Yesterday, the weather here took a turn for the cold, and the news coming out of DC (and most places really) felt extra bleak along with the weather, so I turned to an old favorite to take a break: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a 1939 film about a naive senator who perseveres through corruption and eventually manages what seems impossible these days: He makes a politician feel shame.

And I thought Harvey was supposed to be Stewart’s most fantastical work.

When Jefferson Smith arrives in Washington, he is no match for the town or his new role, but fortunately he inherits not just the position of his predecessor in the Senate, but also his secretary, Saunders, an old hand at DC politics — experienced and cynical enough to help Smith navigate the game she fully understands, and decent and open enough to want to help him, and eventually to love him (come on, it’s a Frank Capra film).

Saunders is played by Jean Arthur, who marches through her character arc (in this film, the primary protagonist and antagonist remain fairly static, while the side players around them change when confronted with Stewart’s impossibly wholesome Mr. Smith) radiating intelligence, sass, and an increasing determination not to let the bastards win (alongside increasing dread that they will do just that).

Jean Arthur began acting in her 20s to escape a rather invisible childhood, but by 30 she’d failed to truly make her mark. After a stint on Broadway, she returned to film, this time aided by the advent of pictures with sound, allowing audiences to hear her smokey, versatile voice.

Arthur also suffered terrible stage fright, often racing back to her trailer to throw up between shoots. When she left her contract in 1944, despite being a bona fide star at that point, she is purported to have run through the Columbia Pictures backlot shouting, “I’m free! I’m free!” While she returned to acting a few more times after this (her final picture was 1953’s Shane), the diminutive actress will remain best known for the type of hard-bitten professional with a heart and conscience she plays in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and especially Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

About herself and her personal reticence vs. her ability to inhabit these roles, Arthur once mused, “[U]nless I have something very much in common with a person, I am lost. I am swallowed up in my own silence.”

I once showed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to my post-undergrad housemates, an irreverent bunch who didn’t realize the film’s earnestness really means something to me — and no wonder, as I didn’t know either until I found myself standing up in our duplex living room with its three shabby couches, shouting, “It is okay for things to be sincere sometimes! We don’t have to make fun of everything!” before fleeing the room. They were chagrined, I was embarrassed, and all was well in the end, but I’ll never forget my strange reaction to a film to which I wasn’t actually all that attached at the time.

This was probably sometime in 2000 or 2001 but definitely pre-9/11. Whatever 21-year-old me was so upset about that night, she had no idea what was shortly to come, much less the state of Washington, D.C., here in the faraway future of 2025. But I do think it’s important to hold on to that earnestness, however threadbare — that belief, not so much that purely good people like Jefferson Smith can exist and survive, but that people like Saunders, and her reporter friend Dizz, and even the wholly but not hopelessly corrupted senior senator Paine exist and can change and create change.

One of my bigger challenges, besides feeling just kind of all-over defeated right now, is that, like Jean Arthur, I’m not one to naturally make my voice heard, and it’s hard to know how to create that change, be that change. Outside of feverish typing and impassioned conversations with my like-minded family, I too often find myself, like Arthur, “swallowed up in my own silence.” I’m going to work on that, if not for me, then for my 21-year-old self who cared enough about sincerity and goodness to drunkenly yell at her friends. I’m not sure how yet, but it seems like a good goal. Any of y’all are welcome to borrow it!

Hang in there, Avocados, and have the best Thursday you can!

(Thanks to Best Movies by Farr for much of the info in this header.)