The Crowd

The camera climbs the face of an office tower, slides in through a window, and crosses a floor of identical desks until it finds one man. That is John Sims, born on the Fourth of July, 1900, and told he would be somebody. He marries, has two children, loses one under a truck and then loses the job, and the city does not notice any of it. King Vidor cast an extra, James Murray, as John and his own wife, Eleanor Boardman, as Mary. The last shot pulls back from the couple laughing in a theatre until they are two faces among thousands. MGM shot seven endings. This is the one Vidor wanted.