Last night I spent an enjoyable evening watching “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town“. After working in town all day, it is nice to come home to the country, and then watch a movie about a refreshingly real small-town individual like Mr. Deeds.

Gary Cooper has always been a close second to Jimmy Stewart as my favorite actor. Gary Cooper’s heartwarming performance as Mr. Deeds only added to my appreciation of his skills, and the very “real” characters he portrayed throughout his acting career. Jean Arthur has also been a favorite ever since I saw “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” so I was thrilled to find another favorite movie with her playing a leading part.

In the movie, Mr. Longfellow Deeds is a smalltown poet, with a lot of “foolish notions about saving a lady in distress,” according to his housekeeper. But as Mr. Deeds explained, “I haven’t married, ’cause I’ve been kinda waiting…I’ve always hoped that some day, that imaginary girl would turn out to be real.”

Then the small-town man comes into big money and goes to town to claim it. He discovers, “People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live. Last night, after I left you, I was walking along and – and lookin’ at the tall buildings, and I got to thinking about what Thoreau said. ‘They created a lot of grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them.'”

The movie leaves you with a desire to find more honest, decent, noble men like Mr. Deeds in this world. As a smalltown girl myself, I agree with Mr. Deeds: “I’d rather have Mandrake Falls.” And as to being pixilated, if Mr. Deeds is the definition of pixilated, I’d rather be pixilated, too.