Posted on 01/24/2024 10:58:59 AM PST by Red Badger
It's that time of year again when you're likely thinking of settling down for a traditional rewatch of It's a Wonderful Life. (It's streaming via Channel 4 online this year).
When we think of Christmas movies, the movie will inevitably come up alongside the likes of Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol. Most Christmas movies follow a similar enough pattern: something dire happens and only a Christmas miracle can save the day.
In the case of It's a Wonderful Life, that miracle actually came many years after the film's initial debut. When the movie bowed in 1946, it was such a flop that it ended up closing down the studio and, more or less, ending director Frank Capra's career.
It's a Wonderful Life is based on a novel of the same name by Philip Van Doren Stern, written in 1938. When no publishers responded to the story, Stern instead printed it on Christmas cards which he then sent to friends and family. One such card wound up in the letterbox of film producer David Hempstead, who showed it to movie star Cary Grant.
Enamoured with the story, Grant brought it to RKO Movies – the studio with which he frequently collaborated. After much back and forth, however, the story was sold to Liberty Films for $10,000 and starred James Stewart.
Far from granting the studio its angel wings, It's a Wonderful Life ended up being the death knell for Liberty Films.
Bank of America's archival records show that the company borrowed $1.54 million to make the movie, directed by studio co-founder Frank Capra, on a budget of $2.3 million.
It's a Wonderful Life was released in cinemas in December 1946 (pushing it up a month from January 1947 so it would be eligible for Oscars nominations) to a disastrous turnout. By the end of its run, it recorded a $525,000 loss for the studio.
Initially set up as an independent film company (whose films were distributed and, in some cases financed, by RKO), Liberty couldn't survive the financial blow. To avoid a takeover, co-founders Capra and William Wyler decided to sell Liberty Studios and its director contracts to other competing studios. Paramount eventually won the bid.
Liberty Films was not long for the world, though, and by 1951 it was dissolved by Paramount. And with it went most of Frank Capra's career.
The box-office failure convinced film studios "that Capra was no longer capable of turning out the populist features that made his films the must-see, money-making events they once were". (Mark Eliot, Jimmy Stewart: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2006.)
They were right. Capra wasn't a Hollywood director, he was truly an independent. The son of Capra's former partner said: "Frank was never found taking his hat off to conventional wisdom, market research, the front office or the latest trend."
Capra himself knew that Liberty Films was what cost him his reputation and employability. He, perhaps humorously, wrote in his autobiography that the goal of forming Liberty Films was to "(1) influence the course of Hollywood films, (2) make four former Army officers independently rich, and (3) virtually prove fatal to my professional career."
It wasn't just artistic conviction that led to his downfall, though. Capra left soured relationships in the wake of It's a Wonderful Life, perhaps most importantly with popular screenwriting duo Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Chauvinism was a problem.
A New York Times article said: "Frank Capra could be condescending and you just didn't address Frances as 'My dear woman.' When we were pretty far along in the script but not done, our agent called and said, 'Capra wants to know how soon you'll be finished.' Frances said, 'We're finished right now.' We put our pens down and never went back to it."
He also hired other writers in secret to rewrite their work (a no-no with the Screen Writers Guild) and continued to meddle with it, leaving the pair wholly disenchanted with the film and with Capra.
It's a Wonderful Life also proved fatal to Capra's long-time cooperation with composer Dimitri Tiomkin. Unhappy with Tiomkin's score, Capra cut many songs without conferring with Tiomkin. In his autobiography, the composer called it "an all-around scissors job".
Capra blamed shifting trends in the film industry – with the rise of the 'movie star' resulting in him being forced to compromise his artistic vision. In his autobiography, he wrote: "Practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardisation of a great art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators."
And then there are the communists.
The FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) – Senator McCarthy's paranoid, red-menace crew – investigated It's a Wonderful Life for having communist leanings. Hard-right philosopher and author Ayn Rand said it had 'pernicious threats to Americanism' and the HUAC agreed.
They wrote that protagonist George Bailey's story was rife with subversive tendencies, like demonising capitalist bankers and attempting to instigate class warfare. Oh no!
They also concluded that "those responsible for making It's a Wonderful Life had employed two common tricks used by communists to inject propaganda into the film". Further, the film used a "subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called 'common man' in society".
