American Madness

Thomas Dickson is the honest, socially minded president of a bank, and he has spent years extending credit to ordinary people he believes deserve a chance. His beliefs put him at odds with a cautious board of directors, and trouble arrives from several directions at once: a young protégé is wrongly accused of orchestrating a robbery, rumors of the crime set off a run on the bank, and signs point to an affair involving his wife. Set during the Great Depression, the film follows a man whose faith in people is tested over a single day by panic, gossip and betrayal.

Frank Capra directed and produced the film for Columbia Pictures, with Harry Cohn also producing. It sits early in Capra's filmography, before the run of features from the mid-1930s onward that established his reputation. Walter Huston plays Thomas Dickson, with Pat O'Brien as Matt Brown, Kay Johnson as Phyllis Dickson, Constance Cummings as Helen, Gavin Gordon as Cyril Cluett and Arthur Hoyt as Ives among a credited cast of twenty-eight. The film runs 76 minutes.

It was released in August 1932. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 2,600 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.9 from roughly 49 votes, so the larger, older audience sample on IMDb is notably more favorable than the much smaller TMDB sample.