Frank Capra, byname of Francesco Rosario Capra, (born May 18, 1897, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy—died September 3, 1991, La Quinta, California, U.S.), American motion-picture director who was the most prominent filmmaker of the 1930s, during which he won three Academy Awards as best director. His most-beloved films, many of which were made during the Great Depression, were patriotic sentimental celebrations of virtuous everymen who selflessly speak truth to power in pursuit of the common good. Early life and work Capra’s family immigrated to Los Angeles from Bisacquino, a Sicilian village, when he was six. After graduating in 1918 from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in chemical engineering, Capra received a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps commission and spent the last year of World War I teaching mathematics in the U.S. Army. For the next two years he traveled, doing odd jobs and working as a book salesman. Despite lacking any filmmaking experience, in 1922 he persuaded a San Francisco stage actor who wanted to make a movie based on poetry to hire him to direct the one-reel film,