Magic Town (1947)

This is certainly a bit of sub-Capra whimsy which probably would now be barely watchable were it not for James Stewart in the lead -- since he can always be relied upon to give a money's worth performance.  Here he plays a market researcher who thinks he has found the perfect town whose inhabitants' preferences exactly match any findings taken nationwide, and to him this is a golden goose.  However so that they will be none the wiser that he is profiting from their opinions, he and his two colleagues -- Ned Sparks and the ever-wonderful Donald Meek -- pretend to be insurance agents.  He begins romancing the local newspaper editor, Jane Wyman, who discovers what he is doing and exposes him.  This results in a wave of chancers arriving, wanting to invest in the so-called perfect town, and the townspeople themselves churning out their own nonsensical research which makes them a laughing stock.  Hence despair and ruin until Jimmy and Jane discover how to put things to right.  Not quite the same all-American "gosh, aren't people great" that one finds in Capra's best.

Talking of James Stewart, I also watched a portmanteau movie from 1948 called "On Our Merry Way" and were it not for the quite extended sector where Stewart and Henry Fonda played two down-on-their-luck musicians frenetically attempting to rig a talent show, the film would have been a complete waste time, even allowing for Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour and Fred MacMurray in the other sections.  It was something of an embarrassment all round for this hapless cast.