It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
George of the Jingle
Happy holidays ILTBTA readers! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or National Sangria Day (that’s today!), we hope you’re able to celebrate your respective holiday season with movies and popcorn family and friends. For this post, we watched Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life. So whip up some hot cocoa, learn what exactly a building and loan association is1, and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: This one is a favorite of my dad’s (though not as beloved to him as this version of A Christmas Carol), so we watched it for a Family Christmas Movie Night Spectacular at some point. I remember liking it and a happy, Christmas ending, but I feel like it was a rough road to get there.
Tyler: Finally one I’ve seen before and actually somewhat remember! I watched this with my family a few years ago during the holidays, after my dad learned my mom had never seen it and was somewhat-sarcastically aghast. I had also not seen it, but knew that Elizabeth Warren’s dog, Bailey, was named after one of the characters, which (unsurprisingly) set off a long conversation about politicians’ dogs. I recall enjoying it (the movie and the conversation), but I’m admittedly a little surprised now to see it nominated for Best Picture. Was it warranted? Let’s find out.
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
The clanging of bells welcomes us to Liberty Film’s presentation of Frank Capra’s: It’s A Wonderful Life! Cute little illustrated storybook pages provide us our credits, and we pan to the equally idyllic-looking Bedford Falls. Seemingly the whole town is praying for a man named George Bailey, who’s having a rough night. The cosmos debate about who to send to help ole George, and Clarence Odbody is just the
manangel for the job! Poor fellow hasn’t earned his wings after 200 years, so this might just be his chance. The powers-that-be insist that Clarence learn a bit about George, so it’s all aboard the Flashback Train!Tyler: I respect the commitment to the old-timey looking opening credits. IAWL is old but not that old that it needed to do something so … quaint.
Ellen: When I say “the cosmos”, I mean that the angels are represented by an image of distant galaxies that light up when one of them is talking. I couldn’t find a gif, but the readers deserve to know!
A heavenly host (Source)
Twelve-year-old George leads a group of boys in a bit of shovel-sledding onto a frozen pond, but zoinks! His younger brother Harry falls through the ice! George saves his life, but loses hearing in one ear. We learn some about Bedford Falls: the elder Bailey brothers own the Building and Loan Association, Henry F. Potter is the local cigar-chomping bigwig, a young girl named Mary is enamored with George, and he works at Mr. Gower’s pharmacy. The very same Mr. Gower is currently deeply distraught to learn his son has died of influenza, and he accidentally puts poison into pills instead of medicine2. George manages to stop him, kicking off a lifelong friendship.
Tyler: I need someone much older than myself to tell me if kids really spoke like this back then: "Oh gee golly Mister …” It just seems like such a caricature, but I guess caricatures are usually at least partially based on fact?
Time jump! George, having saved his pennies in the four years since high school, is preparing to head off to college with a world tour to start, as he’s always had an urge to travel. The entire town of Bedford Falls seems invested in George’s impending adventure, and even town bombshell Violet struts by George to bid him farewell as he talks with Bert and Ernie, a cop and cab driver, respectively. At the Bailey household, Harry is gearing up for his high school graduation party tonight!3 He leaves in a tuxedo, and Mr. Bailey and George have a serious discussion about the future. George wants to go to college and then be an architect, though Mr. Bailey thinks the Building and Loan is more than a “shabby little office” and is in fact a rather important institution in the town. The conversation doesn’t really resolve. (It, uh, never will!)
Tyler: Young George has strong Springsteen "I'm gonna get outta this town" vibes. The sentence “I'm gonna shake the dust of this crummy little town off my boots” could easily be a line from Born To Run.
It’s a pretty classy-looking high school graduation, despite being held in a gym. A very lively Charleston contest ensues, and George and Mary reconnect with exuberant dancing. So enamored are they with each other that they barely notice when a prankster pushes the button to open the floor and sends everyone tumbling into the pool below! As they walk home in dry clothes pilfered from the locker room, George and Mary flirt up a storm. Mary reveals she always wanted to live in the dilapidated old Granville house, and George offers to lasso her the moon if she wants it. They’re very nearly about to kiss when a car comes screeching up informing them that Mr. Bailey has had a stroke! He passes away, and George ends up delaying his world tour to help square things away at the Building and Loan. There’s just one problem: Potter wants to shut them down, because he is a cartoon villain! The Board votes not to sell to him… as long as George takes over. Thus, he gives his college money to Harry and stays on with his forgetful Uncle Billy and his, uh, pet crow?4
Charleston Chews your partner wisely! (Source) The Time Train jumps the tracks yet again! George and Billy are on their way to pick up Harry from the train station, fresh from completing college. George is more than ready for his baby brother to take over the business, but that just got a lot more complicated: Harry comes home with a wife and job offer from his new father-in-law! Even though Harry says he knows it’s George’s turn, George can’t take the opportunity away from him. Morose, he goes on a walk… and finds himself at Mary’s house! She’s just back from college herself and very excited to see him. Having been beaten down by the past four years, he’s an absolute crank and not responding to Mary at all. He leaves, and Mary smashes the record she was playing in frustration. However, a phone call brings him back inside, and when they jointly huddle around the receiver, they’re simply too close NOT to make out!
