Personal Life
Capra married actress Helen Howell in 1923; they divorced in 1928. He married Lucille Warner in 1928, with whom he had a daughter and three sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Capra was four times president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and three times president of the Directors Guild of America, which he helped found. Under his presidency he worked to give directors more artistic control of their films. During his career as a director, he retained an early ambition to teach science, and after his career declined in the 1950s he made some educational TV films related to science subjects.
Physically, Capra was short, stocky, and vigorous, and enjoyed outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing, and mountain climbing. In his much later years, he spent time writing short stories and songs, along with playing the guitar.
His son Frank Capra, Jr. – one of the four children born to Capra's second wife, Lucille Capra – was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios, in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007. His grandson, Frank Capra III, is a Hollywood director and worked as an assistant director in the 1995 film The American President, which referred to Capra in the film's dialogue.
Read more about this topic: The American Film Institute Salute To Frank Capra
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)