In a movie directed by Frank Capra toward the end of the Great Depression, an enterprising lady reporter with an eye for the photogenic persuades a down-and-out ballplayer to act the part of “John Doe,” “author” of her new syndicated front-page column, “I Protest!” The speeches that Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) pays the handsome hobo (Gary Cooper) to front are, if slightly sentimental, always provocative and immediately successful. They inveigh against the petty self-interest that in the name of rugged individualism has weakened and corrupted the cause of the common citizen in this country; they plead for a new spirit of grass-roots cooperative activism. “Tear down the fences,” John Doe implores his small-town audiences. “You're the hope of the world!”