To Frank Capra, The Strong Man was “more than a comedy.” In the early frames of his first feature as a director, he declared his artistic independence with a direct evocation of his primal experience-his rebirth as an American. Harry Langdon plays Paul Bergot, a Belgian World War I doughboy who emigrates to America on a giant steamer, passes under the protective gaze of the Statue of Liberty, and disembarks on Ellis Island. This moral fable, whose working title was The Yes Man, treats in comic terms several of the key elements of Capra's life: the gullible immigrant's harsh exposure to the corruption of big-city America as he pounds the streets looking for work; the shock of his first sexual encounter with a rapacious older woman; his entry into show business; his attempts to overcome the pervasive corruption which has penetrated even the archetypal American small town, Cloverdale (read: Hollywood); and his romantic yearnings for a pure, wholesome woman through whose love the weakling can find the power to become The Strong Man.