"Infuriated at being laid off from her job as a newspaper columnist from The New Bulletin, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) prints a fake letter from the unemployed "John Doe," threatening suicide in protest of society's ills. When the note causes a sensation, the newspaper is forced to rehire Mitchell. After reviewing a number of derelicts who have shown up at the paper claiming to have penned the original suicide letter, Ann and Henry Connell (James Gleason) decide to hire John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former baseball player and tramp who is in need of money to repair his injured arm, to play John Doe."
In the film Meet John Doe, the John Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a political movement, with financial support from the newspaper's publisher, D.B. Norton. Norton plans to channel the support for Doe into support for his own political ambitions.
When Willoughby (John Doe), who has come to believe in the Doe philosophy himself, realizes that he is being used, he tries to expose the plot, but is stymied in his attempts to talk to a nationwide radio audience at a rally, and then exposed as a fake by Norton (who claims to have been deceived, like everyone else, by the staff of the newspaper). Frustrated by his failure, Willoughby intends to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the City Hall on Christmas Eve, as in the original John Doe letter. Only the intervention of Mitchell (his girl) and followers of the John Doe clubs persuades him to renege on his threat to kill himself. At this point in the movie, a reference to Jesus Christ is made, that a historical "John Doe" has already died for the sake of humanity. The film ends with Connell turning to Norton and saying-
"There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!"
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