America’s Favorite Holiday Movie: The Story of It’s a Wonderful Life
Based on a lecture by professor emeritus at Fordham University, Brian Rose, under the aegis of Smithsonian Associates.
Festive Christmas movies are an annual staple, their popularity growing since the first screen appearance of Santa Claus in 1898. Three years later, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol appeared as Scrooge-Or Marley’s Ghost a silent, black and white film. In 1905, there was a big screen version of The Night Before Christmas. Years later, Die-Hard, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, The Santa Clause, Elf and The Nightmare Before Christmas joined a roster of what had been sentimental favorites. Television made the genre enormously popular and lucrative. Hallmark Channel runs hundreds of Christmas films starting just after Thanksgiving.
In between, Hollywood gave us White Christmas, The Bishop’s Wife, Christmas in Connecticut, Miracle on 34th Street and dozens more including continued reinterpretation of A Christmas Carol, gender flipping, and frequent musicalizations. When It’s a Wonderful Life was released in 1946, it flopped. The classic has since been included in the registry of The Library of Congress and recognized “the most inspiring film ever made” by The American Film Institute.
“Few films offer such a beguiling depiction of every emblem of American life wrapped in gushing holiday spirit,” our host comments. “One of the reasons is director Frank Capra.” Capra was a Sicilian born immigrant who found his way into the film business in the late 1920s. By the 30s, he was firmly rooted. His 1934 offering, It Happened One Night, garnered all five top Academy Awards.
George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) and Mary (Donna Reed)
With the next year’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra created a new type of protagonist, one Rose calls, “the quintessential common man who outsmarts city slickers and trumps them with decency.” We watch a clip of Gary Cooper sliding down a mansion banister in top coat and fedora. Next came Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – Jimmy Stewart as an everyman against corrupt politics. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. asked Sam Cohn not to release the film in Europe for fear it might affect the morale of United States’ allies at the start of WWII. Cohn and Capra chose to ignore negative publicity and demands.
Meet John Doe, in which Cooper goes up against a fascistic media mogul followed. Rose notes that Doe almost committing suicide on Christmas Eve might have been Capra’s realization his hero really couldn’t solve all the problems of modern times. Uncertainty was a common national denominator.
After the war, Capra, William Wyler and George Stevens left the Hollywood system to set up their own studio, Liberty Films. It’s a Wonderful Life would be their first release. The plot is based on a reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by Philip Van Doren Stern called The Greatest Gift. Unable to secure a publisher, Stern printed copies himself and gave them as Christmas gifts. A year later, the story came out as a book and RKO bought the rights for Cary Grant. When no one could figure out how to turn it into a screenplay, Capra bought it for $10,000.
Several writers worked on the film, but ultimately the popular team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett delivered a final script. Capra was meanwhile working behind their backs on his own version. Needless to say, they were furious. Credit is given all three writers. The director was now in charge of every aspect of production. He cast Air Force Vet Jimmy Stewart who had worked with him on You Can’t Take It with You and Mr. Smith.
Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter
First choice for George’s wife Mary, Jean Arthur, was otherwise occupied. Ginger Rogers turned the role down citing its blandness. Capra cast Donna Reed, on loan from MGM. She was a mere 25 years-old. Stewart took to her immediately. We watch the terrific scene where George and Mary listen to a phone call from Mary’s New York suitor as George realizes with alarm that he himself is in love with her.
Capra favorites were next in line. Lionel Barrymore would play the villain Mr. Potter, H.B. Warner, drunken druggist Mr. Gower, and Henry Travers, Second Class Angel Clarence. (Travers had played a small role in The Bells of St. Mary’s which might’ve given Capra the idea.) “A key performer is the town of Bedford Falls,” the host points out. Built on four acres, the set consisted of three city blocks with 75 buildings, including a marble fronted bank. Twenty full grown oak trees were brought in and made, with movie magic, to reflect the seasons.
An idealized, nostalgic version of small town USA was created. In 1920, the U.S. Census declared that more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. Rose calls the vision a virtual encyclopedia of Norman Rockwell America. “Capra made us long for a world few of us have ever known…The film is powerful because it also offers an alternate, diametrically opposed look at what critics called ‘Capracorn,'” he says. “Five years after John Doe considers ending his life on Christmas Eve, George Bailey also feels it’s his only solution.”
