"If you want to send a message, try Western Union"

Frank Capra’s pithy remark, “If you want to send a message, try Western Union,” is a sharp rebuke to the idea of films and other works of art being vehicles for explicit social or political messaging. The statement suggests a boundary between artistic creation and direct didacticism, implying that movies ought primarily to engage, move, or entertain rather than serve as mouthpieces for an author’s particular agenda. By referencing Western Union, the telegraph service once used for clear, unambiguous communication, Capra links the act of “sending a message” with a utilitarian, transactional exchange, hardly the aim of cinema, which he saw as rooted in emotional resonance, ambiguity, and human experience.

This perspective reflects Capra’s belief that powerful storytelling arises organically from character, situation, and emotion, rather than being imposed from above as a kind of manifesto. He distinguishes between art that comes alive with narrative energy and art that stifles itself beneath the weight of the creator’s “message.” There’s an underlying caution against reducing complex art forms to mere propaganda or sermons; to Capra, the director’s role is not to lecture but to craft worlds and lives that provoke thought, joy, sorrow, or wonder in audiences. Messages may naturally emerge, but they arrive as byproducts of sincere storytelling, not as primary objectives.

Capra’s quip has lived on as a challenge against heavy-handedness in art. It resonates as a defense of subtlety, indirectly championing the idea that the most lasting “messages” are experienced, not dictated. Audiences, he suggests, are not passive recipients of instruction but active participants in the meanings they draw. Ultimately, Capra’s observation champions the autonomy of both artist and viewer, upholding art’s complexity as something to be experienced rather than simply decoded.