ABSTRACT
The career of Leo McCarey runs interestingly parallel to that of Frank Capra. Both entered the film industry in the mid-twenties and gained their initial experience as gagwriters and later directors of silent comedies. Where Capra enshrines the ideals of populism in its heyday and puts forward a vigorous and consistent political, economic and social programme, McCarey represents populism in its decline, the turning towards fairy tale and fantasy with no central core of ideas to restore the health of the nation. McCarey's was Rainbow Productions, with its much more generalized fantasy associations with the land somewhere over the rainbow and the pot of gold to be found at the end of it. The setting of the film is the mythical European country of Freedonia, a fantasy version of America complete with Coney Island peanut vendors in the streets and baseball games on the radio.
