really can happen,'' he said.

Capra's most uplifting films were made between the mid-1930s and mid-1940s, when the Depression had left breadwinners out of work, homes and farms were being foreclosed on, and 25 cents to spend on a movie was hard to come by.

In contrast, Capra was ``wildly successful,'' Duncombe said. He was a Sicilian immigrant who moved to the United States at the age of 6 and worked in the movies as a ``gag man'' and writer for producer Mack Sennett before directing his own films.

``He felt guilty about his success and felt he needed to give something back,'' the producer said. ``So he made these hopeful pictures. He really lived the American dream, but he was very lucky and he knew it.''

What has been referred to as Capra's great trilogy - ``Mr. Deeds Goes to Town'' (1936), ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' (1939) and ``Meet John Doe'' (1941) - all show how innocence and idealism can be used as a weapon by unscrupulous forces for their own gain.

``They all show how an innocent man is nearly crushed by `the system,' '' Duncombe said.

A simple formula

In his admittedly fictionalized, boastful autobiography, ``The Name Above the Title,'' Capra said he based those popular movies on a simple formula:

``A simple, honest man, driven into a corner by predatory sophisticates, can ... reach deep down into his God-given resources and come up with the necessary handfuls of courage, wit and love to triumph over his environment.''

Capra worked as a youthful con man and a professional gambler before he began working in the movies, so he knew how to manipulate audiences, Duncombe said. That darker side often surfaced in his films.

``He has a certain reputation as a sunny sort of populist kind of guy,'' Duncombe said. ``He created very hopeful films, but he created them out of a very troubled soul. He was an authentic believer in the American dream. But he saw it was something that was not all that available to the man in the street.''

Capra once told an interviewer that he tried to make his unique brand of moralizing easy for moviegoers to take.

``I use comedy to warm people to my subject,'' he said. ``I don't say, `Now I'm going to tell you a moral tale and you'd better like it.' No, first I entertain them, then I get them in a spirit of laughter and then, perhaps, they might be softened up to accept some kind of moral precept. But entertainment comes first.''

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Photo

PHOTO To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Frank Capra, pictured in 1985, some of Capra's greatest films, including ``It Happened One Night,'' are being re-released.

Associated Press