When a newspaper is taken over, the new owners sack many of the staff. A single mother (Barbara Stanwyck) comes up with a plan to keep her job by writing a letter from a fictious man called John Doe who says he will commit suicide on Christmas Eve as a protest against all the problems with society. When he starts to become a grass roots movement, they find a man (Gary Cooper) off the street who needs money and pay him to be John Doe. This is essentially a piece of pro-American World War 2 propaganda of the power of the individual against the power of facist organised politicians.
3/5 
Gary Cooper
Barbara Stanwyck
Edward Arnold
Walter Brennan
Spring Byington
James Gleason
Gene Lockhart