Wedding bells ring out for George and Mary! George cannot be allowed a second’s contentment, however, and they discover a bank run underway as Ernie attempts to drive them out of town for their honeymoon. Over at Building and Loan, folks want their money, and they want it now! George explains that everyone’s money is not literally there, but they’re the only game in town: Potter closed the banks to try and force the Building and Loan out of business! Folks ask for what they need to get through a week, the Baileys provide… using George and Mary’s wedding money, at his new wife’s insistence. After a long day, George receives a call from Mary at the “Waldorf Hotel,” which is actually the Granville house! It’s been bedecked with travel posters and is serving as their “honeymoon.”
As time progresses, George’s work is helping the town thrive, getting people out of Potter slums and into owning their own homes in Bailey Park! Though, as Potter himself points out, the Baileys are barely making a dime off of it. George’s childhood friend Sam Wainwright (who incidentally used to have a thing for Mary) stops by a housewarming to lowkey gloat about having so much money from his plastic factory in Bedford (the location of which was George’s idea, and it brought a lot of jobs). Potter tries to hire George himself and get him to sell his soul for $20,0005 a year and the chance to travel. George tells him to pound sand, and he and Mary proceed to have four children. When the war comes, everyone pitches in to the war effort, but due to his deafness in one ear, George is relegated to the front lines of Bedford Falls. Harry, meanwhile, is an ace fighter pilot who rescues a whole troop transport and earns himself a Congressional Medal of Honor!
Ellen: There’s some pretty rough cutting in this movie, and the jumps when Mary is first telling George she’s pregnant are EVIDENT lol.
Tyler: Yeah you know it’s bad when we both laugh out loud at it.
It’s Christmas Eve, and Bedford Falls prepares for a hero’s welcome for Harry. George, Billy, and all the Baileys are just about beside themselves with pride. Billy is even more distractible than usual, and while gloating about his nephew to Potter at the bank, he, uh, misplaces $8,000 of the Building and Loan’s cash! After a fruitless and frustrating day scouring the town, none of the Baileys can find the money, and George is terrified of bankruptcy and, worse, jail! It turns out the envelope landed in Mr. Potter’s paper, and you know that bitch will not be returning it. In fact, when George crawls to Potter to beg for a loan, the rich man takes the opportunity to take the Baileys down a few pegs, accusing them of double dealing and criminal activity warranting arrest! George’s only collateral is his life insurance, and Potter scathingly informs him he’s worth more dead than alive. George, now having yelled at his family, fought in a bar, and run his car into a tree, really takes that to heart as he stares over a bridge…
Ellen: Okay, you watch this movie, and you’re thinking that Potter is just a cartoonish, Monopoly Man kind of villain. But for him to keep the money and then use that as pretext to rip George apart, wrongfully try to send both Baileys to prison, and arguably suggest that George commit suicide?? Potter. Is. EVIL!
Tyler: It’s at that point that I realized that Potter wouldn’t eventually be making some inexplicable and rational-only-in-Frank-Capra-movies face turn into a hero for plot purposes (looking at you AP from You Can’t Take It With You).
Oh yeah, remember how this movie was about an angel who’s supposed to literally talk a desperate man off a ledge? We’re finally back to that! Clarence, sent to Earth as an adorable old man, flings himself into the dark waters below in order to force George to save him6. Clarence doesn’t seem to understand modern day, and George doesn’t seem to understand this whole angel situation. He posits that everyone would be better off if he’d never been born. Clarence is like “now you’re talking!” and makes it so. George is pretty slow on the uptake7, deeply confused by why his car is missing, none of his friends recognize him, and the charming bar known as Martini’s is now Nick’s, and they do NOT serve mulled wine, flaming rum punch, or anything fun, I guess. Here’s a list of some of the differences: Harry is dead (and so are all the people he saved in the war), the town is called Pottersville and looks like Biff Tannen’s Hill Valley, Uncle Billy was institutionalized after the Building and Loan failed, Mr. Gower did 20 years for poisoning a child, and worst of all: Mary is an old maid! Absolutely horrified, George sprints back to the bridge, pleading and praying that he wants to live again.
Ellen: You can the the flour or whatever in Jimmy Stewart’s hair to make him look more gray and world-weary, and Mary as an “old maid” is just Donna Reed in glasses and a frumpy coat. Clearly this movie blew the budget on the cosmic special effects lol.
Back to reality! George gallops through town, elated to see everything back to normal, yelling Merry Christmas at anything and anyone in his path. He’s absolutely elated to enter his home, not minding the bank examiner, reporters, or warrant for his arrest! People begin to flood the house, and he finds out Mary and Billy rallied the townspeople to the cause to replace the missing money. Donations pour in, Sam Wainwright calls to say he can wire up to $25,000 from London, and even the bank examiner and Mr. Potter’s employees pitch in. Among the donations is a copy of Tom Sawyer, which includes a note from Clarence, reminding George that no man is a failure who has friends, and thanking him for his wings. A bell on the Christmas tree rings, and the adorable Zuzu explains that means an angel just got their wings! The whole assembly sings Auld Lang Syne as snow falls outside.
