It's a Wonderful Life

The Christmas classic that was never intended to be a Christmas classic! This week, Chris & Lizzie explore the many versions of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life that we were nearly gifted, complete with adultery, murderous doppelgängers, and political intrigue. Plus, why Jimmy Stewart worried Hollywood had passed him by, the invention of a new kind of snow, and suspicions of a communist agenda. *CORRECTIONS: Jimmy Stewart won his Oscar for The Philadelphia Story in February of 1941, the same month as he enlisted, not one year prior, as Chris incorrectly stated, and he played Macaulay "Mike" Connor, not C. K. Dexter Haven (played by Cary Grant). Tums is calcium carbonate, not calcium chloride (which is a salt used as a de-icer). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

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• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Life can be a lot sometimes. Traffic, taxes, and that dreaded text that just says, "Call me." Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off all your day-to-day problems and turn on the movies and shows you already love. From Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to Dirty Dancing, from Alias to The X-Files. Channel Surf Live TV or browse the menu to find exactly what you're in the mood for. It's all free, no subscription, no credit card, no catch. The best things on TV are free, so escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. Hey guys, before we dive into our coverage on It's a Wonderful Life, a brief disclaimer. As it is a key component of today's movie, we will be discussing suicide. Suicide came up during our coverage of The Iron Giant, and after we released that episode,

• 1:48Chris Winterbauer?

  we got some really thoughtful emails educating me on stigmas around the term to commit suicide. The correct term, the preferred term, is to die by suicide. I want to apologize for any distress that this may have caused anybody, and sincerely, I appreciate the correction. The holidays are a really tough time for many, many people. If you are struggling or are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support, remember that you can always call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org to connect with a trained crisis counselor who can help. These services are free, confidential, and they are available to anybody 24/7. I want to say thank you again to our listeners.

• 2:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I learn probably as much from you as I do from our researchers. And with that, we bring you It's a Wonderful Life.

• 2:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Hello and welcome back to your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a loose retelling of the cautionary Christmas tale of all ages that would become a miraculous holiday classic all on its own. I am your host, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what do you have for us today?

• 3:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's a wonderful life, Lizzie, unless you're married to George Bailey, in which case it's probably kind of miserable a lot of the time. And it's difficult to pin down, and there's a lot of highs and a lot of lows. But we are discussing the 1946 Christmas movie. We'll get into whether or not that was the filmmaker's intent. It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra. Lizzie, this is quite the movie to follow up Bad Santa with, I would say.

• 3:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 3:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Polar opposites. Both hold places in my heart for very different reasons. But why don't we begin with your experience with It's a Wonderful Life? What's your relationship with this movie? What were your thoughts upon watching it or rewatching it for the podcast?

• 4:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, this is a bit of a weird one for me because I grew up, I grew up watching a lot of Jimmy Stewart movies. I loved Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I adore The Philadelphia Story. I still really love that one. I even grew up watching Dusty Rides again quite a few times. My dad was a big Jimmy Stewart fan. For some reason, this is not one that we watched a ton. So, you know, I was familiar with it. I had seen scenes from it. I'm sure I'd seen it chopped up on TV, but I had never sat down and watched it all the way through until I was an adult. I think probably my twenties was the first time I saw this. And I don't know why, maybe it's

• 4:55Lizzie Bassett?

  because it's so much more depressing than I thought it would be. I didn't really love it the first few times that I saw this. And this time, I will say, I had a very different experience. Maybe it's now that we have our own family, this hits a little different, but I really loved it. There's, there are some things that, you know, obviously don't age super well or are a bit funny in the present day, of course.

• 5:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Shaking Mary at the bottom of the stairs aggressively.

• 5:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Got to shake her real hard.

• 5:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I love you so much, Mary. I love you so much.

• 5:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, he's a 40-year-old high school student, which is one of the funniest parts of this. 38.

• 5:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's this and Billy Crystal at the beginning of When Harry Met Sally are my two favorites. Just, I mean, the Billy Crystal one takes the cake, in my opinion, because of the hair, but I agree with you.

• 5:44Lizzie Bassett?

  But hilarious. You know, one of the parts of this that made me laugh the hardest is after, I think, one of the most heartfelt scenes in the whole thing, where, you know, he's in the bar that used to be Martinis and now it's Nyx. And you see his old boss come in and he's just, he's a drunk who's done jail time because he poisoned a kid. And it's like, it's, to me, though, like, one of the worst outcomes of, you know, George Bailey not ever having been born, spoiler alert. And then he's like, well, where, where, where's Mary? And, you know, his angel is like, oh, I can't, that's the worst one yet. You don't want to see this. And then it's like, she's just a librarian. She's an unmarried librarian. And somehow, that's the biggest nightmare of them all, even though,

• 6:29Lizzie Bassett?

  honestly, she may be having a better time.

• 6:31Chris Winterbauer?

  She's somehow being a single librarian has aged her 50 years.

• 6:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yes.

• 6:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Having four kids and a mercurial husband, to say the least, leaves her as youthful as ever.

• 6:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, although, as David pointed out, she's a pretty hot librarian. When he comes in again, shakes her vigorously in the street.

• 6:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Donna Reed is a smoke show. One of my big problems with this movie is George, I'm like, George, you have an amazing wife.

• 6:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Chris Winterbauer?

  She's, she looks amazing. She is amazing. You got beautiful kids. What are you doing?

• 7:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, I know. She really is, she is like probably the most selfless person in this entire movie. Um, and she's great in it.

• 7:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that's very intentional by Capra and, and like, yes, she's so charming, Donna Reed, in this role. She could come across as a manic pixie dream girl to steal a more modern.

• 7:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Chris Winterbauer?

  She doesn't at all. I think she really grounds the character in a really nice way.

• 7:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. But yeah, it's still, as is, I believe it's inspiration, A Christmas Carol. Um, you know, it's, it's a darker holiday, Christmas movie, certainly. It's a nice reminder of the importance of small things, small gestures and, you know, small people. You think, the biggest thing I came away from this viewing with was nowadays, with social media, I am constantly, you know, finding myself thinking that I should be doing more, being more, looking different, having my life be this very polished, presentable thing. And also just with the internet, we're so connected to people outside of our immediate vicinity. And watching this movie really made me miss the idea of a small town where it's like,

• 8:10Lizzie Bassett?

  people know everyone. There are small town celebrities. There are connections with everybody in town and everyone is important in a different way. And that it just, that's something I feel very lacking right now.

• 8:22Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. I think this movie, unlike a lot of Christmas movies, has actually a pretty strong, collectivist, relatively anti-materialist, anti-greed message to it, which I very much appreciate. I think it resonates.

• 8:36Lizzie Bassett?

  So does Bad Santa.

• 8:37Chris Winterbauer?

  So does Bad Santa. But I think that there are some themes to this movie that feel particularly resonant in today's society. I do want to mention right at the front that like, one of the things that Capra has been consistently criticized for, I think rightfully so, is that Capra very much focuses on a very specific group of Americans, white, middle to upper-middle-class Americans. There is a couple of Italians, but Frank Capra was actually the most Italian person probably on this movie since he was born in Italy. But yeah, black Americans not represented in this movie. You know, other minority groups are very much not represented in most of his movies. So I do want to acknowledge that because there is a bit of a, I think

• 9:19Chris Winterbauer?

  you could have a real rose-colored goggles sort of approach with a lot of his movies. But what I do like about this movie and what I appreciated it upon re-watching it is that it doesn't necessarily seem to hearken back for a time that didn't exist. It seems to hearken for a form of connection that is at odds with at least the ways in which corporate capitalism, right, was becoming popular, you know, at this point in time. And the way, by the time we hit the 80s, greed is good, you know what I mean, and everything, kind of goes to shit, so to speak.

• 9:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's, I feel like it's really making the argument for enjoying the present and what you have, that that is the present.

• 10:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, but even his approach with the Bailey Building and Loan, with building houses almost at cost, so people have a place to live, as opposed to, you know, the Potter's Field, which is a great name. And the other things that this movie really made me think about this time watching it, is this idea of this crisis of masculinity that I think we're in the throes of right now, and I think was in part at least kicked off by the Richard Reeves book of Boys and Men, which was published in 2022, and this kind of growing sense that the young men in America America are not all right. You know, they're going to university at a rate that far lags their their female peers. You know, I think I think it's two to one. Women outnumber men going into college right now. You know, they're not finding work. They're dying, higher rates of deaths of

• 10:47Chris Winterbauer?

  despair, although I know those numbers are very different in adolescence. And I think that this movie really kind of hearkens to this idea that George Bailey can't see a future in which he adds value to those around him. And I think that maybe is at the core of some of the conversations about what some young men are feeling in this country. And then the other thing that I think this movie really ties touches on is the crisis of loneliness that I believe even the surgeon general made an announcement about a few years ago. This idea that men and women across the United States have reported that they just don't have very many friends and a number of them don't have any friends they feel they could reliably call on. And that really makes me think about

• 11:32Chris Winterbauer?

  the end of It's a Wonderful Life, which is one of my favorite line of the whole movie that makes me tear up every time is when Harry, George's brother, toasts him, you know, and he says, I'm paraphrasing, you know, to my big brother, George, the richest man in town, referencing the fact that George has friends and friends are the ultimate wealth or currency of life. And by the way, just a quick plug, I really liked this article that this writer Jessica Winter wrote in The New Yorker called What Did Men Do to Deserve This? That's a bit of a review and a bit of a critique and a bit of a rebuttal to Scott Galloway's book. He's a big podcaster. Notes on Being a Man. So if you guys are interested in that topic, check out What Did Men Do to Deserve This? Very interesting article by Jessica Winter.

• 12:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I will check that out for sure. I'm reading a book right now that I'm really enjoying called The Separation of Church and Hate. And it, you know, goes through a lot of the teachings in the Bible that, and I'm not religious, but the teachings in the Bible that Jesus actually said. And I think, you know, that this movie is more, much more aligned with what is actually in there than I realized and the importance of community, of giving back, of putting others over yourself, that that is love and that that's the greatest gift of all.

• 12:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. A couple other notes from my watch that I did want to share because I just wrote them down. My wife's favorite line, which made her laugh so hard and always makes her laugh so hard, is when George goes, "Why do we have to have all these kids?"

• 12:59Chris Winterbauer?

  She loves that line.

• 13:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, George, that's really up to you.

• 13:03Chris Winterbauer?

  We could talk about that, George. Uncle Billy, who should not be trusted to carry his own glasses, let alone the entire cash reserve of the building and loan company in an unmarked white envelope.

• 13:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Uncle Billy, who, by the way, I love that actor. He's also Scarlett's dad in Gone with the Wind, and he's generally playing a bit of a drunken fuck-up there as well as here. Yeah, he's great.

• 13:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like Violet walking by early in the film when we're introduced to her as an adult very much inspired The Wachowskis with the woman in the red dress and how she walks by. Like, that shot felt very similar to me, so I wanted to shout that out. The start of this movie is unhinged with the stars talking to each other, but I love it. I think it's great. We'll discuss, Lizzie, you mentioned the religious elements. This movie, the story that inspired it very much aimed to be non-denominational as much as possible, and so you can feel that. Just last couple of notes. Red Letter Day, as he mentions, the Bayleys are having a red letter day. That was my pitch to David for our high school band name back in 2005.

• 14:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow, that didn't win. I was gonna say, I know what your band was called.

• 14:11Chris Winterbauer?

  It was called Left Lane, which was way worse. We could have been famous. Anywho, all right. Before we dive in the details, It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 Christmas movie directed by Frank Capra. It was written by, these are the credited names. We'll get into the process of how this was written.

• 14:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 14:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Frank Capra, Francis Goodrich, and Albert Hackett receive screenplay credit. Joe Swirling is given credit for additional scenes. Now, Michael Wilson is an uncredited contributor to the screenplay, and it was based on the story The Greatest Gift, written by Philip Van Doren Stern, which is, as you mentioned, Lizzie, loosely based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It was produced by Frank Capra under his Liberty Films banner, and it stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey.

• 15:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Jimmy Stewart, the forerunner to John.

• 15:05Lizzie Bassett?

  John Lithgow?

• 15:06Chris Winterbauer?

  John Lithgow. I feel like Jimmy Stewart and John, like John Lithgow listened to Jimmy Stewart and was like, "I could talk about that word too." I don't know why. All right. Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey. Yeah. Donna Reed as Mary Hatch, Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, Henry Travers as Clarence Oddbody, our angel without his wings.

• 15:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Love him.

• 15:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Thomas Mitchell, who you mentioned, as Uncle Billy, who is, who is really great, but again, you incompetent old man. And many, many more.

• 15:33Lizzie Bassett?

  So many squirrels and crows inside of the bank.

• 15:35Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. It was released in a limited release at the end of December in 1946, and then it was released wide on January 7th, 1947. And as always, the IMDb logline reads, Lizzie's face like, yeah, we'll get into the timing of the release too. "An angel is sent from heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman see the value of his own life." "The sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to, the name above the title, an autobiography by Frank Capra, which is notoriously perhaps embellished and maybe inaccurate. And so to balance that out, we have Frank Capra, The Catastrophe of Success,

• 16:14Chris Winterbauer?

  by Joseph McBride, It's a Wonderful Life by Marie Cahill, Jimmy Stewart, The Truth Behind the Legend, by Michael Mann, not that Michael Mann, It's a Wonderful Life, BFI Film Classics publication, by Michael Newton, and The Making of It's a Wonderful Life, which is a TV movie documentary, along with many other articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film." Now, Lizzie, like It's a Wonderful Life, the story of It's a Wonderful Life is one of, I would argue, deep-seated insecurity. The belief that, at least in this case, two men harbored that maybe, just maybe, the world had passed them by, and maybe it would even be better off without them.

• 16:56Chris Winterbauer?

  But before we get to the surprisingly insecure Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart, as we will learn,

• 17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 17:02Chris Winterbauer?

  understandably, at a crossroads with the industry, we need to start with a story that nobody seemed to want. And it's called, not It's a Wonderful Life, but The Greatest Gift.

• 17:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Back in 1938, writer Philip Van Dorn Stern was shaving his face when a story suddenly came to him, just like an angel, complete from start to finish. And it was a little dark. It was about a man who was saved from suicide by a guardian angel who showed him the significance and importance of his life to those around him.

• 17:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 17:35Chris Winterbauer?

  And suicide will be a theme today, and I want to give just a warning to our audience. It will come up repeatedly because it was clearly something that many of the men involved in this, in this movie were thinking about.

• 17:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Can I ask a really, really dumb and ignorant question that I'm gonna get a lot of shit for? When did the Great Depression end?

• 17:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It kind of didn't until World War II pulled us out of it.

• 17:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, so this is written, maybe not at the peak of it.

• 18:01Chris Winterbauer?

  We were not in the trough. You know, 29, you have the crash, obviously. The stock market has rebounded, but for many Americans, it was, I believe, my understanding is the manufacturing boom, right, of World War II. Men being mobilized and then women being mobilized into these factory positions is largely what pulls us out. And then the fact that the battles weren't fought on our shores.

• 18:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 18:23Chris Winterbauer?

  And then we get this burst of GDP growth because we're rebuilding other countries, and then jet technology takes off and international travel, blah, blah, blah. So that's a very, very probably decently accurate summary, high-level summary.

• 18:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it. So this is a story born very much of the Great Depression?

• 18:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe so, yes. Now, according to Stern's daughter, he was actually remembering a dream that he'd had the night before. He wrote an outline that day that he said was terrible, and then he wrote a first draft a few months later, but he kept coming back to it over the next few years. But it seems like part of the problem is that this is unlike anything that he's written before. So he was best known for writing historical nonfiction. He wrote biographies about Lincoln and John Will Sputh, and now he's writing this sentimental fantasy novella, basically. And let's talk about the high-level beats. So this is the original story, Lizzie. It's Christmas Eve, and a man named George Pratt, great-grandfather of Chris Pratt, is standing on a bridge over icy water, thinking about jumping in.

• 19:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And we say, "No, we want Guardians of the Galaxy." Suddenly, a stranger appears out of nowhere, tries to talk him out of it, but George can't be convinced. "My life is boring. I've been stuck in my hometown my whole life. I've never done and never will do anything interesting. My wife's super hot, and I got all these kids bothering me all the time." I'm just kidding, that's not part of the story. He tells this stranger, "I wish I'd never been born." And the stranger says, "Your wish is my command. It's been granted." He hands him a case of brushes and says, "Pretend you're a traveling salesman because you've never been born, so nobody will know who you are." And George says, "This guy's crazy." And he walks back into town. He says, "I'm not kidding. I'd kill myself in front of this crazy person." He walks back into town. Everything is different.

• 20:07Chris Winterbauer?

  The bank where he worked has gone out of business because the man who worked the job that George had been working ran away with $50,000. His brother Harry is dead because George wasn't there to save him from drowning. His wife Mary is unhappily married to a belligerent man. He runs back to the bridge.

• 20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's a better, scarier ending for Mary, but continue.

• 20:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, there was an even scarier ending for Mary. We'll get to in a different version of the script. He runs back to the bridge and he says, "Stranger, stranger! Reverse the wish. I no longer take for granted the greatest gift, which is my life." He goes back to his old life with fresh eyes. He checks up on the bank, his parents, his brother. He kisses his wife and he wakes up his kids and he says, "I don't regret you."

• 20:51Lizzie Bassett?

  And that won't mess them up at all.

• 20:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. In 1943, in the middle of the United States' involvement in World War II, he finally sends the story to his literary agent. She goes, "I think this is gonna be a hard sell." And he says, "Just try anyway." So she does, and nobody wants it. So Stern takes matters into his own hands and he basically self-publishs. He gives the story a title, "The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale." He prints it out as a pamphlet, makes 200 copies and sends them out as a holiday card to friends and family, to which I say, "Sir, TLDR, I don't even read the little holiday updates on the back of people's postcards. I am not reading your novella."

• 21:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Can you imagine receiving a novella that opens with someone contemplating killing themselves? And it's like, "Merry Christmas from the winter hours."

• 21:44Chris Winterbauer?

  "Just in case you didn't know, things have been going really well this year. Here's the story about this guy who's thinking about killing himself." Yeah, no, that'd be a tough read.

• 21:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I'd read it.

• 21:54Chris Winterbauer?

  But I would too. He was relentless. He hired his third grade daughter to deliver these to teachers and her friends. And she later emphasized that even though it was a Christmas story, it wasn't religious. Her family had a very mixed religious background, and so the story was meant to be as vague as possible.

• 22:14Lizzie Bassett?

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• 22:56Lizzie Bassett?

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• 23:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, Stern also sent two copies to the US Copyright Office in the Library of Congress with a copyright registration form. He sent one to his Hollywood agent, and she says, "Why don't we offer this to the movies?" And Stern thinks she's crazy. "I can't even get this story published." But little does he know, the greatest gift in Hollywood, Lizzie, IP.

• 24:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 24:20Chris Winterbauer?

  It doesn't matter if it's not published, as we have learned time and time and time again.

• 24:23Lizzie Bassett?

  As long as it existed prior to being a movie, they want it, no matter what form it was in.

• 24:29Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's as short as a pamphlet? I don't have to read a whole book? Fantastic!

• 24:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Now unbeknownst to Stern, Paramount Pictures was considering adapting The Greatest Gift. People were passing the book around and as the story goes, somebody above the title wrote in brackets, "It's a wonderful life." It's also been said that Capra changed the name later. Both of these could be true. In February of 1944, somebody at Paramount writes out a synopsis and they make a little note, says the movie would work best as an episodic picture like The Tales of Manhattan, but whether it should be made the basis of a full-length screenplay is a moot question. Now Tales of Manhattan, if you haven't seen it, anthology film from 1942, six stories, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but it's a black formal tailcoat, more or less.

• 25:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 25:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the issue at hand is that the story is a series of vignettes, right? There's no driving narrative here. This is a boy's life when he becomes a man and then, you know, he gets married. Again, it's like all these life stages that we experience as George vaguely attempts to leave town, but then something happens to him. There's a lot of happening to George and not George causing things to happen in this movie.

• 25:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 25:43Chris Winterbauer?

  So it's a little untraditional in that sense.

• 25:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Mary is more actionable than George is, for sure.

• 25:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So in March of 1944, Stern's daughter answers the phone. The operator asks for her father and she's worried it's bad news related to the war. Stern takes the phone and after a few seconds he goes, "Hold me up. I can't believe it. It's good news." The operator has read him a telegram from Stern's agent and it says, "The movie rights to The Greatest Gift have been sold for $10,000 to RKO Radio Pictures and the studio has big plans for it." $10,000 in 1944 would be $184,000 today, so a sizable sum.

• 26:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Chris Winterbauer?

  RKO is making it a star vehicle for any guesses as to the actor Lizzie.

• 26:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it a co-star in The Philadelphia Story?

• 26:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Uh, yes, it is.

• 26:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it Cary Grant?

• 26:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It is Cary Grant. Very good.

• 26:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Cary Grant.

• 26:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Cary Grant, right? Very, very good.

• 26:44Lizzie Bassett?

  That would be such a weird, that's the only, honestly, only because they're both in that movie together. And I know that they're contemporaries. It is why he popped up, but that's a bit of a weird choice, given the material. Cary Grant, I love Cary Grant, but he's so polished, he's so, you know.

• 27:02Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a little slick, right?

• 27:03Lizzie Bassett?

  He's very slick.

• 27:03Chris Winterbauer?

  You think he should be the friend that discovers plastics, you know what I mean?

• 27:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, he's impenetrable. He's not, you know, he's not accessible, he's, he's not the everyman.

• 27:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. It's interesting too, because, and we'll get into how old Jimmy Stewart looks, but I believe.

• 27:18Lizzie Bassett?

  He's younger than Cary Grant, for sure.

• 27:19Chris Winterbauer?

  He's younger than Cary Grant by, by four years, I think. And so it would have been, again, as you mentioned, it's a little tough at the beginning of the story when you're like, how old is this guy?

• 27:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, he's basically 22 is what I, I pieced together. So again, Grant would have been a little unusual for, for a few reasons.

• 27:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Not only that, but he, like, if you watch The Philadelphia Story, he looks so much older than Jimmy Stewart.

• 27:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Jimmy Stewart had a youthful quality to him, he had a boyish quality to him throughout his career.

• 27:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Chris Winterbauer?

  But this is a, this would have been a huge package. So producer David Hempstead was going to make it. There are also reports that the guardian angel might be played by Gary Cooper, which would have been really interesting. Grant's a huge star. Now, he'd been nominated for an Oscar, Roger Adams and Penny Serenade, 1940, a year after Philadelphia Story. And over at RKO, they say, let's just throw a bunch of writers on the job. And it is a murderers' row, a murderers' row of writers. They apparently, according to some sources, hired three teams of writers at the same time, which included Mark Connolly, Dalton Trumbo, and Clifford Odets.

• 28:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Now. Oh, wow.

• 28:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Connolly had been nominated for an Oscar for co-writing Captain Courageous, 1937. Trumbo, Lizzie, of course, was one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood. He'd been nominated for Kitty Foil in 1940. And Odets had written The General Died at Dawn, starring Gary Cooper. So he'd had experience working with him as well.

• 28:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, also really interesting playwright Clifford Odette.

• 28:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yes, big playwright, yeah, especially before becoming a screenwriter. Now, I just want to mention now, Trumbo and Odette's were both briefly, Trumbo longer, members of the Communist Party at or around this time.

• 28:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:59Chris Winterbauer?

  This will come back. Now, Trumbo was reportedly hired first, but the project was at one point put on hold when one of the producers, quote, "went on an alcoholic binge." If you piece it together, this was probably David Hempstead, who had an alcohol problem.

• 29:12Lizzie Bassett?

  How bad must that have been, because you know they were all eight martinis deep most of the time.

• 29:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Honestly, I can't even imagine. I was reading an article recently, and I'm going to butcher the amounts, but it was about how much whiskey the average American drank at the end of the 19th century. And it was basically, it was, I believe for men, it was between like five and seven whiskeys a day, every day.

• 29:33Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 29:34Chris Winterbauer?

  It was crazy. Now, I think the alcohol may have been a little more watered down back then, but it was shocking.

• 29:39Lizzie Bassett?

  There was definitely a difference in alcohol consumption.

• 29:41Chris Winterbauer?

  As I get a hangover when I eat a Kit Kat too late. All right. Let's talk about these in slightly, slightly out of order. Let's talk about Connolly's version first. So this is very high level summary. Connolly takes the Christmas setting out. He introduces the concept of Clarence not yet having his wings, but Clarence is not the name of the angel. He calls him Angel B-1. Again, there are a lot of military references in some of these books, and I think that even the getting his wings feels like a potential reference to the Royal Air Force, among other armed forces. You get one's wings, meaning your signal to fly, a badge with a pair of wings. But Angel B-1, Lizzie, importantly, doesn't just show George what life would be like if he were never born.

• 30:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He shows him an alternate version of himself, and we get the George Bailey multiverse.

• 30:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, this is closer to a Christmas Carol.

• 30:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, this is George Plus, the son that George himself always wished his parents had had, the fellow who did all the things that George would have liked to have done and has all the qualities George always regretted not having. And then, Lizzie, things get dark, because unlike a Christmas Carol, George can interact with this alternate version of the world. And George has an affair with his alter ego's wife.

• 31:00Lizzie Bassett?

  What? What?

• 31:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 31:05Chris Winterbauer?

  And we get a multiplicity action here and his alter ego turns out is having an affair himself. And the movie culminates with George and George getting into a fight on the bridge. Other George, the alter George, falls into the river and drowns. And the angel says, that's great. Winner winner chicken dinner. This is your life now. George accepts his true self. He's a murderer.

• 31:29Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 31:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And the movie ends.

• 31:31Lizzie Bassett?

  What? He just subsumes the other George and becomes Bizarro George? Okay.

• 31:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like a twin in some weird angel created utero. He just eats his other half and then continues on.

• 31:43Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a weird strangers on a train take on this. Crisscross.

• 31:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Trumbo said, let's keep that, but change everything else.

• 31:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 31:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Trumbo claims he took the job as a favor to Lou Wasserman. So according to Trumbo, David Hempstead didn't know what to do with the story. And so Trumbo takes it on the side. He's working at night on this script while he's working during the day at MGM. Now, his version involves politics because it's Dalton Trumbo. And basically, he's this, it's kind, it was interesting because this is well before Frank Capra comes in. It's like a dark version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. So he's a politician who rises from an idealistic state assemblyman to a cynical congressman contemptuous for the people he represents. He goes to the bridge to attempt suicide after losing a race for governor.

• 32:32Chris Winterbauer?

  So I think that what Trumbo's doing is trying to arc Bailey from, well Pratt in this version, from where Jimmy Stewart will eventually start the movie to Mr. Potter.

• 32:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. Oh, okay. Interesting.

• 32:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? It's like he's, it's not that he is just dissatisfied with his life. He actually becomes the thing he despises at the beginning of the movie.

• 32:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 32:54Chris Winterbauer?

  And what's interesting is like, it's kind of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with a like, meets Sunset Boulevard or something. Yeah, or Scrooge, right? It's like a tragic arc to that character. So his achievements in light of losing the governor's race, making a park, building a junior college, they pale in comparison to what he isn't. He's not a good brother, he's not a good son, he's not a good husband or father. His attempted suicide comes a lot earlier in the story. Basically, he's turned down by this version of Mary. She's not called Mary in this version, but they're not married yet. He gets turned down once by her and he's like, well, might as well end it now. The interloper is described as a fat and dumpy little angel. And then George becomes, and again, more like a Christmas story, an observer of a world without him. The fact that the angel needs his wings

• 33:36Chris Winterbauer?

  remains. Trumbo adds the flaming rum punch, which did stay, and some other elements.

• 33:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's fun.

• 33:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And it, of course, ends with the sound of a bell and the story that that signifies an angel getting its wings. And it was supposed to end with the angel now called Codwallader in this version with his wings.

• 33:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Quick question about the angel bell, bell wing situation. Was that like a known thing or did they make that up for this?

• 33:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So in our research, it seems like this exact iteration of that type of folklore was created for the movie. That specific angels get their wings when bells ring was created for the film.

• 34:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 34:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Like Connolly's version, Mary marries an evil version of George, who has basically become Mr. Potter, then starts an affair with the good George and the George's fight and the bad one drowns. So we get a similar ending.

• 34:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Kind of like it.

• 34:28Chris Winterbauer?

  It's kind of fun. Okay. Odette's changes the name from George Platt to George Bailey, an important change, and his script would be more the basis for Capra's film than Trumbo or Connolly's. He introduces Uncle Billy. He introduces the pharmacy sequence with Mr. Gower.

• 34:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is very dark, which I did not understand when I was young. Yes.

• 34:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep. George and Mary's date getting cut short by George's father having a stroke, George yelling at his daughter's teacher and getting punched by her husband, which I do like as a fun callback at the end. But again, we still have two versions of George that we saw in Trembo and Connolly's versions, and the beginning of the movie and the whole conceit of the movie is very different. It starts with George's four-year-old daughter, Zuzu, entering Heaven, which looks like a small town, and asking Angel 1163 for help, and that angel is actually her grandfather. She's in a coma in an oxygen tent, and George is in trouble and considering suicide. They watch a movie of George's life in a projection room. When George is erased, he's again replaced by a different George. After the true George disappears, the town falls apart. There are

• 35:32Chris Winterbauer?

  fairs. There's another fight on the bridge. The bad George dies in the river. Again. Just a quick little studio note. Maybe don't start with child coma and suicide. You can kick it off somewhere else, you know? We have missing money. Uncle Bill, in this version, Uncle Billy also considers suicide, but is stopped by George. The money's then miraculously found, and George cries out, "What a lucky man I am!" at the end of the movie. And then we cut to the icy shot of the corpse of his all-three-ego, like Jack at the end of The Shining. And, okay. So, the script is getting worked and reworked. They're even doing some production design drawings. William Cameron Menzies of Gone with the Wind fame has drawn up sketches

• 36:17Chris Winterbauer?

  for what the movie, or the town, I believe, in Heaven could look like. Now, as this is happening, the original short story novella is getting attention in the publishing world. It finally gets published as a book in 1944, and alternate abridged versions appear in magazines over the next year or so. It's around this time that a brand-new production company called Liberty Films signs a nine-picture deal with RKO, and Liberty Films, Lizzie, is a production company founded primarily by Frank Capra. So Frank Capra and two of his Liberty Films partners, one of which we've spoken of at length, William Wyler, and George Stevens, had all served in World War II together, and they had all worked on government-sponsored documentaries during the war. So Frank Capra famously is associated

• 37:00Chris Winterbauer?

  with the Why We Fight government propaganda series. Okay. So, returning from the war, Capra was really anxious, by his own admission, about figuring out where he was gonna fit in in Hollywood. And I think this may have been because he'd come a long way, literally, to get there in the first place. So, I'm not sure how much you know about Frank Capra, Lizzie. I knew very little. Yeah, same. He's a much more complicated person than his movies, which tend toward arguably simplistic feel-good themes might suggest. So he was born Francesco Capra in Sicily, Italy in 1897. He says he celebrated his sixth birthday in a howling Atlantic storm

• 37:41Chris Winterbauer?

  as he immigrated to the United States with his parents and three of his six siblings. And he hated being an immigrant. According to his autobiography, he hated being poor. He hated living in the Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles, and he wanted out. And it sounds like it was a tough life. His dad, I'll mention now, who was illiterate and became a motivating factor for Capra wanting to pursue education, had all sorts of jobs and at one point landed a job as a ranch hand. And he died in a freak accident. He was in a well pump house. His coat got stuck between two gears and he basically was torn in two.

• 38:20Lizzie Bassett?

  No, that's terrible.

