The American Film Institute Salute To Frank Capra - Early Life

Early Life

Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, Sicily, a village near Palermo. He was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, and the former Sarah Nicolas. Capra's family was Roman Catholic.

The name "Capra", notes Capra's biographer Joseph McBride, represents his family's closeness to the land, and means "she-goat". He notes that the English word "capricious" derives from it, "evoking the animal's skittish temperament", adding that "the name neatly expresses two aspects of Frank Capra's personality: emotionalism and obstinacy."

Capra emigrated to the United States with his family in 1903, when he was six. They were placed in the steerage section of the boat, which was the cheapest way to gain passage. For Capra, the journey, which took 13 days, remained in his mind for the rest of his life as one of his worst experiences:

You're all together – you have no privacy. You have a cot. Very few people have trunks or anything that takes up space. They have just what they can carry in their hands or in a bag. Nobody takes their clothes off. There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be.

However, Capra remembers the ship's arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw "a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter". He recalls his father's exclamation at the sight:

Cicco, look! Look at that! That's the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That's the light of freedom! Remember that. Freedom.

They eventually settled in an Italian ghetto in Los Angeles, where Capra's father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for the next 10 years, until he graduated from high school. Instead of finding full-time employment after graduating, as his parents wanted, he refused to end his education and instead enrolled in college. He worked his way through college at the California Institute of Technology, playing banjo at nightclubs and taking odd jobs, which included working at the campus laundry facility, waiting tables, and cleaning engines at a local power plant. He studied chemical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. Capra later wrote that his college education had "changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person".