Saturday Afternoon and Fiddlesticks were a fitting valedictory for Langdon and Capra at Sennett’s. (…) In Fiddlesticks, Ripley and Capra solve the problem of women by the simple expedient of disposing of a love interest altogether. This almost perfect little comedy deals instead with another Capra obsession: ambition. Harry has no interest in life but playing a bass fiddle that’s bigger than he is. His loutish father and brothers think he’s a “loafer”, but his mother says, “Don’t be too hasty, father – he may be a great musician some day!” But whenever Harry plays his music on the street, people throw things at him from their windows. Eventually he falls under the patronage of a junk peddler who follows him around collecting the mountains of junk that come cascading down in their direction. Harry comes home to his astonished family a wealthy man, wearing a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar, carrying a cane. When they ask how he did it, he shrugs: “Just fiddling around”.

Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, Simon & Schuster, New York 1992 (revised edition, St Martin’s Griffin, New York 2000)