The American Film Institute Salute To Frank Capra - World War I and After

World War I and After

Soon after graduating college, Capra enlisted in the army as a second lieutenant, having already worked on the campus ROTC. In the army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Scott, San Francisco. His father died of an accident the following year, 1919. In the army, Capra caught the Spanish flu, and was later medically discharged to return home to live with his mother. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra.

Living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only member of his family with a college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed. After a year without work, seeing how his siblings all had steady jobs of some sort, he felt he was a failure, which led to bouts of depression and abdominal pains, later discovered to have been an undiagnosed burst appendix.

After recovering at home, Capra then moved out and spent the next few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains, wandering around the Western U.S. To support himself, he took odd jobs working on farms, as a movie extra, playing poker, or selling local oil well stocks. When he was 25, he took a sales job selling books written and published by American philosopher, Elbert Hubbard.

Capra recalled that he "hated being a peasant, being a scrounging new kid trapped in the Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles ... All I had was cockiness – and let me tell you that gets you a long way."