• 38:23Chris Winterbauer?

  It is. It's hard to imagine how difficult work was for so many people at this point in time in the early 20th century. Frank Capra didn't want that life. He felt like a black sheep for wanting to go to school. Everybody else in his family was working by necessity. He almost wasn't allowed to go to high school. His father was still alive, though, and backed him up. I think his father realized it'll be better if my son has an education. He makes it through high school, goes to college to study chemical engineering at Throop College of Technology, which becomes Caltech later on. So Frank initially thought school would be his way out. He, again, according to his biography,

• 39:05Chris Winterbauer?

  also dabbled in bootlegging, prize fighting, baseball, con games, but none of them seemed to provide the future that he wanted. And then in his undergrad studies, which required two years of English, he fell in love with writing. I want to point out one of the first stories that he wrote. It's called "The Butler's Failure", which was retitled "The Butler's Adventure". It's about an immigrant English butler who is living in poverty and winds up robbing and killing his American boss, who's a millionaire, a police detective, and then kills himself. And I'd like to read this quote. Frank Capra grew up with what he recognized as a mother complex. Quote, "I had a very strong mother, a very nice mother.

• 39:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I had a great respect for her ability to make do under the worst kind of circumstance and not panic. Women have always been pillars of strength to me, always. I'm not a feminist, but I'm a real lover of women." The quote then goes on. When asked about the strength of women in his movies, he says, "It's probably a carryover from my mother. All of the women in my stories are strong. They are stronger than the men. Men start crying more quickly. Jean Arthur was not about to play a harmonica. Women are more pragmatic. They think in terms of everyone's welfare. They think in terms of tomorrow and in terms of continuation. Men die by suicide."

• 40:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yikes.

• 40:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Very interesting quote from Mr. Capra.

• 40:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, you talked about sort of young men today. There's also a lot of discussion about the invisible work that women do. And I think that's in many ways exactly what he's describing there is the sort of planning ahead, the thinking of tomorrow, the ability to think almost in a multiverse in terms of like all of the things that have to be taken care of, can go wrong, could go wrong. Yeah, that's, it's interesting.

• 40:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And I, you know, he's putting it in very stark terms, but there are disparities in suicide rates between men and women. Men do tend to die, deaths of despair, higher rates than women too. So it is interesting that he's cluing in on something, as you mentioned, Lizzie, that seems to be supported by data that we see even today. You know, even as we've made progress, as I believe you would agree, we've made a lot of progress in terms of equality between men and women, but we're not all the way there. And again, I think there are a lot of young men and men out there right now who, like George Bailey, wonder. You know, maybe would the world be better off if I were not a part of it? If I had not been a part of it and maybe struggle to envision a future that is brighter

• 41:39Chris Winterbauer?

  through their continued participation in the lives of those around them. Now, the next thing that has a really big impact on him is the movies. And that's because he saw Birth of a Nation, which changed his perception of movies forever. And this movie, which effectively glorifies the KKK.

• 41:59Lizzie Bassett?

  It's basically a commercial for the KKK, yes.

• 42:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it was a remarkable technological achievement at the time.

• 42:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely.

• 42:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Has been cited as one of the first, you know, full-length narrative feature films. He called it the most important movie ever made at one point. And so around the time of his graduation, he writes one of his old high school teachers, who happens to be writer and director, Robert Wagner. And he says, you know, I want to be in the movies. And Wagner says, you'd be a damn fool to give up your scientific work for the movies. And Lizzie, I'd like you to tell me if this advice sounds familiar. Even if there was a good chance in the movies, which there isn't, it is about the last place for an artist. Moving pictures are social products and art is individual. If an artist could own a company and all the others had to obey his orders, there would be some fun in it. As it is, there are 20 men butting in on every picture and the artist being the most sensitive gets it in the neck all along the line.

• 42:50Chris Winterbauer?

  The most unhappy artists in the world are in the pictures, struggling against conditions that are absolutely heartbreaking.

• 42:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's every episode of What Went Wrong.

• 42:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say, you could send that to anybody right now. So after college, Capra enlists in World War I. He doesn't see any action. And then he tries but fails to get a job as an engineer. And I would just like to mention, he works a lot of jobs across his life. Copper mine, plays music in a band at wealthy people's parties. He tutored a wealthy kid, actually the grandson of Lucky Baldwin, who discovered the Comstock Load, which was a huge gold and silver deposit in Nevada.

• 43:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Huh.

• 43:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And I wonder if Mr. Potter was somewhat influenced by the kind of unexplained wealth of Mr. Potter. He picked fruit, he pruned trees, he unloaded freight, he dug ditches, he worked as a traveling salesman. And in film, he worked almost as many jobs. He was an extra, he was an assistant, he was a treasurer, he was a prop man. And he started to break in in the early 1920s. He directed a short called The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House in 1922, based on a poem. He lands a job as a gag man for Henry Langdon at Mark's Senate Studios, and Langdon brings Capra with him to First National. And in 1927, he gets his big break. Harry Cohn at Columbia hires him, and he makes over a dozen movies at Columbia over the next 10 years. And it starts with That Certain Thing in 1928. Silent film, $20,000 budget,

• 44:05Chris Winterbauer?

  culminates with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring

• 44:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Jimmy Stewart.

• 44:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Jimmy Stewart, with a budget of nearly $2 million.

• 44:13Lizzie Bassett?

  And when was that?

• 44:14Chris Winterbauer?

  1939, that's right. So 28 to 39. And Lizzie, I did not know this. Across that period, he was one of the most influential and decorated directors in Hollywood. He won three Oscars and was nominated six times in an 11-year stretch. It happened one night, 1934, I believe, first film to win all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which I, there was one critic who mentioned that this seems to be about the time that he started making movies about themes and less movies about people. And then you can't take it with you.

• 44:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, which also, based on a play. I mean, a lot of things were.

• 44:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, he believed in an auteur approach to filmmaking. Maybe he was inspired by Wagner's Letter, but he was also synonymous with Columbia, and he had a lot of frequent collaborators, like Oscar-winning writer Robert Riskin. But Capra knew he wasn't actually free. Important quote: "So long as I make pictures which have great success and bring large profits to our bosses, I enjoy relative freedom in selection of themes, stories, and actors. They let me spend more money on my pictures than they do other directors, but I have only to make one unsuccessful or even mediocre picture, and my independence will be lost." Director's jail is always one movie away.

• 45:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, just before the war, Robert Riskin and Frank Capra form an independent studio, Frank Capra Productions. Riskin's name notably absent from the title. And they make one movie, Meet John Doe. It's this, quote, "anti-fascist, pro-freedom, very much meant to rebuke against Hitler and the little Führers", as he called them, popping up across America at the time. This is right before the United States is going to enter World War II. And at a time when there was a lot of debate as to whether or not we should. Yeah, I think more than people realize, yes. There's a summary. "When a newspaper comes under new ownership, an advice columnist tries to save her job by writing a fake letter from an unemployed everyman who refers to himself as John Doe. In the letter, he says he is so fed up with the injustice and inequality

• 46:17Chris Winterbauer?

  of the US that he plans to end his own life by jumping from the roof of City Hall at midnight on Christmas Eve." And Santa catches him. Oh, boy. So, again, you know, inequality, Christmas, suicide. Consistent themes that Capra is very interested in. So it was not the first time he dealt with suicide either. It comes up a number of times. And then "In the Way of the Strong" and "The Bitter Tea of General Yen", the heroes of those movies respectively, die by suicide. Now, Capra famously could not figure out how to end this movie. He tested five versions with various audiences. In some versions, John Doe kills himself. In some versions, he doesn't.

• 47:00Chris Winterbauer?

  The movie comes out and Capra feels he got what he wanted, which was critical acclaim, but the movie didn't resonate with audiences. It's nominated for an Oscar, Best Writing. It makes a profit of $900,000 before taxes. They dissolve the company and Frank Capra enlists. He goes to war, he makes documentaries. And in the fall of 1944, he asks a former Columbia executive, Sam Briskin, to put out some feelers at the major studios on his behalf for when he returns from the war. And according to Capra, take it with a grain of salt, the response was, "Frank who?" Again, this had been, it'd been like four years since he was winning Oscars. Yeah, I was gonna say. But that's Capra's perception. He has a real chip on his shoulder, I've noticed through a lot of this. Seems like the problem,

• 47:45Chris Winterbauer?

  according to biographer and film historian Joseph McBride, was less that Hollywood had forgotten Capra and more that Hollywood was just changing.

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• 48:37Chris Winterbauer?

  So, Lizzie, we've discussed this ad nauseam on this podcast, but the studio system was crumbling with the dissolution of vertical integration. And so, no longer were the long-term contracts being offered to stars and directors that would pay them quite handsomely in some instances and lock them up for film after film after film. And Frank Capra wanted the security of a long-term studio contract.

• 49:01Lizzie Bassett?

  And just to be clear, the case that you're referring to that started this dissolution was the US--

• 49:05Chris Winterbauer?

  The Paramount decree.

• 49:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, US, United States versus Paramount Pictures, which I think was in 1948.

• 49:11Chris Winterbauer?

  That is when the Supreme Court handed down their ruling, but this case had been going on effectively since 1938. It had been originally settled with a consent decree in 1940, and then I think the government took their case back up again in 1943. And the studio system had been weakened by the rise of television and changes in audience preferences, et cetera. And then the rise of independent producers, directors, et cetera.

• 49:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 49:38Chris Winterbauer?

  So, basically, as McBride puts it, "Capra was afraid to take the risks of going independent again, and did so only out of necessity and a state of anxiety and self-doubt." So Capra's first stab at going independent, right before World War II, hadn't worked. And now he's forced to do the same thing, and I think he's terrified. So he forms Liberty Films. But he's not going to make a risky movie. He says, "I want to focus on safely, non-controversial, escapist, subject matter." Throughout 1945, he's trying to figure out what movie should mark his return to Hollywood. And let's talk about a couple of what-ifs. Number one, remaking Broadway Bill, which he'd done in 1934. That was the movie I couldn't remember the name of earlier. There were some rights issues. He would remake it later as riding high in 1950.

• 50:23Chris Winterbauer?

  He thought about making a Western-- Wrote a treatment called Pioneer Woman about a cowboy who guides a wagon train full of 200 mail-order brides to California, but it got bigger and bigger and bigger and it was going to be in Technicolor and very expensive.

• 50:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, gay.

• 50:37Chris Winterbauer?

  He sold that to MGM and it was made into Westward the Women in 1951, directed by William Wellman.

• 50:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 50:43Chris Winterbauer?

  He even thought about buying the rights to Harvey.

• 50:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Ah.

• 50:46Chris Winterbauer?

  The Broadway hit about a man with an invisible friend who is a six-foot-tall rabbit. Was he?

• 50:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh huh. Yes, another film that would, of course, end up starring Jimmy Stewart.

• 50:55Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 50:56Lizzie Bassett?

  That movie is weird. I love that movie.

• 50:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Very weird. And but like maybe inspired Donnie Darko in some ways, who knows?

• 51:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Definitely, yeah.

• 51:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, another movie that's maybe arguably about suicide a little bit. There are a lot of similar themes, I think, to Donnie Darko and It's a Wonderful Life, I would argue. There was a comedy, and happened on Fifth Avenue. A post-apocalyptic war film, No Other Man. But all the stories had one thing in common, according to Capra. I knew in my heart I'd never make any of them. In fact, he was starting to wonder, why'd I make this Liberty Films to start with? Is there even a place in Hollywood for Frank Capra anymore? As he stroked his Oscars.

• 51:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 51:34Chris Winterbauer?

  But he was right in that Hollywood had continued to churn out movies while a lot of its, you know, known entities were off fighting the war. And I think he felt a bit out of step as he returned. And that's when RKO's studio chief, Charles Kerner, poked his head into his office and says, why don't you check out this literally small book called The Greatest Gift, which had turned into a terrible gift for RKO. The studio was not happy with the script, which they'd had so many writers on. David Hempstead, the producer, it was rumored, was off the movie due to his alcoholism. And Cary Grant was basically like, I'm gonna make a different Christmas movie, The Bishop's Wife. The Greatest Gift

• 52:14Chris Winterbauer?

  is falling apart. And Frank Capra fell in love. He said, this is the story I've been looking for all my life. Small town, a man, a good man, ambitious, but so busy helping others, life seems to pass him by. Maybe like Frank Capra going to fight in the war and document it as life pass him by. Despondent, he wishes he'd never been born. He gets his wish through the eyes of a guardian angel. He sees the world as it would have been had he not been born. Wow, what an idea. The kind of idea that when I got old and sick and scared and ready to die, they'd still say, "He made the greatest gift." But they won't say that Frank because you're gonna change the damn title. All right.

• 52:56Chris Winterbauer?

  In early September of 1945, just as World War II finally came to an end, RKO sold their scripts and the rights to The Greatest Gift to Liberty Films. And Frank Capra knew exactly who he wanted to play the lead. A fellow World War II veteran who was terrified that he'd lost his mojo. Human giant Jimmy Stewart. Yes. Now, Lizzie, Jimmy Stewart had enlisted in 1941 in the Army. I didn't know that. Yeah. A year removed from winning Best Actor for his performance as C.K. Dexter Haven opposite Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Which she's wonderful in.

• 53:35Chris Winterbauer?

  There were a lot of actors who very bravely left to defend this country during World War II. Jimmy Stewart was assigned to the Air Corps. He logged more than 1,800 flight hours across 20 bomber missions. Wow. Rose to the rank of Colonel. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross. What? The Air Medal and the Quatier, which is a French military decoration because the action took place over France. Despite this, he was very nervous about his return to Hollywood. The day the war ended, he told a reporter that he wanted to make movies, but very importantly, no more war pictures. Yeah, I bet. I think we've had enough of those.

• 54:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I'd like to do some comedies, I think, although I'm probably a little rusty as an actor. So Jimmy Stewart had been under contract at MGM before he went off to war. So he comes back and he meets with Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. Mayer says, "Jimmy, you're a star. You just went to war. We need to exploit that war record for your comeback." I've already got your first picture. You're gonna play an ace pilot. And Jimmy Stewart says, no.

• 54:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, hell, no.

• 54:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Turns him down, turns Louis B. Mayer down, turns the contract down. And Mayer, who Stewart had apparently viewed as a bit of a father figure, tells him, you're never gonna work as an actor again. And Stewart thought-

• 55:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Fuck you, sir.

• 55:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Stewart thought he might be right. He says, well, you know, maybe I'm done with acting. Years later, and I do want to read this full quote. Jimmy Stewart said, I'm proud of my war record and I have respect for every man who lived and died fighting for freedom and every woman who died. If I had made a picture about the war and it turned out to be a bad picture, I feel it would have been disrespectful to those men and women. No one sets out to make a bad movie, but sometimes they turn out bad just the same. So I wouldn't take the chance. And I decided without a second thought, I would never exploit my own role in the war for sake of a movie. That would just be distasteful.

• 55:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 55:45Chris Winterbauer?

  A man of integrity on that front, I must say, Jimmy Stewart.

• 55:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I have to imagine also a decent amount of PTSD that it would not-

• 55:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 55:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Not be beneficial for him to revisit that.

• 55:54Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll talk about that a little bit when we get into production. So in early October of 1945, the LA Times runs a photo of Jimmy Stewart stepping off a train in California and the headline reads, Jimmy Stewart Longs For Roll. Now, in some interviews, he'd even speak self-consciously about how old he looked. He was only in his late 30s, but he moved in with his friend, actor Henry Fonda. And Fonda said that Stewart was really preoccupied with the fact that unlike a lot of his friends, including Fonda, he wasn't married and he didn't have children. He was a single man returning to Hollywood. But the war has aged him. This is what Fonda said. Some of the fellows who'd been big stars before the war came back looking like hell. That happened to Clark Gable. He looked 10 years older.

• 56:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Jim had also aged quite a bit. And now there were the young fellows like Gregory Peck and Van Johnson. End quote, which I do think is interesting because I think of Peck as so old when I think of the movies that I know him from, right? But he was this young whippersnapper. So when I read the quote, it just made me smile. Now Stuart almost got a really interesting role, Doc Holliday in John Ford's My Darling Clementine, which is a tombstone telling effectively. But Ford went with Victor Mature instead. And so he lost that role out and his agent says, don't sign a contract with a big studio. The whole system's crumbling to the ground. Everything's going independent. And so suddenly he's this observer watching a world in which

• 57:20Chris Winterbauer?

  he doesn't seem to exist. I think very much echoes the movie. And that's when Frank Capra calls. He says, I got a movie for you. Come on over and I'll pitch it to you. Now there's two differing recollections of how this pitch went down. So I'll give you the summary of both. Stuart says he meets with Capra and Capra dives in. And by the time he gets to the suicide and the angel named Clarence, Capra realizes the movie sounds insane. And he says, it doesn't sound too good, does it? And according to Stuart, Stuart says, Frank, if you want to do a movie about an angel named Clarence who hasn't won his wings, I'm your man. Now Frank Capra remembers the story a little bit differently, but these could both be true. He says that when he called Stuart's agent, Stuart's agent says

• 58:05Chris Winterbauer?

  he'll do it without even hearing the story. But Capra said, I want to pitch it to him first. So he pitches it to him and Stuart is in. Now there's a big problem. Frank Capra didn't really like any of the scripts that had been written so far. He didn't really like, you know, the Odette's version got the closest to what he would like, but none of them were quite right. So he hires husband and wife screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich to rewrite it. And he wants it closer to the original story. Then he brings in another writer who he'd worked with before, Joe Swirling, to rework their version and things start to get really tense. I think like a definite thing I noticed is that Capra has difficult or prickly interactions or working relationships with his screenwriters.

• 58:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he very much views them as tools and if they can't achieve what he needs, he's ready to move on to the next one.

• 58:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, that's not a good way to interact, but to be fair.

• 58:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Talking to a writer, right?

• 58:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, I know, I know. But if we're, if we're looking at the studio system as it existed. It was not, I don't think, all that uncommon to bring on teams of screenwriters like this.

• 59:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 59:09Lizzie Bassett?

  In the same way that the directors weren't even necessarily as important as sort of the producer and the overarching studio system itself was.

• 59:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I also personally feel that there's a big difference between, I think you have to give a writer more time or leash if the story originated with them. Whereas if the writer is a hired gun on a project, like if I was hired to adapt something and the producer felt I just wasn't cutting it, I get it. You gotta replace me. You know what I mean?

• 59:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 59:37Chris Winterbauer?

  At a certain point. Whereas if it was my idea that brought for, I brought forward, I would be much more upset. Even though ultimately, I still think I would understand that decision. Hire me. Now, the timing.

• 59:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Goodrich felt that Capra was very condescending. So in later interviews, she and Hackett described him as a quote, "horrid man, a very arrogant son of a bitch," and said that working on the film was the only unpleasant writing experience they ever had, which is a lot. The timing is unclear, but Capra did bring in even more screenwriters, Michael Wilson, Dorothy Parker. And according to some sources, the shooting script indicates that roughly a quarter of the movie was actually rewritten by Joe Swirling and Frank Capra while they were shooting the movie.

• 1:00:20Lizzie Bassett?

  This is like 15 screenwriters at this point.

• 1:00:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. Yeah. And

• 1:00:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Like minimum.

• 1:00:24Chris Winterbauer?

  There were maybe even more at RKO that we don't know about, right? That underneath Trumbo or Connolly or Odette's as well. So they got this patchwork script, right? And Capra then decides he's gonna pull in heavily from actors that either he or John Ford had worked with previously. He called this the Ford-Capra Stock Company. One of those actors, Gene Arthur, for the role of Mary Hatch, not Donna Reed. She had been nominated for an Oscar for her part in George Stevens' The More the Merrier, 1943. And of course, she had worked with Capra and Stewart twice. Do you, you mentioned one of the movies that they worked with together on, which was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, she plays Secretary Clarissa Saunders.

• 1:01:04Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right, yes.

• 1:01:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, You Can't Take It With You. She's actually eight years older than Jimmy Stewart.

• 1:01:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:01:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so I don't know if it would have worked in quite the same way. Maybe it would have worked just as well. I don't know exactly what she looked like at that moment.

• 1:01:20Lizzie Bassett?

  She doesn't look like it, to be fair, but yeah.

• 1:01:24Chris Winterbauer?

  It's just an interesting, it would have been an interesting shift, right? Because it's so notable how much older Stewart is than Donna Reed at the beginning of this movie. And you would have, they would have looked closer in age, at least. Definitely neither of them looked like high schoolers.

• 1:01:36Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:01:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Of this movie. He then considered Olivia De Havilland.

• 1:01:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. De Havilland, by the way.

• 1:01:42Chris Winterbauer?

  De Havilland, Olivia De Havilland. Why do I want to always fancy it up? Olivia De Havilland, twice nominated for Hold Back the Dawn, Gone with the Wind. Ultimately, he chooses Donna Reed, established contract player at MGM. She'd recently been in John Ford's They Were Expendable. And she is a very late hire, one month before principal photography, after six weeks of negotiation with MGM, because she's got to get out of her contract, and without a screen test.

• 1:02:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:02:08Chris Winterbauer?

  She was only 25, so she was 13 years younger than Jimmy Stewart and two feet shorter, roughly.

