Every kind of WONDERFUL
MARION McMULLEN DISCOVERS WHY FILM CLASSIC IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE IS STILL LIFTING SPIRITS AFTER 75 YEARS
IT’S A Wonderful Life is a Christmas film with a big heart and the simple message that one person can make a difference.
The Frank Capra tearjerker opened in American cinemas in December, 1946, and was James Stewart’s first movie after his service during the Second World War. He had joined the US Army Air Force a year before Pearl Harbor was bombed and rose to the rank of colonel.
He said when Capra offered him the role of George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life he told him “Frank, if you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I’m your man.”
The Christmas fantasy follows the fortunes of family man George Bailey who has spent his entire life in the little town of Bedford Falls. When a series of disasters threatens his livelihood and his family, he decides it would be better for everyone if he had never been born. Angel Clarence grants his wish and shows him what a world without George Bailey would really look like.
James Stewart later called it “a pure movie” and said: “It wasn’t taken from a novel or a play. It was developed from one little paragraph. Simple story, no message, no violence, no mob scenes. When the movies have a story like this, they do it better than any medium there is.”
The part of small town bank manager George was originally developed by another film studio with Cary Grant in mind, but Capra later re-wrote the script to suit James Stewart and said the film star’s appeal lay in him being “so unusually usual”.
It was the only time Capra directed, produced, financed and co-wrote one of his own movies and the film was shot in 90 days with the set of the fictional Bedford Falls built over four acres of RKO film studio’s Encino Ranch in LA.
Cornflakes painted white had been used in earlier movies for snow scenes, but a new kind of fake snow using a fire-fighting chemical called foamite, soap and water was used for the first time to create a more realistic look and the mixture was pumped through a wind machine under high pressure to create the winter scenes.
It might have looked freezing, but a lot of filming actually took place in a summer heatwave. James Stewart is visibly sweating in some scenes and Capra had to give everyone a day off at one point to recover from the high temperatures.
Nevertheless the sheer emotion of the film still shone through and James Stewar Stewart even began to sob when filming one scene that saw George prayin praying in a bar. Stewart lat later said: “I’m the inarticulate ticul man who tries. I don’t don really have all the answers a but, for some reason, r I make it.” Capra himself once pointed po out: “I thought drama dr was when the actors ac cried, but drama is when wh the audience cries.” The Th film certainly proved prove a weepy with cinema audiences audience especially when angel C Clarence (played by British actor Henry Travers) explained expla that George could finally help him get his wings w after 200 years by lettin letting him come to his aid. H He told him: “Every time you hear a bell ring, it means mean that some angel’s just g got his wings.” Residents Res in Seneca Falls, NewY New York, claim the town of Bedford Falls was inspired by their own upstate town. Capra never confirmed such a connection, but that has not stopped locals from celebrating the beloved movie every December.
The film was nominated for five Oscars including best picture, best director and best actor for James Stewart’s performance. It has also been colourised three times over the years, but the original black and white version still retains all the original charm and feel-good factor. As angel Clarence points out in the movie: “Strange, isn’t it. Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” Capra himself called It’s A Wonderful Life the greatest film he ever made and it still regularly tops the list of best Christmas movies 75 years after it was released.
The director said: “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I’m like the proud parent whose kids grows up to be president. “I’m proud, but it’s the kid who did the work. I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea.”