Frank Capra Jr.

It's a wonderful and busy life for Frank Capra, Jr., president of EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, currently the largest motion picture studio east of Hollywood. A second-generation filmmaker, Capra is the son of the late Lucille Rayburn Warner Capra and world-renowned director, Frank Capra, a native of Sicily, who is best known as director of the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He is the eldest of three children that include brother Tom and sister Lucille. While growing up, the Capra children had the best of both worlds: relatively normal lives with friends balanced by dinners with guests who could include Barbara Stanwyck,Jean Harlow, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore or Gary Cooper. Capra has said that growing up in a show-business household seldom interfered with holiday time and family life, for which he credits his father and mother. He has been active in the film industry for over four decades. Capra did not start out to be a filmmaker. It wasn't until after he studied at the California Institute of Technology and later graduated from Pomona College with a degree in geology that he chose movie making as a career. Again, he chose the best of both worlds, deciding to combine his interest in film with his scientific background by making films that documented government research programs conducted by Hughes Tool Co. (the parent company of Hughes Aircraft). During his time with Hughes Tool, Capra made films centered on the construction of torpedoes and helicopters contracted by U.S. military branches. With the Vietnam draft imminent, Capra enlisted in the army's film unit, the Signal Corps, and for the next three years taught combat motion picture photography to soldiers stationed in New Jersey. He also taught techniques of combat motion picture photography from land and air while serving in Vietnam. After his discharge from the army, Capra worked on a number of TV shows including Dennis the Menace (1959), Hazel (1961), Gunsmoke (1955), "Rifleman, The" (1960)_, Zane Grey Theatre (1956) and Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958). Working his way to assistant director, Capra continued to work in television and eventually migrated to producing feature films that included Born Again (1978), The Black Marble (1980) and An Eye for an Eye (1981). In 1983 Capra was sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, by producer Dino De Laurentiis to find a location for the feature film Firestarter (1984). Both he and De Laurentiis found Wilmington a wonderful place to live and work and continued to film projects here. In 1996 Capra was appointed President and CEO of EUE Screen Gems Studios. He was presented an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and also received a Directors Guild of America award in 2000 in recognition of his instrumental role in transforming Wilmington into a regional production center for both television and film, as well as for his significant contributions as a creator of original programming. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the Executive Branch Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the North Carolina Governor's Film Council and the North Carolina Southeast Film Advisory Board. Capra is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, instructing film classes in the university's film studies degree program.