• 1:02:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, she's very small.

• 1:02:17Chris Winterbauer?

  She's very small. It's very noticeable.

• 1:02:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Chris Winterbauer?

  When you see them together. There's like no apple boxes they're going to be able to put around.

• 1:02:22Lizzie Bassett?

  When he vigorously shakes her, yeah.

• 1:02:23Chris Winterbauer?

  As she's standing on a step and still a foot shorter than him. Now, actor Henry Travers was an exception to the Ford Capra rule, but he knew he wanted to work with him. He'd been Oscar nominated for his role in William Wyler's Miss Miniver. Capra can't figure out where to put him. Is he going to be Uncle Billy? Is he going to be Old Man Gower? Is he going to be George's father? And he finally says, he's going to be Clarence, and he's perfect as Clarence.

• 1:02:46Lizzie Bassett?

  He's so good.

• 1:02:47Chris Winterbauer?

  He also could have been Uncle Billy, I think. Definitely could have been Uncle Billy, but he's great as Clarence.

• 1:02:52Lizzie Bassett?

  He, yeah, this feels like the right part for him. There, he's like a, there's just a very self-assured sweetness to him that works perfectly.

• 1:03:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. Now, he knew exactly who he wanted for the evil Mr. Potter. Lionel Barrymore of the Barrymores. Lizzie, I didn't know this. He had voiced Ebenezer Scrooge, or did at this time, for nearly two decades in an annual Christmas Carol broadcast. So he was like primed for this part.

• 1:03:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, sure. Ready to step right in. His character is interesting because there is, he's just a piece of shit through and through, and there is zero redemption.

• 1:03:26Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll get to that, but also zero punishment.

• 1:03:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. I kept thinking, and even though I've seen it before, I was like, he's gonna realize that he has the $8,000 and he's gonna come around, he's gonna give it. No, he just keeps it. He just keeps it. He's just a piece of trash the whole way through.

• 1:03:44Chris Winterbauer?

  He could watch, he could watch a 10-year-old child drop their parents' diabetes medicine on the floor that he doesn't even need because it's $10.

• 1:03:55Lizzie Bassett?

  And he'd pick it up.

• 1:03:56Chris Winterbauer?

  The money for the medicine. He would pick it up and he'd say, "You should have kept that $10 more firmly in your pocket, little boy." And then he would have wheeled away as fast as he could. He really is. I think he really is the embodiment of what greed can do, how it can warp you in that way. If the sole pursuit of your life is the accumulation of more wealth, you lose any semblance of humanity. And I like this fact that he's also driven by the fact, it doesn't, it's not enough that he has more money than George. He's also driven by the fact that George is a threat within the social hierarchy. And so I think it's interesting that he knows everyone hates him, and he will only be satisfied when people also hate George.

• 1:04:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's that, like, you know, his hatred begets more hatred in a really interesting way.

• 1:04:44Lizzie Bassett?

  And there's also the interest, the scene you mentioned earlier where he's talking about George's housing complex. And it really struck me this, upon this viewing. I think one of the reasons he's so mad about that is that George is actually seeing some financial success from helping people. He's not out to just completely fleece them, and that's not ruining him. And of course, that's all Potter's ever done, is just totally fleece and ruin other people.

• 1:05:11Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a slumlord.

• 1:05:12Lizzie Bassett?

  He's a slumlord, right. And the idea that someone could be both successful and good, I think, is maybe what drives his rage at the end of it.

• 1:05:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's interesting too, because it's, it's that... Idea, right, that maybe unfettered rampant cancer-like capitalism is not the answer, you know, as Mr. Potter embodies it here. And that'll come in again later in our story as we get into the Red Scare.

• 1:05:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's, it is interesting that movies like this came out when they did because I think we think of America as having very different values than it maybe actually did at that time.

• 1:05:55Chris Winterbauer?

  This, at this moment in time, the United States, the amount that you would pay as a rich person in taxes was unrecognizably high at this point in time.

• 1:06:04Lizzie Bassett?

  FDR.

• 1:06:04Chris Winterbauer?

  And inequality, yeah, as a result, was much lower. The top income tax rate reached above 90% from 1944 through 1963.

• 1:06:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:06:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And people, you know, think that their, their 40% now is high, you know, in the top tax bracket. And of course, the richest people aren't paying that. They pay capital gains.

• 1:06:24Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, it's just, sorry, the last thing I'll say, I feel like there's, you know, I was just gonna, I was just, you know, this, this whole idea of like hearken back to the, to the old times. It's interesting to look at the content that was actually being produced at the time that I think people tend to celebrate as like, you know, particularly, we're talking about coming out of World War II. We're talking about the last war we ever fought, where we were like clearly, you know, the heroes in the right, like, and was, you know, it was the, the great, was it the greatest generation? Like this, that's, that's what is celebrated. That's what is hearkened back to. And yet, when you look at what they were actually making, I do think that the set of values is, does not quite match up to some of the ideas that are being associated with it.

• 1:07:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, we're gonna have to cut all that. But yes.

• 1:07:10Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:07:12Chris Winterbauer?

  All right, back to casting. So Old Man Gower, as you mentioned, Lizzie, one of the dark, a tragic character, one of the, I mean, it's, you learn.

• 1:07:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the saddest part in the whole.

• 1:07:20Chris Winterbauer?

  His, his son was, died of influenza. By the way, Frank Capra famously survived influenza. He also survived a burst appendix. Like, his appendix had burst and he didn't know it and his body had somehow figured out how to keep living and then they discovered it later. Crazy. Now, he was played, Old Man Gower, played by H.B. Warner, who was delighted because he was being cast against type because he was famous for playing Jesus in The King of Kings. And in this version, he is at best a child beater, and at worst. I wore a C. Kills a Kid, so you actually really liked that. I do want to shout out Gloria Graham as Violet.

• 1:07:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I love her.

• 1:07:57Chris Winterbauer?

  She's such a good actress. And this was kind of a breakout for her. So according to Capra, his words, "I also needed a village flirt, preferably a young blonde sexpot. I asked Billy Grady, MGM's casting director, if he knew of any." All right, here we go. I'm gonna keep reading it. "Do I know any?" he cackled. "For Christ's sake, I'm up to here in blonde pussies that have never been to the post. Let me show you some tests." End quote. He said the second test was of Gloria Graham. She was a sultry, surly young blonde that seemed undecided whether to kiss you or knock you down. I actually think that's a pretty good description.

• 1:08:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Capra says, "Hey, Bill, who's that dame?" And Bill said, "Who is she? For Christ's sake, she's a star! But you think I can get any of our jerk directors to listen? Two years she's been around here snapping her garters. You can have her for a cup of coffee." I think they paid her more than that. Uh, Graham, Graham was, I know, what Graham had to, what these actresses had to deal with is

• 1:08:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Chris Winterbauer?

  She was probably sitting at the table as they were having this conversation.

• 1:08:56Lizzie Bassett?

  I had to imagine the camera pulls back and she's been there the whole time, yes.

• 1:09:00Chris Winterbauer?

  She was later nominated for an Oscar for a supporting role in Crossfire. She won for The Bad and the Beautiful in 1952. She's, she's really good in this role. I think she gives some humanity to a character who might seem like a punchline.

• 1:09:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 1:09:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Capra added the pet raven to the script. That's the same bird that had played Jimmy the crow and you can't, you can't take it with you. And it's his great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchild that is, um, uh, the, the crow in, God damn it, The Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:09:32Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 1:09:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm kidding.

• 1:09:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Terrible joke. All right, let's move through it.

• 1:09:39Lizzie Bassett?

  It wasn't your best.

• 1:09:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Not the best joke.

• 1:09:41Lizzie Bassett?

  It was confusing enough that I thought it was real.

• 1:09:44Chris Winterbauer?

  And that crow gave birth to a million crows. All right. Eight weeks before Principal Photography begins, the crew builds a Bedford Falls set on the Arco Ranch in Encino, California. And I just want to call this out. It is so impressive. It totals four acres. It's in three sections. There's a main street section that is 300 yards long, that is 75 stores and buildings, right? So when you see him walking down the street as a young man, and then you see the alternate version later where everything's been replaced, I do think that's interesting. You know, you've got, it's kind of like a terrible urban vibe all of a sudden, you know, with the neon and the advertisements. It is, it's Vegas.

• 1:10:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Not gonna lie, some parts of Bedford Falls looked a little more fun when it was Pottersville.

• 1:10:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I will say, I don't, don't, maybe there's a halfway in between version that we could go to. Now, a total of 20 full grown oak trees were transplanted onto the set. And as you see in the movie, Lizzie, everything's covered in snow. But this movie was shot during the summer.

• 1:10:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I was gonna say, the amount of snow in this is really impressive.

• 1:10:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. It's not a light dusting. Noted human giant Jimmy Stewart is knee deep in snow as he's trudging around town. So let's talk about the fake snow really briefly. How did you think it looked?

• 1:10:56Lizzie Bassett?

  I thought it looked great.

• 1:10:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I do, too.

• 1:10:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I was curious what it was. I'm guessing pure asbestos?

• 1:11:02Chris Winterbauer?

  That was one of the main ingredients in how they made snow at the time.

• 1:11:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 1:11:07Chris Winterbauer?

  They tended to use things like ground up calcium chloride, which is Tums, asbestos, which is cancer. Both are toxic to breathe in. Or, Lizzie, we talked about this in Armageddon, cornflakes, painted white.

• 1:11:20Lizzie Bassett?

  That seems like the safest option.

• 1:11:22Chris Winterbauer?

  But they make really loud crunches when you walk on them. And as you mentioned in Armageddon, if you leave them out or they get wet, they get stanky moldy, not so good. Frank Capra wanted something quieter, so the special effects crew pioneered a new snow formula. One part shaved ice, 3,000 tons of it. Gypsum, 300 tons. Plaster, 300 tons. And a combination of foamite soap and water, 6,000 gallons.

• 1:11:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:11:50Chris Winterbauer?

  This combination yielded a new form of snow. And the man behind this effort was special effects artist Russell Shearman. He and his team would actually later win an Oscar for the development of a new method of simulating falling snow on motion picture sets.

• 1:12:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow. I will say, it looks amazing. And also, I think because there is the shaved ice in it, it is, it looks melty. It looks a little wet the way that real snow does.

• 1:12:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Well. You're right, Lizzie, and that was a problem because apparently it made the color on some of the costumes run. And so they actually went back to cornflakes for some of the shoot, according to cinematographer Joseph Walker. So it's a combination of cornflakes and this new pioneer technology. Now, by today's standards, I think It's a Wonderful Life can feel a bit quaint, although it is very dark, but the Production Code Association, Lizzie, had some serious concerns. Let's talk about them. This is late in prep and into filming. Capra and Arcaio are negotiating for some seemingly small things that were a big deal. Number one, old man Gower's drunkenness. Not that he beats the kid silly, but that he's drunk.

