It’s a Wonderful Life (film)

• Release Date: 1946
• Director(s): Frank Capra
• Writer(s): Frank Capra; Frances Goodrich; Albert Hackett
• Principal Actors and Roles: Donna Reed (Mary Hatch); James Stewart (George Bailey); Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter); Beluah Bondi (Mrs. Bailey); William Edmunds (Mr. Martini); Gloria Grahame (Violet); Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu Bailey); Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy); Henry Travers (Clarence); Mary Treen (Cousin Tilly); Charles Williams (Cousin Eustace)
• Book / Story Film Based On: The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern

It’s a Wonderful Life was a Christmas film released in 1946 by RKO Radio Pictures. The movie tells the story of George Bailey, whose generous nature has led him to miss out on many opportunities in life. Finally, one Christmas Eve, he decides that he wants to commit suicide, but his guardian angel Clarence intervenes. The film is based on a short story, "The Greatest Gift," which was written by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1939. Stern, who had difficulty finding a publisher for the story, sent copies to his friends and family members when mailing out his 1943 Christmas cards. Somehow, the story made its way to David Hempstead, a producer working for RKO Pictures. Hempstead enjoyed it so much that he showed it to the agent of actor Cary Grant. Grant thought the story would make a great film, one that he could star in. As a result, RKO Pictures bought the rights to "The Greatest Gift" in 1944 for $10,000. While in development at RKO, three separate adaptations were written; when each one in turn proved unsatisfactory, the production came to a temporary halt. While RKO delayed moving forward on the picture, Cary Grant made a different Christmas film, The Bishop’s Wife, inspiring the studio chief to show Stern’s story to director Frank Capra. Capra, who had just started his own production company, Liberty Films, bought the rights from RKO in 1945 for the same $10,000 price tag. The $10,000 purchase price also bought him the three failed script attempts.

Capra, along with screenwriters Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Jo Swerling, crafted a usable screenplay, and production on It’s a Wonderful Life began in 1946 with James Stewart in the leading role in place of Grant.

Plot

It’s a Wonderful Life takes place in Bedford Falls, New York, on Christmas Eve in 1945. George Bailey is a savings-and-loan manager. After a life of personal setbacks resulting from his habit of helping others, George has finally decided to commit suicide. However, heaven has other plans for him. Clarence, an angel-in-training, has been assigned to be George’s guardian angel, a task that could earn the angel his wings. In order to prepare Clarence for his mission, the angel is shown a flashback of important events in George’s life.

When George was twelve, he saved his younger brother Harry from drowning after the younger boy fell through the ice at a pond. As a result, however, George caught a terrible cold and suffered permanent hearing loss in one of his ears. Later, while working at a drugstore, George prevented another tragedy. His boss, Mr. Gower, was distracted by the death of his son and almost made a fatal mistake when preparing some medicine, but George prevented his boss from inadvertently killing a child with an arsenic pill. In 1928, George attended Harry’s high school graduation party, with plans to fulfill his dreams of traveling the world. There, he met Mary Hatch, who would one day become his wife, but then he received devastating news—namely, that his father had suffered a stroke. After the elder Mr. Bailey’s death, the board of his father’s company, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan, told George that unless he agreed to run the company, the board would sell the bank to Henry Potter. Potter was the wealthiest man in Bedford Falls, and George agreed to run the company out of fear that Potter would ruin the community.

George continued to put others first, initially sacrificing his honeymoon money to save the company and then turning down a job offer that would have allowed him to travel. On Christmas Eve 1945, now back in the present, George’s uncle Billy misplaces a company deposit of $8,000; this money finds its way to Potter, who keeps it for himself. Distraught that he will be charged with embezzlement, George gets drunk, crashes his car, and decides to kill himself. Clarence, who is looking on, stops George by jumping into the river before him, knowing that George will save him instead. When George does not believe that Clarence is his guardian angel, he is shown what life would have been like had George not been around. He discovers that Bedford Falls would have become Pottersville, his brother would have died, and Mr. Gower would have been charged with manslaughter. He had also prevented additional horrible tragedies. Desperate for his real life, George pleads for another chance, which Clarence grants him. Upon his return from the river, the townspeople rally around George to raise the lost money, and a bell on the Christmas tree rings—signaling that an angel has earned his wings.