The film’s hero is eager to escape the confines of Bedford Falls. He’s thwarted at every turn, first when his father dies and no one else can take over the Building and Loan, then when his newly married brother takes a job in another town, and at last on the eve of his honeymoon when the bank apparently fails and monies saved are otherwise allotted to cover the institution’s loss. Curiously, Rose says, it’s the villain Mr. Potter who best understands the protagonist’s frustration. We watch Potter’s harsh analysis to which the cowed hero has no response.
George Travers as Clarence, Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
“In George’s desperation, Capra goes further than any other film to show the end of the road for an American dream,” Rose tells us. After Clarence stops George from taking his own life by rescuing the angel, the hero is subject to a harrowing portrait of what the town would be like had he not been born. “For close to 15 minutes, he’s given a nightmare tour of the modern Hell now called Pottersville.” It’s the sleaziest of Times Square on fantasy steroids.“ To really hammer the guilt home, there’s a chilling scene in the town cemetery as George stares at his brother’s grave.” Had he not rescued the boy who fell through the ice, Harry Bailey would not have been a war hero and happily married man.
In a 2010 essay for Salon, Richard Cohen described It’s a Wonderful Life as “the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made.” About the Pottersville sequence, he writes, “George Bailey is not seeing the world that would exist had he never been born, but rather the world as it does exist in his time and also in our own.” 2021’s celluloiddame.com states, “It’s a Wonderful Life embodies more than a few elements of film noir, from its string of colorful secondary characters, to its exploration of the grimmer parts of life, to its central question of the innate value, if any, of a human being.” Chilling, but true.
“The tour does the trick. George happily races back to embrace everything that lead him to a suicide attempt,” the host continues. A rousing celebration of the joys of small town life ensues. The angel’s letter to George reads, Dear George, Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings. Love, Clarence. Rose notes it’s hard not to be swept away by the all-problems-solved, uplifting finale and forget the nightmare.
In fact, It’s a Wonderful Life was not scheduled as a Christmas movie, but rather, considered universal, for release in January, 1947. A major distributor found itself with a scheduling hole and six months after completion, prints were rushed to theaters. Rose shows us two versions of advertising posters, the first with no sign of the holiday, the second with its presence clearly depicted.
In 1946, The LA Herald touted It’s a Wonderful Life as the best holiday film ever. Conversely, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times stated, “The weakness of the picture is the sentimentality of it, its illusory concept of life…” Imagine how many films we would’ve done without on that basis. Looking for Communist infiltration, an investigation by the FBI conjectured the film intended to discredit bankers. A single unanswered question that continues to loom is what Mr. Potter did with the $8000 he stole from Uncle Billy. When queried, Capra responded, “We decided to let Heaven take care of that.”
The film cost $3.5 million to make. RKO ended up losing half a million. Rose theorizes that had it been released in 1947 as intended, Academy Award chances would’ve been far greater. As it was, competing with The Best Years of Our Lives was a post war, no win situation. By the end of the year, the film was for all intents and purposes, dead. Its loss lead the partners to sell Liberty Films to Paramount. A second lease on life began in the 1950s with television showings, then erupted in 1974 when copyright lapsing made it annual holiday fare. In 1994, NBC bought sole rights. “I suspect many people mark the season by its viewing,” Rose notes.
“For these who can’t get enough of George Bailey, the town of Seneca Falls, New York, convinced it’s the model for Bedford Falls, has founded the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum,” Rose says. “There’s no basis for the town’s belief, but last week it held a 75th year anniversary celebration. For a box office flop, there’s no doubt It’s a Wonderful Life has a second wonderful life.”
Brian Rose is thoroughly entertaining; his research wide and illuminating, film clips and other visuals well chosen. A highly recommended lecturer.
Trivia Note: In researching this article, I discovered that Uncle Billy’s pet, Jimmy the Raven, was used by Capra in every film he made as well as dozens of others. Jimmy played the crow on the scarecrow’s shoulder in The Wizard of Oz.
All photos are in Public Domain
Opening: Donna Reed, Jimmy Stewart and Karolyn Grimes (the latter had just finished playing David Niven’s daughter in The Bishop’s Wife.)
Next from Brian Rose – The Golden Age of Hollywood Thursday, January 13, 2022 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET
