Frank Capra

Born: May 18 1897
Where: Bisacquino, Sicily, Italy

Died: September 3 1991 (heart attack)

The legendarily populist Hollywood director is known for his unflinchingly optimistic movies celebrating the triumph of the common man over the corrupt system.

Nowhere are these "fantasies of goodwill" more more apparent than the perennial Christmas feelgood film It's A Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart.

During his heyday from the mid-1930s to the 40s, he won three Oscars in just five years for It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds Goes To Town and You Can't Take it With You.

Born in Italy, his family emigrated to America in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles where Capra formed a music combo with his brother, playing gigs at venues including brothels.

While studying chemical engineering at the Throop College of Technology, he discovered poetry and decided on a career as a writer.

After serving in the US Army he succumbed to Spanish Flu and while he was recuperating worked as an extra in John Ford's The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

He made ends meet working as an orange tree pruner and ditchdigger while working as an extra and failing to get his short stories published.

An attempt to form a film company in 1920 failed and he went back to jobs such as a door-to-door salesman before being hired as a director of shorts.

Switching to gag writing, Hollywood legend Mack Sennett hired him for the short Plain Clothes and he went on to work for Columbia Studios.

He first hit his stride with American Madness in 1932, which struck a chord with audiences suffering under the Great Depression.

When the comedy It Happened One Night, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, earned a shelf of Oscars he found himself firmly established in Hollywood.

Detractors criticised his wide-eyed optimism - the "Capra-corn" - of movies such as Mr Deeds Goes To Town and Mr Smith Goes To Washington.

But these stories of a humble man overcoming a haughty system were adored by the public...and the Academy, which awarded him three Oscars.

With the rise of European fascism, his tone darkened with Lost Horizon and his first independent production, Meet John Doe.

He returned to pure comedy just prior to entering the army, with Arsenic and Old Lace, and, during his wartime service, directed the US Army's Why We Fight series.

In 1946, ater demob, he made the most personal and legendary of his movies, It's A Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart as the small town Everyman George Bailey.

It originally bombed and only reached an audience during the 1970s and early 1980s via TV when it temporarily passed out of copyright protection.

Capra's subsequent movies , including State of the Union and A Hole in the Head, fell out of favour with the changing tastes of the cinema-going public.

His last feature film was 1961's Pocketful of Miracles, a big budget remake of his 1933 hit Lady for a Day.

Capra - who author Graham Greene described as a director "with a touch of genius" - died of a heart attack in his sleep in California in September 1991.