Significance

It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed on RKO’s film ranch in Encino, California, using a massive four-acre set as the backdrop for the fictional Bedford Falls. The set, which included a main street that stretched on for three blocks, contained nearly seventy-five stores, buildings, and neighborhood homes. The producers also built a set of Potter’s bank and planted twenty full-grown oak trees so that the scenery resembled the look of a small New York town. To produce a white Christmas on the California set, the filmmakers used a brand new type of artificial snow, one that did not produce the crunchy sound of the cornflakes typically used for winter scenes. Cornflakes would have forced the filmmakers to overdub some dialogue in postproduction. Instead, they concocted a quieter recipe for It’s a Wonderful Life. Its creator went on to win a technical achievement award at the Academy Awards for this invention. Seneca Falls, New York, boasts that Capra’s 1945 visit to the town inspired Bedford Falls, and as a result, the New York locale is home to many film-themed attractions. Each year, the town hosts an It’s a Wonderful Life festival, and it even temporarily named a hotel opened in 2009 the Clarence Hotel in honor of the film’s guardian angel; its name was later reverted back to the Gould Hotel around 2013 due to the history of the building. In 2010, Seneca Falls opened a museum dedicated to the film.

When the film was first released, it did not perform well—either at the box office or in the eyes of critics—and the studio lost over $1.5 million on it. Despite this dismal result, the film was nominated for a total of five Academy Awards, although it lost in every category. Only in 1974, when the its copyright fell into the public domain, did television stations began repeatedly playing the film during the Christmas holiday season because they could do so for free. This failure to renew the copyright led to the film’s popularity, and it subsequently became a holiday classic. In 1990, the United States Film Registry, distinguishing the film for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance, selected It’s a Wonderful Life for preservation in the Library of Congress. Even after it began showing in a more limited fashion after NBC secured exclusive rights to the film in 1994, it was still considered a classic by older and newer audiences, and several television series aired episodes inspired by it and its message. In following decades, as film technology continued to improve, the lasting impact of It's a Wonderful Life continued to be seen in that it remained a staple for restorations to preserve and even improve its quality for further generations of viewers. By the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it had been restored in the highest resolution format up to that point, 4K, on a Blu-Ray disc that included bonus features. In difficult times, such as the worldwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic declared in 2020, many people still cited It's a Wonderful Life as a good source for universal hope.

Awards and nominations

Won

• Golden Globe (1946) Best Director ()

Nominated

• Academy Award (1946) Best Film Editing
• Academy Award (1946) Best Sound Recording
• Academy Award (1946) Best Picture
• Academy Award (1946) Best Director: Frank Capra
• Academy Award (1946) Best Actor: James Stewart

Bibliography

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"It's a Wonderful Life (1946)." Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.

Poague, Leland, ed. Frank Capra: Interviews. Jackson: U of Mississippi, 2004. Print.

Thomas, Tony. A Wonderful Life: The Films and Career of James Stewart. Secaucus: Carol Group, 1997. Print.

Thompson, Simon. "'It's a Wonderful Life': Inside the Classic Holiday Movie and Why It Is Needed More Than Ever in 2020." Forbes, 17 Nov. 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/simonthompson/2020/11/17/its-a-wonderful-life-inside-the-classic-holiday-movie-and-why-it-is-needed-more-than-ever-in-2020/?sh=2e76cd1f4c7b. Accessed 7 Jan. 2021.

Willian, Michael. The Essential It's a Wonderful Life. Chicago: Chicago Review, 2006. Print.