by BK Munn
Van Johnson pulls a copy of Walt Disney Comics & Stories #85, published in 1947, out of his inside jacket pocket. In this scene from Frank Capra's satire of U.S. presidential politics, Johnson plays a cynical journalist-turned-campaign-manager opposite Katharine Hepburn's wife of the presidential candidate Spencer Tracy. Johnson has come to ask Hepburn to welcome her husband's mistress (Angela Lansbury) back into her home for the good of the campaign but the tense scene is interrupted by Tracy and Hepburn's children who are packing aid boxes for European refugees and have run out of comic books and bubble gum. Johnson shows his childlike innocence and working class bona fides by magically producing this Donald Duck comic, an indication that he isn't really a bad guy like the rest of the evil cabal who are slowly corrupting Spencer Tracy for their own special interests. In a later scene, it will be Johnson who urges Hepburn to fight for her husband by giving a radio speech that ultimately derails the campaign and brings Tracy back from the dark side. Comics are again used in that final scene to signify Capra's brand of liberal working class idealism when a lighting gaffer is shown reading a Brick Bradford science fiction comic during Tracy's ultimate speech.
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