Intermission
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Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
It’s A Wonderful Life’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Before we dive into the source material, let’s discuss one of the minor characters in It’s A Wonderful Life. If you watched both IAWL and You Can’t Take It With You, you may have noticed that both randomly feature what appears to be a pet crow. Because the internet is a wonderful place, we know that that crow is actually a raven, and his name is Jimmy. Jimmy actually made his film debut in YCTIWY, after which director Frank Capra cast him in all of his subsequent movies. Among Jimmy’s assorted skills were typing, opening letters, and even riding a tiny motorcycle.
IAWL is based on the 1943 short story “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern, which (just like its author’s name) is 4100 words long. Stern started working on it in November 1939, but did not finish it until December 1943. He sent out 200 copies of it to friends as Christmas presents after he was unable to find a publisher, but one of those copies eventually made it to a producer at RKO Pictures, and the rest is history.
Mr. Gower, the drugstore owner, was named after the street name that Columbia Pictures was on. Gower Street also had a drugstore that was popular with Columbia’s employees.
Despite there being no evidence to support the claim, Seneca Falls, NY claims that Bedford Falls is modeled on the town after Capra visited in 1945. The town has an annual “It’s A Wonderful Life Festival,” a hotel named The Hotel Clarence after George’s guardian angel, and an IAWL museum that was christened by the young actress who played George’s daughter Zuzu. Philip Van Doren Stern, who you learned about in the previous bullet, said in a later interview that while the movie takes place in Westchester County, New York, he envisioned Califon, New Jersey when writing the source material.
Filming took place from April-July 1946 at RKO Studios in Culver City, CA and their 89-acre movie ranch in Encino, CA. It being southern California in the summertime, RKO’s head of special effects Russell Shearman had to get creative to create realistic looking snow for a movie set in the wintertime in New
YorkJersey. Shearman developed “chemical snow” using water, soap flakes, foamite, and sugar. This replaced the previous process of painting untoasted cornflakes white, which ended up being so loud when stepped on that dialogue would have to be redubbed.Ellen: Painting mass amounts of corn flakes to look like snow sounds like a parody of old filmmaking
Sometimes a Wikipedia sub-section has such an intriguing name that you rush to click on that before anything else. Such is true of IAWL’s page, which has a “Sesame Street urban legend” section. Close listeners of IAWL may have heard that a cop and cab driver were named Bert and Ernie (respectively), leading some to believe that the famous puppet duo were named after these two characters. Sadly, it appears to just be a coincidence.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role8. And the nomnomnominees are:
Chocolate ice cream (with no coconut!) from Gower's
A stiff drink from Martini's
Mulled wine (heavy on the cinnamon light on the cloves) from Nick's
And the Oscar goes to … the mulled wine from Nick’s! Unfortunately, the villainous Mr. Potter purchased the entire awards show mid-ceremony and poured out the winner because he can, so we will accept this award on its behalf.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I'd like to buy the Academy a flaming rum punch, because I just want to see what that means. But really: I enjoyed this! It takes a loooong time to circle back to the Christmas of it all, but the flashbacks (for the most part) aren't quite as depressing as I remembered. But boy howdy, that Mr. Gower scene in the alternate reality is brutal! In a world in which You Can’t Take It With You took the title 8 years earlier, I'm not surprised that this Frank Cap-tacular was nominated. If we cover more of his films, I'll be watching for an inexplicable raven and a mass donation of funds from townsfolk. Still, it's what you want in a Christmas tale, and I had fun!
Tyler: I’d like to give the Academy a nice weighted blanket to enjoy this movie under, but one so weighted that they reconsider getting up to nominate it for Best Picture. Look, IAWL is a Christmas classic for a reason, it has all the ingredients you’re looking for: beloved actors; an underdog story set in an idyllic Small Town, USA; and a sentimental reminder about the wonders of life, all wrapped in a cloak of Christianity. That being said, I struggle to see how this would be considered one of the best movies of the year. Perhaps it benefited from the star-power of the names attached, maybe it was just a different time; it was likely both. Regardless, I’m still happy to have watched it.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
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If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
We’ve got good news and bad news.
Bad news: starting next week, we’ll be taking an extended vacation from the Northern Hemisphere as we embark on our honeymoon (#honeymonth), so that means we won’t be writing about any ILTBTA movies during that time.
The good news: we’ve pre-written some fun posts that are scheduled to be sent at their usual time, so you’ll still get your twice-monthly dose of ILTBTA content.
Until then, count your blessings!
Shout-out to Dennis Wendte for the helpful link!
Sounds like my ex-wife!
Despite the fact that he looks about 30 years old.
Tyler and I were both like “Wait, is that a crow in the office??” Jump to Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat? to learn more!
Just over $350,000 in today’s dollars!
Tyler: GET IT? JUST LIKE HIS BROTHER.
Tyler: Like, annoyingly slow.
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.