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Meet John Doe, the classic 1941 Frank Capra political populist romantic newspaper journalism mistaken identity melodrama (about a female reporter who writes a fictional story, which she presents as fact, about a man who is planning to commit suicide in protest of the world's treatment of downtrodden people; when the column is a giant hit, she must find a man to portray the writer and hires ex-baseball player Gary Cooper) starring Gary Cooper (in the title role as John Doe), Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod La Rocque, Sterling Holloway, Irving Bacon, Regis Toomey, J. Farrell MacDonald, and Ann Doran. Note that in the original story this movie was based on (by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell), it concludes with John Doe standing on the roof, preparing to jump, and the Barbara Stanwyck character, Nan, tries to talk him out of doing it, and he is unshakable, and he says "I'll always love you, Nan" and she replies "I'll always love you, John". He then looks out at the crowd, which is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and when the clock strikes midnight, Nan looks at where he was standing, and it is now empty, and she has "a look of pride and great joy". Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin did not want this ending, because it involved the character committing suicide, and they felt that the Catholic Church would strongly object to that, which might make the movie unable to get distribution. Capra filmed five different endings and previewed at least two of them. In one, they had the suicide take place, and ended with Walter Brennan holding John's dead body. In another, it ends at the John Doe Convention, with John Doe disgraced, and the editor saying "Well, boys, you can chalk another one up to the Pontius Pilates." Another had Nan talking John out of committing suicide. In another, John convinces the corrupt publisher to change his ways and join John in his crusade. But none of those four seemed right. At one of the previews where they showed one of the above endings, a viewer suggested ending it with the John Doe members telling John that they had never stopped believing in him, and Capra then filmed that ending, and this is the ending that is on the movie's final version!
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Important Added Info: Note that this story treatment (which has the working title "The Life and Death of John Doe") was written in 1941 by Richard Connell & Robert Presnell. It has passages explaining what is happening, but it also has dialog for all the characters. It was surely written prior to Robert Riskin writing the script that was ultimately filmed. As noted above, this treatment ends with the John Doe character committing suicide. Riskin was fine with this ending, but he added the final scene where Walter Brennan's character holds John Doe's dead body and says "Long John, you poor fool. You poor sucker." This treatment has no markings on the covers and it has no printed information inside other than the actual treatment itself, which begins with the title and authors' names (see our images). Someone taped a tiny piece of paper to the center of the spine that says "John Doe Story". However, we feel certain that this is an original treatment from 1941, based on the type of printing and the age of the paper. It comes together with an example of the book "Meet John Doe", which was published by Rutgers University Press in 1989, which contains much information about the movie, including the continuity script, alternate endings, and commentaries by many experts (see our images for the cover and three 2-page spreads from this book).

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