With all this going against it, it's a wonder that It's a Wonderful Life ever became up as popular as it was. And it was likely a clerical error that allowed the movie to re-enter the zeitgeist.
The 1909 Copyright Act stipulated that creative works were protected for 28 years, after which the copyright holder would have to renew the copyright. By 1974, either the studio was so keen to distance itself from the turkey or they simply forgot, but the copyright protection was not renewed and thus It's a Wonderful Life fell into the public domain.
This meant that TV stations were free to run the film all year round (not just at Christmas) at almost no cost. So it was on all the time. Perhaps this constant playing on screens across America meant the public soon realised what they had missed.
You may think that watching It's a Wonderful Life any time other than Christmas is sacrilege, but Capra never saw it as a Christmas movie, he just liked the idea of it.
Though Capra suffered greatly for his art, It's a Wonderful Life eventually got the credit it was due, and Capra did too. In 1982 he was awarded the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award.
At the ceremony, Capra said: "Don't follow trends. Start trends! Don't compromise. Believe in yourself! Because only the valiant can create. Only the daring should make films. And only the morally courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow man for two hours and in the dark."
I do not like IAWL. It’s a depressing movie based on personal tragedies, thoughts of suicide, thievery, drunkenness and more.
No wonder the movie was a flop when released.
I absolutely love this movie, it is timeless in that these are struggles we have as humans.We have dreams, disappointments and blessings we would never realize if it weren’t for the disappointments.
I’ve never seen it but intend to someday.
It reflects reak life.
It’s a good movie.
It taught me, as a child, how banks work.
It reflects reak life.
_______________________________
I agree. It reaks (sp).
lol
Capra is ‘goat’ in Italian.
It is said the Jimmy Stewart was essentially suicidal with depression before and during the making of the movie. Having to keep up appearances (in an era when being depressed was considered un-masculine at best) made it worse. Those who know said he had considerable PTSD from WW2 and ‘survivor’s guilt’ as well; some of the scenes are not really acted as much genuinely felt.
It's for these reasons I don't listen to country music. LOL
But once per year or so of watching IAWL is enough to remind of how good we have it today. Especially from the perspective of the pharmacist. He's a reminder that there was a generation that went through two world wars and the great depression. It's hard for us to feel too down on our luck with the relatively little we have to go through (as a generation, I'm sure there are individual cases that differ).
“”””I do not like IAWL. It’s a depressing movie based on personal tragedies, thoughts of suicide, thievery, drunkenness and more.””””
In 1945 pulled from flight status for PTSD, in 1946 filming a comedy.
“After completing his final tour at the end of February 1945, Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for his combat valor. But Stewart was scarred. Instead of celebrating, he had a breakdown. He was bedridden with PTSD.”
“He came back looking like hell. There’s a before-and-after photo in the book that shows him in 1942 looking all youthful, and then in 1944 looking like hell.”
“But if you watch that performance by Stewart, there was a lot of rage in it and it’s an on-the-edge performance because that’s what those guys were feeling “
“At this point, he had just started to eat again. He always had a high metabolism and always had trouble digesting food, and during the war it got worse and worse. He himself said that the only thing he subsisted on was peanut butter and ice cream. He just hadn’t been able keep food down. Now he’s starting to gain weight. But he’s still having nightmares and the shakes and the sweats. He’s got some hearing loss now, from the sound of the bombers on those seven-, eight-hour missions. So now you have an actor who, it’s not easy for him to hear his cues.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-jimmy-stewart-book-mov-1202-20161201-column.html
...same could be said of politics.
"Inspired by the classic American film, It's a Wonderful Life, It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play is performed as a 1940s live radio broadcast in front of a studio audience. Five actors perform the dozens of characters in the radio play as well as produce the sound effects."--Www.joelandry.com
It’s A Wonderful Life is simply the greatest movie ever made.
I developed a crush on Donna Reed after watching that movie. Bedford Falls was modeled on the upstate NY town Seneca Falls and I had relatives who lived there during the time period this movie was made.
Blackrock = Mr. Potter
This movie is being lived out today. Everyone has to rent due to a selfish Mr Potter having control of banking due to a hero being erased from this world.
My in-laws are from Elmira. My wife loved the reference to that in the movie. It was her favorite movie.
OMG, people can find anything to bitch about, even a terrific movie like “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
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