• 1:12:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Number two, Violet seems to be a sex worker. She does seem to be, in the flashback, I think that's kind of what seems to maybe be implied. A stripper, perhaps.

• 1:13:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Just based on her fancy hat? I don't, I don't know.

• 1:13:11Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it's in the flashback, not in the, not in the, like, in the alternate version. I think that may be what they're referring to. The kiss between George and Mary, the shaking's fine, and some colorful language like, nuts to you, impotent, dang, lousy, and jerk, all of which were removed. The censors also wanted to make sure that Mr. Potter was punished for his crimes. He was not. And Lizzie, Frank Capra reportedly said that after the movie was released, he got more mail about that one specific fact than any other aspect of the movie.

• 1:13:47Lizzie Bassett?

  It's one of my favorite parts of the movie, and because it is upsetting and frustrating.

• 1:13:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And, you know, in real life, if you have money.

• 1:13:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't get their comeuppance.

• 1:13:57Chris Winterbauer?

  The legal system tends to work in your favor.

• 1:13:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, the shooting schedule apparently did include an alternate scene where Clarence reportedly told Mr. Potter off, so not like a true comeuppance, but a minor one, but that did not make it into the final film.

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• 1:14:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Principal photography kicks off on April 8th, 1946, the same day that Frank Capra's old pal, William Wyler, started shooting "The Best Years of Our Lives." The movie takes place during Christmas. As I mentioned, it's shot in the summer and it's during a heat wave. Apparently Frank Capra just gave everybody the day off one day because it was too hot. If you look at their costumes, they are wearing long coats, gloves, wool hats. But Donna Reed later said, "It was the best of times. Inspired, extemporaneous, fun, hard work, and especially memorable for me. I remember working harder for Capra than any other director before or after for a deceptively simple, uncomplicated, small-town girl and woman." Meaning the role, I think. I don't thi-- I think she's deceptively complex, personally.

• 1:15:36Chris Winterbauer?

  But the rumors that have been most persistent around this movie or the actors involved is that Jimmy Stewart was having a tough time returning to film after the war and that maybe he really was rusty. Now, according to some sources, Stewart kept asking Capra to delay the telephone kiss scene with Donna Reed so he could warm up first. Unclear if that's true. But Capra did reportedly rework the scene so that they could do it in the two-shot, where they're sharing the frame and they're sharing the phone. Supposedly, they skipped a page of dialogue, but he thought the performances were so good that he just said, "Screw it," and he went with that version anyway. I agree, because that scene didn't need to go on any longer. I really liked that scene. It's really fun.

• 1:16:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, Stewart says this wasn't exactly true. Quote, "I was a little shaky, I guess, but nothing like the bewildered actor that has been talked about over the years. Someone said that Lionel Barrymore took me aside and gave me a lecture. He never did any such thing. What he did do was notice a couple of times that I would just be getting my soundstage legs back and he'd say something that would be encouraging." Now, Lizzie, you mentioned this, and I think what's really happening, you mentioned, "I'm not going to go as far as saying PTSD. I do not know the contents of Mr. Stewart's head or heart."

• 1:16:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, sure.

• 1:16:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I do think adapting to life after the war is more what was going on. People did say he tended to keep to himself and that he didn't like talking about the war, which is completely understandable. Leave this man alone. Frank Capra did later say, "I can't begin to describe my sense of loneliness in making that first feature film, It's a Wonderful Life, a loneliness that was laced by the fear of failure. I had no one to talk to or argue with. My former close associates, the Fiddlers Three, had scattered." So he feels like he's doing this movie alone. I wonder if Jimmy Stewart felt the same, in that like, "This is my comeback, and if it doesn't work, I don't have anything else to fall back on." And Capra really believes, it seems, like the future of his company, Liberty Films, depended on the success of It's a Wonderful Life.

• 1:17:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Which, that, from what you've told me, may be a more legitimate concern than, you know, Jimmy Stewart's fear of failure coming back from the war.

• 1:17:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Liberty Films very much, I think, depends on the success of this movie, as we'll learn. So, this may have been why Frank Capra was a bit tricky to work with. He cycled through three different cinematographers on this movie. So Victor Milner, from Paramount, was the first cinematographer on the film. He leaves due to creative differences. Some sources claim that Capra called him "slow and nitpicky." He was paid for 20 weeks but left after five, and that's after he shot the drugstore scenes and the dance at the Swim Gym, which is just a great name, Swim Gym. It's like Slim Jim with a broken tooth. Then came Joseph Walker, sometimes described as Frank Capra's favorite cinematographer. They'd made 20 movies together.

• 1:18:18Chris Winterbauer?

  He shot the most of the rest of the movie, but he had to leave before filming was done to hop onto another project he was contractually agreed to do. So they promoted the cameraman, Joseph Borick, who had been working under both Milner and Walker to finish the movie. Now, a couple more notes from production, which was relatively smooth. Robert Anderson, who played little George, said that H.B. Warner did actually bloody his ear during the pharmacy scene. So he was actually hit hard enough. And then quickly hugged him and apologized after, but that was like a stunt gone wrong, apparently. The scene where the dance floor opens up into a pool, that's not special effects. That is a real contraption called the swim gym at Beverly Hills High School at the time. They wrote the scene because that existed. And Capra would get letters saying, "How'd you do that effect?"

• 1:19:03Chris Winterbauer?

  And he said, "It's just Beverly Hills High School. They have a swim gym."

• 1:19:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just the swim gym.

• 1:19:07Chris Winterbauer?

  That really is Donna Reed throwing the rock at the old house. Very good, very good, accurate throw. Frank Capra apparently hired the stunt double to do it for her, and she said, "I don't need that." And she did it so well, he said, "Great."

• 1:19:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Hell yeah, Donna.

• 1:19:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Remember when Uncle Billy at the homecoming party for George's brother, he like walks off screen and you hear him like bump into a bunch of trash cans?

• 1:19:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:19:28Chris Winterbauer?

  So apparently, Thomas Mitchell walks out of frame and a crew member accidentally knocked off a bunch of, like a bag of props, and Mitchell just yells out, "I'm all right! I'm all right!" And so that's an ad lib that stays in the movie.

• 1:19:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I love that moment.

• 1:19:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Capra reportedly paid that crew member $10 for knocking over the props for improving the scene. When there's a run on the bank, George gives out his honeymoon money. That's a very famous scene. And the last woman asks him for $17.50. That was an improvised number. Capra just told the actress to come up with a number to surprise Jimmy Stewart, and then the kiss was improvised as well. Now, principal photography wraps in July. Pickups were shot in August. We couldn't figure out exactly what the pickups were. Capra brings in his wartime documentary collaborator, William Hornbeck, to edit the film, and the music's composed by Dmitry Tiamkin. Now, they had worked together on a lot of films. Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and the last movie he did before World War II, Meet John Doe.

• 1:20:26Chris Winterbauer?

  But they didn't see eye to eye on this project. Now, some sources claim that Capra felt that Tiamkin was too focused on another project he was working on, Duel in the Sun. And in the end, Tiamkin leaves early, and some sources claim that Capra cut some of his cues, shifted a bunch around, and even brought in music from other movies.

• 1:20:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Not super uncommon at that point in time.

• 1:20:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Not at all. And it seems like maybe what's more likely is that Capra was being rushed because the studio wanted to pull the release date in for It's a Wonderful Life to make it a Christmas movie. So Capra didn't intend for this to be a Christmas movie and the original release date was supposed to be January 30th, 1947, which is so weird to me.

• 1:21:11Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really weird because it involves Christmas. Like to be that close to it is strange. You would think if you're gonna say it's not a Christmas movie, you push it even farther out.

• 1:21:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I don't, yeah, like do it in the summer or something. It's a little unusual. Film historian and Michael Bay's former professor, Janine Basenger, claims it wasn't intended to be a Christmas movie. It was shoved into the Christmas release of 1946 because R. K. O.'s big escape movie, their Technicolor production of Sinbad the Sailor, wasn't ready for release. So It's a Wonderful Life gets pulled in. And then to add insult to injury, they decide to use Capra and Stewart's anxiety about returning to Hollywood to market the movie.

• 1:21:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Cool. Thanks, guys.

• 1:21:52Chris Winterbauer?

  The press packet includes a sample story with the headline, "First Post-War Kiss Scene Ordeal for James Stewart." This is not an ordeal. It's fine, sir. Don't worry about it. Everything, though, I think, was probably looking up from Frank Capra's perspective. He'd finished the film. I'm sure he was happy with the film. And then everything kind of went a little sideways. So in December of 1946, Liberty Films holds a screening and dinner dance with Capra, William Wyler, George Stevens, and all the stars and near-stars we'd ever used in our films. And then they previewed it for the press. And the reviews are mixed. People say it's sentimental, it's

• 1:22:37Chris Winterbauer?

  sappy, it's Pollyanna-ish. But Frank Capra thinks, well, surely audiences will embrace it. It's the safe, non-controversial, warm and fuzzy movie that everybody's been waiting for. It's a Wonderful Life premieres on December 20th, 1946, at the Globe Theatre in New York. As I mentioned, it doesn't open wide until January 7th, 1947. So It's a Wonderful Life wasn't exactly a big time flopper. It wasn't a huge time flopper, but it was the biggest movie of Frank Capra's career up until this point, and it did lose money. So after R. K. O.'s distribution fee, the movie grossed around $4.4 million. The budget

• 1:23:16Chris Winterbauer?

  was around $3.18 million, and Stewart earned another $173,000. The best figure that we could find By July 2nd, 1947, the movie had a net loss of about $392,000, roughly 12% of its budget. Again, not an enormous flop, but not a success and not enough to keep Liberty Films afloat. Right, okay. So it's nominated for five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Actor in a Leading Role, Jimmy Stewart, Sound Recording, and Film Editing.

• 1:23:56Chris Winterbauer?

  But it didn't win anything because Capra got beat out by his buddy, William Wyler. The Best Years of Our Lives swept the awards, it won seven, including Picture, Actor in a Leading Role, and Director. And Lizzie, if that weren't enough, in 1947, the FBI launched an investigation into the Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. McCarthyism has come to Hollywood. And It's a Wonderful Life was put on a list of motion pictures disclosing Communist propaganda therein. Wow.

• 1:24:39Chris Winterbauer?

  The themes that you mentioned. The FBI agent who watched it reportedly said, "It was very entertaining," but also identified what they considered "a malignant undercurrent" to the film.

• 1:24:56Chris Winterbauer?

