Life Saver

Family man: George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) hugs daughter Zuzu (Karolyn Grimes) in Frank Capra's 1946 holiday classic, It's a Wonderful Life. Photo Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

As warm and comforting as a scarf knit by Grandma, Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life has been a holiday favourite for more than 30 years. That success was late in arriving, however. For decades, the film — which airs again Christmas Eve on CBC and NBC — was a monumental failure. Then something remarkable happened — a Capra-esque miracle, if you will.

In 1973, a few TV broadcasters noticed that, due to a contract lawyer’s blunder, rights to the film had expired. Anyone could air it — free. The film starred Jimmy Stewart and it was set during Christmas. Programmers decided to give it a try that holiday. Audiences responded, and the film’s popularity spread. With the advent of cable, It’s a Wonderful Life was on a dozen channels every holiday in the ’80s. The 1946 box-office failure is now as much a Christmas ritual as mistletoe.

A sentimental populist, director Frank Capra accepted his film’s belated success as proof that good will ultimately triumph. But there’s evidence that suggests It’s a Wonderful Life finally clicked with audiences because the WWII-era spectacle became a different film when it was transferred to the small screen. It evolved from a contrived, hysterical melodrama into a Boomer Yuletide fantasy.

The movie was Capra’s first film after returning from the war. The director was disturbed to discover Hollywood was in the midst of an anti-communist pogrom. He even had to vet his cast with right-wing American Film Alliance leader and hatchet-faced movie star John Wayne. A shouting match ensued; Capra was about to shoot a film crafted by six writers — including Dalton Trumbo, Clifford Odets and Dorothy Parker — who would soon be called by the House Un-American Activities Committee. (The film’s final credits do not acknowledge the trio’s participation.)

Stewart recalled Capra nervously pitching the project to him. “He said, ‘Now, you’re in a small town and things aren’t going well. You begin to wish you’d never been born. And you decide to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, but an angel named Clarence comes down from heaven, and, uh, Clarence hasn’t won his wings yet. He comes down to save you when you jump into the river, but Clarence can’t swim, so you save him.’

“Then Frank stopped and said, ‘This story doesn’t tell very well, does it?’”

Trumbo’s original script was suspicious of capitalism. Hero George Bailey battles to keep Bedford Falls free from the clutches of a greedy conglomerate, before eventually contemplating suicide. Fearful of being considered a Commie, Capra replaced the Big Bad Business subtext with a contemporary Scrooge named Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). Capra also transformed George’s village into an American Christmas card, going over budget to create movie snow manufactured from 3,000 tons of chipped ice, 300 tons of gypsum and plaster and 6,000 gallons of soapsuds. This frothy mixture was lathered like cake icing over a picture-perfect set for which Capra imported 28 mature oak trees.

Not a good sign: George Bailey meets a black crow. Photo Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

The film opened to bad luck in the Christmas of 1946. A crippling snowstorm in the northeast United States and central Canada discouraged filmgoers; but it wasn’t bad weather that put viewers off It’s a Wonderful Life. Returning servicemen who toughed out the Depression and the Second World War were uncomfortable with George Bailey’s frenzied gloom; Lionel Barrymore’s villainous Mr. Potter and Bedford Falls, a small town full of merry eccentrics, both felt like Victorian contrivances. America didn’t recognize itself in Frank Capra’s vision.

The film’s failure was Capra’s undoing. At the time, he was 48. With close to 30 hits behind him (including It Happened One Night and the rabble-rousing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), the filmmaker would make five more pictures, all flops, before retiring. He visited my film class at Ottawa’s Carleton University in the mid-’70s. A student asked, “What would Mr. Smith have thought of Vietnam?” Capra frowned. “That’s a political question,” he said. “And I never made political films.”

Another student wanted to know whether the retired director watched his movies on TV. Television ruined movies, he complained. The screen was puny and there were too many commercials, he felt, growing visibly upset. Capra clearly didn’t enjoy young people’s company. He seemed unreasonably grumpy, as querulous and mean as Barrymore’s Mr. Potter.

And yet it was television and a younger generation that saved Capra’s favourite film. On TV, George Bailey’s suffering seemed easier to manage, especially when crammed between hot chocolate and toy commercials. Watching George Bailey, young viewers saw only Jimmy Stewart, who became a cherished figure in the 1970s and ’80s, his hair as white as Santa’s.

More contemporary audiences were unconcerned by the film’s falsely sentimental depiction of the ’40s. George Bailey’s heroic self-sacrifice and all the glistening heaps of shaving-cream snow were now accepted as a fair representation of The Good Old Days. Critic James Wolcott wrote in 1986, “It’s a Wonderful Life is the perfect film for the Reagan era, celebrating the old-fashioned values of home and hearth that everyone knows deep down have eroded… like Reagan, Capra is a blue-sky optimist who filters out bad news.”

It’s a Wonderful Life’s reputation continued to soar after Capra’s death in 1991. In 1998, the American Film Institute voted the Christmas movie the 11th greatest film of all time. Turns out Frank Capra made the perfect Hollywood Christmas card. He just put it in the wrong envelope and mailed it way too early.

Stephen Cole writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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