  What is the malignant undercurrent? What is it? Hold on. Those responsible for making It's a Wonderful Life had employed two common tricks used by Communists to inject propaganda into the film. These tricks, as applied by the Los Angeles branch of the Bureau, were smearing values or institutions judged to be particularly American. In this case... The capitalist banker, Mr. Potter, is portrayed as a scrooge-y misanthrope, and they glorified values or institutions judged to be particularly anti-American

• 1:25:35Chris Winterbauer?

  or pro-communist. In this case, George's depression and existential crisis are pro-communist, Lizzie. The subtle attempt-

• 1:25:44Lizzie Bassett?

  George is also a banker. He's also making money.

• 1:25:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Shut up. Shut up. This is the FBI. We listen to the FBI. The subtle, this is a subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called common man in society. This case was a big deal, Lizzie. It was not brought to the House Un-American Activities Committee. I think they probably realized this is not ultimately a communist film.

• 1:26:12Lizzie Bassett?

  This is not the one.

• 1:26:13Chris Winterbauer?

  This is not the one. This is not the Trumbo movie that we're gonna go after. But it didn't matter. Liberty Films was dead on arrival, FBI or not. They made just one more film of their nine-film deal, State of the Union, directed by Frank Capra. And so the question remains, Lizzie, how did It's a Wonderful Life become a timeless classic beloved by millions? It happened when, like George Bailey and the communists, they accidentally gave it away for free.

• 1:26:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:46Chris Winterbauer?

  In the mid-1970s, the copyright for the film lapsed, and the movie was considered to have entered the public domain. And suddenly, It's a Wonderful Life was showing up on television. There were countless copies that people could rent or buy, and there was no Mr. Potter clawing at his return, just a movie that people could enjoy. By 1990, the Library of Congress added It's a Wonderful Life to the National Film Registry, and in 1993, the copyright was restored.

• 1:27:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:27:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Before we end, I want to mention Frank Capra, very interesting person. We're gonna need to cover more of his movies, obviously. We're gonna need to talk more about Frank Capra. I was talking to my sister and we were trying to kind of pin him down. And I think the thing I really thought was most interesting about him in relation to this movie. He famously published his autobiography, I believe it was in 1971, which was a bit of a retelling of his legacy. A hagiography, as we've discussed.

• 1:27:48Lizzie Bassett?

  As most autobiographies are, yes.

• 1:27:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. Capra really, really, I think, struggled with being pushed out of Hollywood by the new wave of auteurs in the 1960s. And he felt that he was being shunted aside despite having been such a heavyweight, especially before World War II. And I think it's obvious he really struggled with that. And then in retelling his story and trying to reassert his position in the building of Hollywood, it seems like the big sin that he commits, at least according to Joseph McBride and a few other people, Joseph McBride's one of his biographers, is that he erases his collaborators from his own bootstrapping history.

• 1:28:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And in an ironic twist, forgets the lesson of It's a Wonderful Life, which is a man is rich through his friends. And instead tries to tell the story of how Frank Capra did it alone.

• 1:28:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Did it all by himself, yeah.

• 1:28:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I just think it's really interesting and an important reminder that, man, movies are a collaborative medium that nobody makes on their own. And even if you believe in auteur cinema, it's still never just yours. And I think we could all stand to remember that the richest men or women and the greatest directors recognize it's a collaboration. So that concludes our coverage of It's a Wonderful Life, Lizzie. So I have to ask you, what went right? What's gonna keep you from killing your doppelganger? It's so Kafkaesque, the original version of it.

• 1:29:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I still want that version. I have to give it to good old Jimmy Stewart in this one.

• 1:29:37Lizzie Bassett?

  As you pointed out, it's not a particularly active character, which I think could get very frustrating to watch as played by almost anyone else. Like you mentioned Cary Grant early on. I think this would be a tough watch with Cary Grant in as George Bailey. And I love Cary Grant. And then learning what you said about Jimmy Stewart and, you know, voluntarily enlisting and making the decision to then not capitalize on that when he, you know, got out of the war and choosing to do this project. It just makes me like him even more and I already liked him a whole lot. So gotta give it to Jimmy Stewart. And we should cover more Jimmy Stewart movies because I would like to know more about him.

• 1:30:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's interesting. He had such a second life in the 50s. And that's kind of the Jimmy Stewart that I know.

• 1:30:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Harvey, Rear Window.

• 1:30:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Rear Window, Vertigo. I knew, um, I knew, I, I watched more of that era of Jimmy Stewart than his 1930s work or even, you know, his 40s work. And I really loved that Jimmy Stewart. There are so many good iterations of him, but I agree. We definitely need to more, cover more of his films. For some reason, my dad doesn't like Jimmy Stewart. And so I grew up with this bias against Jimmy Stewart.

• 1:30:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Really? Because your dad kind of is Jimmy Stewart.

• 1:30:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, I know, I know. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's like George fighting George on the bridge.

• 1:30:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's the doppelganger.

• 1:30:58Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the doppelganger. Anyway, I will, I'm not going to give it to Frank Capra, even though he probably, we probably should, one of us give it to Frank Capra because I want to give mine to Donna Reed.

• 1:31:11Chris Winterbauer?

  She is so captivating. And man, I think this role could be

• 1:31:21Chris Winterbauer?

  tough, saccharine, annoying in the wrong hands. And she's not given a lot to, to do, I don't think. And, and yet it works. And, you know, I mentioned the other week about how I don't carry over things from, from when they use a different actor when a character is a child to when they're an adult. And for some reason, the little girl version of her looks enough like her in this version that I kind of do.

• 1:31:45Lizzie Bassett?

  And it's very cute.

• 1:31:46Chris Winterbauer?

  And I kind of love that part when she leans over and says, George Bailey, I'll, you know, love you till the day I die into his death here. It's so good. So I'll give it to Donna Reed, who I just found so charming in this movie.

• 1:31:57Lizzie Bassett?

  She's charming and she, she makes sense of a part that at many moments, I think it would be probably pretty hard to make sense of, you know, when she. Gives away all of their money in order to save the run on the bank. And, and she really, it's not like, you can see the thought process that she's going through before making those decisions. And I, she takes her time in this and it really ends up being a beautiful performance.

• 1:32:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. And I think one of the things that I do, I like about this movie that he eventually gets there, but I don't even know if he gets all the way there, is that I think what Donna Reed really understands is that we're, this is no longer my life. This is our life. Right? This is, this is me. It's, it's my life. It's my children's lives. It's my husband's life and we're a team and, and I'm making, we're making decisions for all of us. And it takes George Bailey so long to understand, George, this is no longer just your life, but only his personal life. He really understands that with regards to the community. And he sacrifices for the community constantly. And I think that's his saving grace as a character. But it's interesting that it takes him, he, he does take his family for granted in so many ways.

• 1:33:03Lizzie Bassett?

  He's the star of the show in his head. And I think doesn't understand that those supporting characters are not supporting characters. He is supporting them.

• 1:33:12Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the supporting character.

• 1:33:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:33:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that's really important. That's something that I've, you know, learned through fatherhood especially and, and marriage. But, you know, you're, you're not like, you've taken your bow now. You know what I mean?

• 1:33:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:33:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Like the, it's your children's time. Not that your life doesn't matter anymore or anything like that, or you can't find new things. But anyway. All right, guys. Thank you for listening to our coverage of It's a Wonderful Life. And if you think this is a wonderful podcast, there are a few easy ways to support us. Number one, leave us a rating and review on whatever podcatcher you are using. Number two, you can subscribe on whatever podcatcher you're listening to us on. Hit follow so our episodes pop up every Monday, sometimes Fridays. Number three, you can get bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts now. For $4.99 a month, you will get at least one bonus episode a month. Our bonus episodes are a little different than our standard ones. We typically cover a newly released movie. We try to give you guys a little bit of the history of how that movie came to be.

• 1:34:12Chris Winterbauer?

  And then it's followed by a spoiler filled review where we talk about what we liked and didn't like. And then you guys can come to our Patreon and tell us what you think about that. Patreon is a platform that connects podcasters like ourselves with listeners like you. You can join for free. For $5, you can get all our bonus episodes and an ad-free RSS feed, and for $50, you can get an old Langsine call-out just like one of these.

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  Should you make a movie that's a flop and you feel your life is done? Fear not, my friends, you'll find kind ears on the podcast what went wrong. So much goes wrong, my dear, so much always goes wrong. But with our friends on Patreon, we can learn to love these bombs. Oh, Adrian, Pankoria, Darren and Eo complete.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Amy, Olga, Schlager, McCoy, and the Provost family. Angelina, Renee Cook, Chris Leal, Karina, Conaba. Kate Elrins and Kathleen Olsen, Dee Dee Smith's God, Oshita. Oh, and Adam Moffat, Cameron Smith, Chris Saka, and C. Graceby. And Zonia, Felicia G., broken so much I need.

• 1:36:07Speaker 03

  Ben Chindman and Blaise Ambrose, David Frisco, Lanty. Rur, Jur, Rosemary, Southward, Don Schiib, Levon Downey.

• 1:36:25Speaker 03

  Brian Donna, Hugh, Brittany, Morris, Mike McGrath, Jose Salto, Steve Winterbauer, Vidia House, and our JJ Rapido. Galen and Miguel Broke, Kid Glass Kids, Grace Potter, and Frankenstein. James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, L'Oréal, and Nick the Knife. There is no spoon, Phil, Mitch, yourself, Ellen Singleton, and me.

• 1:37:10Speaker 03

  Suzanne Johnson and Half Grey Hound, and Sadie, she's just Sadie. Jory Hill Piper, and Lana, LJ N. Centuno. And on to Matthew Jacobson, we're more grateful than you know. And should your life be going wrong, know that you are not alone. This life is hard, and we all fail, it's why we love to make this show.

• 1:37:55Speaker 03

  This life is hard, we all fall down, know that you are not alone.

• 1:38:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, thank you for that, Chris.

• 1:38:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course. Lizzie, what do we have coming next week? It's the start of something very special.

• 1:38:13Lizzie Bassett?

  We have a Christmas classic.

• 1:38:15Chris Winterbauer?

  We do.

• 1:38:15Lizzie Bassett?

  We have a...

• 1:38:17Chris Winterbauer?

  We do.

• 1:38:17Lizzie Bassett?

  We have a Christmas classic for all the ages. We are covering our third James Cameron film, Aliens. I'm very excited, and it's kicking off our first ever Very Cameron Christmas, where we will be spending the rest of the year with James Cameron.

• 1:38:38Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. And then we're going to be headed to Pandora to talk all things Avatar, as one of my friends calls it. And then we're going to be off on December 29th, and we'll be back at you in the new year, the first Monday of January. So keep an ear out, you guys. We're so excited.

• 1:38:55Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. We'll see you next week.

• 1:39:00Speaker 04

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Basset and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer.