November 21, 2023 • 46 mins
Probably the episode most fans came to this podcast seeking. After spotlights of so many influential fans' interpretations across the series, here we ask: what did the creators of It's a Wonderful Life actually intend, and for what did they stand? With their next of kin, we come to know them intimately, unearthing the stories of how a literal dream inside a Brooklyn apartment during the Depression by an antifascist slavery-abolition historian was added to by a playwright who hated his money-obsessed father, given definition by exceptionally kind and in-love husband and wife screenwriters and brought to the screen by a visionary who had helped define the meaning of World War II for the nation, along with the truly heroic American actor Jimmy Stewart. Why did the movie initially fail? And what impact did that have on the dreams of its utopian director? SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We are looking down on the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn,
New York. Well, I'm looking down. You'll have to listen
to my description. It's the night of February eleventh, nineteen
thirty eight, in many ways, the beginning of this story.
In your universe. The Great Depression has been decimating the
(00:46):
lives of working Americans for a long eight years, and
signs from overseas abound that for right fascists may soon
start another World war. Inside an apartment, in one of
the bedrooms stands Philip van doren Stern, a thirty seven
year old father's spouse and writer. A struggling one, he
(01:10):
kisses his toddler daughter good night and settles into bed
next to his spouse. As he sleeps, Philip has a
vivid dream it hadn't been for me.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Everybody be all a better off.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
My wife and my kids and my friends are look Lord,
follow while you go up and haunt somebody else.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I said, I wish I'd never been born.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
That you wish you'd never been born. Mother.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
This is George.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
I thought sure you'd remember me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Probably it's George. Don't you know me?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
What's happened to us?
Speaker 6 (01:42):
Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and was
drowned at the age of nine.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's a life strange, isn't it.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
Each man's life touches so many other lines. When he
isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't he?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I wouldn't live again? Please God let me live again?
Speaker 5 (02:00):
H mh.
Speaker 8 (02:04):
Buffalo girls, can't you come out tonight? Can't you come
out tonight?
Speaker 9 (02:08):
Can't you come out tonight?
Speaker 10 (02:10):
Buffalo girls?
Speaker 8 (02:11):
Can't you come out tonight?
Speaker 11 (02:14):
By the lie?
Speaker 12 (02:16):
Oh no, Joe say I'd love to play at night?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Joe say.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 13 (02:31):
The Christmas Eve you make me sid Joe.
Speaker 14 (02:58):
It wasn't an epiphany. It was dream and it's a
dream that he remembered when he was shaving the next morning.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You remember Sarah Robinson, one of three daughters who will
be born to Philip van doren Stern's only daughter, Marguerite.
You will meet her sister, Perene Robinson Geller shortly.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So.
Speaker 15 (03:17):
One thing about that our grandfather is that he was
always extremely interested in his dreams.
Speaker 14 (03:23):
One of his last manuscripts was a manuscript called Dreams
and Creativity.
Speaker 16 (03:27):
Unpublished dreams are important sources for creativity. But the ideas
they provide have to be implemented. Unconscious and conscious minds
must work together, unconscious trigger polished with conscious mind. Only
in this way will the stuff of dreams become reality.
The artful author skillfully leads us past the border that
separates the outer world from the world of the imagination.
(03:51):
This wildly improbable country is not utterly impossible. It has
always existed, locked away somewhere within ourselves. The authors whose
work I have edited were interested in fantasy, mystery, and dreams.
Henry David Threaux was a potent dreamer. So was Abraham Lincoln,
who had many remarkable dreams besides those that forecast major
(04:11):
battles and his own death. I have written books on
prehistoric art, art in which early man did his dream
images on the walls of caves.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
If you're one of the millions in your universe who
have watched Wonderful Life multiple times over the years, chances
are it means something special to you. Over this podcast,
I've taken you to hear many talk about what meanings
they have personally taken away from watching it, and each
of their takes is just as real and true as
(04:42):
what the movie's creators may have intended, but those creators
did have their own intentions. Are you curious to know
what those were and who they were? Over this episode,
I'm going to take you backwards to the nineteen thirties
and forties to get to know them and expect the
moments of epiphany that birthed one of the most popular
(05:04):
movies ever made. Beginning with Philip's strangely vivid Dream, there
are a number of other people who come into the story,
each adding something important to what becomes the whole. Before
we can get to know each of them, we should
first consider who qualifies who belongs in the small club
of significant creators of the movie. That straightforward question became
(05:29):
a matter of debate for a number of people involved
in the making of it, and continues today amongst their descendants.
Speaker 14 (05:36):
I have looked at that initial outline.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Sarah again.
Speaker 14 (05:40):
This story has a man named George, who's a banker
in a small town, standing on a bridge contemplating jumping in.
It has George's wish never to be born, and the
grant of the wish by this nondescript Cheerry Stranger, and then,
of course, the tour of the never born George to
the town that he had you in initial life had
(06:02):
lived in, in his desperate visits to his non parents
and his non wife, his return to the bridge and
the stranger to ask for his life back in his
re emergence with new eyes in the world in which
George had never been born, the bank that he worked
in had failed, and his brother had drowned because he
had not been there to save him as a child,
(06:23):
and Mary lived a hard, sad life. This is all
from the initial draft, the initials writing of the dream.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Now here's Mark Harris, whom you know from a previous episode.
Remember he became a Frank Capra expert while researching his
book Five Came Back and the much watched documentary series
based on it that he helped make with Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Is there an author of a film? It depends. I mean,
some movies really do come from one sensibility, and many
many movies are collaborative in ways that nobody who doesn't
understand how they were made will ever understand.
Speaker 17 (07:03):
That's a tough one because it was Grandpa's Like I
would say he's the author, but he's not the only author.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
You've met. Frank Kapra's granddaughter Monica in a previous episode
when she visited Seneca Falls.
Speaker 17 (07:16):
I think it was his heart. I think it was
the story he wanted to tell. He credits all those
people too for what he created, but he did always
put his name first because he felt like he was
the one who created his creation. It was his creation
with everybody else's help. It would be an insult to
him if I didn't say he was the author, because
I do believe that that's what he thought.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
In another previous episode, I took you to Nutley, New Jersey,
where writer Francis Goodrich grew up while Wonderful Life was
still being made. Frances and her co writer husband Albert
would raise this very issue of credit before a Screenwriter's
Guild arbitration. Frank Capra is given third position credit after
Franz's and Albert and Frank's writer for the the final
(08:00):
shooting script. Joe Swirling gets credit for additional scenes. Philip
is credited for the short story Clifford Odette's a playwright
you will soon come to know, who contributes much to
the first act isn't credited at all.
Speaker 18 (08:14):
I don't think that many actors could have made a
story like that so believable.
Speaker 14 (08:19):
He was being shown what his life would be like
if he hadn't been born.
Speaker 18 (08:23):
You know, it just didn't seem ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You also met Kelly previously to be born five years
after the release of Wonderful Life. She thinks only her father,
Jimmy Stewart could have brought to life so impactfully the
driving force of the movie George Bailey, And given how
important George is to the film, that makes Jimmy a
creator too.
Speaker 18 (08:45):
I mean, the film is Copper Dad?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Really whoever deserves the greatest credit. With a little help
from the Angels, the right remarkable people came together at
the right time to infuse each one's ethos into a
time capsule of sorts to be opened by each new
generation that watches this movie. Let's look closer at how
(09:08):
that happened. What was each of these creators about and
what brought each into the picture that allowed them to
add something of themselves to Wonderful Life. First, who was
Philip van doren Stern and what was going on with
him as he woke from his dream on Lincoln's birthday?
Speaker 14 (09:25):
First he did the biography of Lincoln, and then he
went to the Drums of the Morning, which was another
extremely deeply researched work in a novelistic form. It's a
story about the abolitionists in the years leading to the
Civil War.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
The New York Herald Tribune declares Philip's fiction book The
Drums of Mourning the long overdue answer to Gone with
the Wind, the massively successful movie which has swept the
nation three years earlier, bringing audiences inside the perspective of
the prose slavery South during the Civil War.
Speaker 19 (09:57):
New York Times, August ninth, nineteen teen forty two. The
Abolitionists through the eyes of his hero Jonathan Bradford, mister
Stern gives readers a panoramic picture of America during the
decade before the war, shows one how the issue of
slavery came to a head in both the North and
the South, and introduces one to famous abolitionists. More, he
(10:18):
does not minimize the eternal dissensions and failings of the
anti slavery movement, nor fail to link it as he should,
with the larger struggle for human freedoms.
Speaker 15 (10:27):
They didn't suffer fools lately.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's Peren now joining her sister Sarah as they discussed
what their grandfather Philip is all about in the early
nineteen forties.
Speaker 14 (10:38):
Kaween says he didn't suffer fools. Very true. He also
didn't suffer people who didn't respect the dignity of human beings.
Speaker 15 (10:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 14 (10:47):
Let me offer a speculation. He was very, very engrossed
in the story of Lincoln and a sort of the
man who killed Lincoln when he had this dream and
if there's ever a man right for whom the world
would have been different if he hadn't existed, I mean,
as Abraham Lincoln. I mean it's too simplistic. I don't
really want to make much of it, which is that
(11:08):
it's not about the story of the greatest gift. It's
not about the story of remarkable people who live on
a world stage. It's a story about every single one
of us. He was born of a mixed marriage.
Speaker 15 (11:21):
His mother was Christian and his father was Jewish, which
was extremely unusual in the eighteen nineties nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 14 (11:30):
The Van Door and grandfather he had been somehow involved
in John Brown's harper Fery raid.
Speaker 15 (11:36):
I know that his mother was definitively anti slavery. He
was sensitized to some extent about discrimination and isolation and
whatever by being half Jewish and having definitely experienced anti
Semitic events in his life, and part of what he
was doing in the library was avoiding the people who
were who were being blatantly anti Semitic and unpleasant to
(11:59):
a kind of a bookish boy who was half Jewish.
He was always very He tried a bunch of different
things before he settled on writing. He didn't really know
what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a chemist,
he wanted to be an engineer. He tried out these things,
but he didn't like it at all. He just just
missed being in World War One. He was supposed to
(12:19):
report for officers training for two days after armistice was declared,
and once armisist was declared, he decided he wasn't inter
You know, he didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Talk about a sliding doors moment.
Speaker 14 (12:32):
He keeps a very close eye on what's going on
around the world, and he's terrified about this Spata fascism.
Speaker 16 (12:40):
Today. I had lunch with someone. I told him about
the Lincoln book, and I said I would rather write
a different book at this moment. There's much I want
to say that needs saying about the subject of democracy.
Speaker 14 (12:50):
And I think his idea that it was time to
write about democracy was tie into his ideas about abolitionism,
about anti fascism, about respect for human beings, and I think,
you know, I think that's what his story about George's about.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Finally, Philip knows he has a wonderful idea after his
dream in nineteen thirty eight, but he also believes he's
not yet the fiction writer to bring it to life.
Years pass, those right wing fascists do start another World war,
and America's attacked and joins it. Philip goes to work
(13:22):
running their office that provides books to soldiers overseas. In
the spring of nineteen forty three, he decides it's time
to write the final draft of his story, naming it
The Greatest Gift.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
My name is Kennedy. I'm part of the It's a
wonder Life Festival. Storytelling is one of my favorite things
to do, and so they'd asked me again to read
The Greatest Gift, which is the short story that It's
a Wonderful Life is based on. But as some people know,
this story actually is pretty near and dear to me,
(14:00):
to me and to my family. This was one of
those you would read it every year kind of stories
with my family, so it would be part of our
family traditions. The little town straggled up the hill and
was bright with colored Christmas lights, but George Bailey did
not see them. He was leaning over the railing of
(14:21):
the iron bridge, steering down moodily into the black waters.
The current eddied and swirled like liquid glass, and occasionally
a bit of pipes detached from the shore and it
would go sliding downstream to be swallowed up in the
shadows under the bridge. The water looked paralyzingly old. George
(14:47):
wondered how long a man could stay alive in it.
The glassy blackness had a strange hypnotic effect. He leaned still.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Further over the railgh Philip shop system to magazines, but
finds no one willing to publish. December arrives nineteen forty three.
Speaker 16 (15:06):
By that time, I'd become fond of the story that
nobody wanted. I revised it again and had two hundred
and twenty four page pamphlets printed at my own expense.
I sent these out as Christmas cards.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
One of the Christmas cards with the story finds its
way to a Hollywood producer named David Hempstead, who takes
it to his boss, Charles Kerner, the head of RKO's studios.
Kerner sees the potential he buys the story from Philip
for ten thousand dollars the equivalent of about one hundred
and seventy eight thousand dollars in today's money, to turn
(15:38):
it into a movie. Clifford Odetts, the successful playwright, is
brought on by RKO to craft an early draft. This
is Clifford's son, Walt Whitman Odetts.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
He had actually no interest in money.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
You know.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
His father, whom he couldn't stand, was interested in nothing
but money. And the kids, meaning my sister and I
I weren't permitted to sing him. My father didn't want
us exposed to someone like that.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Mister Potter, What makes use as a Herd's gold character?
Speaker 7 (16:10):
The guy who sat behind the desk and of looked
like my grandfather. He's got his tie on on his
coat and he's stating behind the desk. He's got someone
who sits right next to him, right on the left
side there. And my father wouldn't admire someone like that.
He wouldn't admire someone whose life was about collecting money.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Clifford adds the story of George Bailey's youth in Bedford Falls,
his childhood friends Merry and Violet, George b I Guy,
the school dance, and George's nighttime stroll with Mary.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You want the moon, just say the word and I'll
throw a lat or on it, pull it down.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Nineteen forty five arrives Americans managed to win the war,
and the man who has spent those war years working
under the General in Charge of the Army at the
Office of War Information in Washington, d c. The man
charged with defining for so many the meaning and reason
behind their colossal sacrifices, comes home a changed man.
Speaker 20 (17:18):
This is my first picture, having been in uniform and
out of the theatrical films for five years. I was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
This is Frank Capra, the director.
Speaker 20 (17:29):
People are numb after the catastrophic events of the last
ten or fifteen years. It is the individual that must
be built up in his beliefs, his hopes and his aspirations.
And then, as a matter of course, you will find
the new world we all talk about developing in a
larger way.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Frank's granddaughter Monica again, his.
Speaker 17 (17:49):
Whole entire family came over and they didn't really leave
anybody but one sister back in Sicily, and they came
and got off the boat and went to La and
my startup farm there. You know, he was treated differently
as a kid. He couldn't go to the regular public school.
(18:10):
He had to go to the manual arts school because
he was Italian. That was all very impactful to him,
you know, just like I know I can get out
of this, I know I can figure this out. He
would tell about renting a limo and driving up and
pretending he was a director, and that's how he got
his first job and all that, whatever it was. I
think he must have taken those experiences and just basically
like started making movies and then he became this Academy
(18:33):
Award winning Director's.
Speaker 12 (18:35):
Good Night's Rest Lot of good Side.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
You got nothing to worry about the wolves of Jerry
Gold protecting from the big bad Wolf.
Speaker 21 (18:43):
Who's a pay is the big bad Wolf?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The big bad Wolf, are big bad Wolf. She's afraid
of the they bad Wolf. La la, la la la.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I guess this is just another lost cause.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
Mister Paine, you killed a Johndo movement.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
All right, you're going to see it borne.
Speaker 14 (19:03):
All over again.
Speaker 10 (19:05):
Oh John, if it's worth dying for, it worth living for.
Speaker 17 (19:10):
So he had kind of this oh Henry story, you know,
told himself up, made himself what he was, and then
left all of that Hollywood stuff that he had built
up and went to DC and was the head of
propaganda for the US government, made all the Y we
Fight films.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
What are these two worlds of which mister Wallace spoke,
the free and the slave? Let's take the free world first?
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Our world?
Speaker 6 (19:42):
How did it become free? Only through a long and
unceasing struggle inspired by men of vision.
Speaker 14 (19:49):
He also watched all the newsreels.
Speaker 17 (19:52):
I mean he had to watch all the footage, and
then they made the newsreels out of us.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Frank got a visceral sins of the damage done to
so many people by the right wing fascist philosophy about
humanity taken to its conclusion.
Speaker 17 (20:06):
And I think seeing all that, he's like, what do
we do now?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Frank is back in Hollywood and asking himself what the
so called common man American needs and wants.
Speaker 20 (20:18):
We were at RKO and Charles Corner, the studio head
came in. I've got just the story for you.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
You got to read it.
Speaker 20 (20:29):
Well, my goodness, this thing hit me like a ton
of bricks. It was the story I had been looking
for all my life. Wow, what an idea, The kind
of idea that when I gets old and sick and
scared and ready to die, they'll say he made it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
The greatest gift. Frank buys the rights to Philip's Story
from RKO to be his first movie for his new
independent production company, the aptly named Liberty Films.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Capra, after the war, really wanted to be a leader.
I mean a lot of directors came back from the
war thinking, after what we've experienced, we're never going to
put ourselves in a position of being enslaved by studios again.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
You're hearing Mark Harris again.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Capra was really in the vanguard of that. He started
this company, Liberty Pictures, with George Stevens and William Wiler,
that was going to be essentially a kind of independent
director run mini studio. He gambles his brand new company
on this one film, and the gamble gets more and
more out of control. The movie was supposed to cost
(21:40):
two million dollars to make.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Frank hires Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett to craft wonderful
life their work, especially defining its long middle and the
George Versus Potter battles. This is their nephew, David.
Speaker 11 (21:54):
It's often said that nice people don't win in show business,
but Francis and Albert were unquestionable winners, and over and
over they were described as kind, warm, generous, gracious, wonderful,
as people of extraordinary goodness. The Hacket's friend told me,
it's unusual for people today to be humanly and professionally
(22:14):
successful for an incredibly long time without compromising their principles
and without being untrue to themselves. And they did that
self taught as writers, drawing on their acting experience, Francis
and Albert pushed themselves.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Reviewing three scripts commissioned by RKO before Frank Capra took
the lead. Francis and Albert see elements of clifford O
death script they can use, but the ones by Dalton
Trumbo and Mark Connley go by the wayside Entirely.
Speaker 10 (22:43):
Those were fine, fine writers who had worked on it
before us, but they had gone off track. They had
gone off into stories of politics and other things. But
basically it was a simple story. So we went back
to the Christmas card.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
After the war, I got home and I, uh, my
contract would run out at MGM, and I so I
was independent and after four years I said, maybe can
you forget how to act?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I didn't know this is Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
When Frank Frank Capra called me on the telephone, he said, Jim,
I have I have an idea for a story. Why
don't you come down, I'll tell you about it.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, I ran.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And he said, well, now you're in a small town
and you'd be saving the loan thing and you're having
a tough time and things aren't going well, and so
you've decided to commit suicide. And an angel named Clarence
he comes down. You're out in the bridge and he
(23:56):
jumps into the water to save you, and you saved him.
And he said, I'm not telling this very well. I said, Frank,
if you want to do a picture about an angel
named Clarence who hadn't won his wing yet, and I
saved him and he teaches me something, I'm your man.
Speaker 18 (24:18):
I knew that he had been a hero in the
war because we had photographs of of him getting a medal.
You know, I have a picture right here of him
receiving the Quada Gara, the flying Cross Kelly. Again, Dad
didn't talk about the war at all. He just did
not talk about it. Mom would say, your father used
(24:39):
to sometimes wake up in the night with a nightmare,
screaming as if he's in a plane and he's yelling
fighter down to the left. And that's as close as
Dad ever got to talk about the war. I think
part of that was that he didn't want to glorify
his war experience, and that's why he didn't make war
movies when he got back. He did not want to
(25:02):
conflate his military service with his acting career. Nothing was
more important to Dead in his life than his military service,
and it was nothing to do with Hollywood, and it
was nothing to do with.
Speaker 14 (25:12):
Fame and rasmeatas or any of that.
Speaker 18 (25:14):
By choosing Dad to be George Bailey, Capra must have
intended for that character to convey a certain type, to
convey us certain emotions that Dad did very well.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Over two months at the top of nineteen forty six,
across four acres on the Rko Ranch in Encino in
Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, a reconstruction of Bedford Falls
is built. It's one of the most elaborate constructions and
movies up to that point. They do a brilliant job.
It's a spitting image of the place. Lionel Barrymore is
(25:49):
cast as iconic villain Henry F. Potter and Donna Reed
as George's partner Mary Hatch. April eighth, nineteen forty six,
the three and a half months of filming begins with
a stellar crew and supporting cast. And I have to say,
Jimmy Stewart looks and sounds just like the real George Bailey.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
I'm not a gray man.
Speaker 16 (26:18):
If you're a player, and you can.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
Hear me.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Show going.
Speaker 16 (26:25):
At the end of my rope.
Speaker 21 (26:29):
Say, when I first read the first draft of the
script and that scene the little prayer affected.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Me, and when I read it, when I did it
in the movie, it did, and it did the same
to me right now.
Speaker 18 (26:52):
His favorite scene in mine is the scene in the bar,
and I watched It's a Wonderful Life recently. I don't
think i'd realized before what a fantastic film it was
and what a fantastic performance it was, because Dad changes
through the movie and he is such a happy innocent
(27:15):
in the beginning, and he looks so young and fresh.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I wish I had a million dollars.
Speaker 18 (27:24):
And in a very short time he ages. He really
ages in the film with no makeup.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
I can't think, George, I.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Did, where's that money?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
You're silly, stupid, old fool.
Speaker 13 (27:41):
Where's that money?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Do you realize what this means?
Speaker 9 (27:44):
It means bankruptcy and scandal and present, that's what it means.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
One of us is going to jail.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
Well, it's not gonna be me.
Speaker 14 (28:01):
I mean, he just.
Speaker 18 (28:03):
His whole aspect changes. And that's the effect of hardship
and despair and feeling like you're a failure.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Only one way you can help me. You don't have
to have eight thousand bucks on you.
Speaker 20 (28:15):
No, we don't use money in him.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. It comes in pretty handy
down here, Bob.
Speaker 18 (28:23):
And the transformation to something else, to the weight to
the wage of responsibility and the weight of problems was
just to me remarkable.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Two million dollars was quite expensive for a movie in
nineteen forty six, and then the movie starts to go
over budget, and so it ends up costing almost three million.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Forty seven million today, And that.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Is a huge investment. There was supposed to be enough
money so that Capra and William Weiler and George Stevens
would each make three movies over the same period of
time for total of nine.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But Frank is optimistic. He and his editors spend the
summer and fall cutting the movie. December ninth arrives at
the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood. He hosts Wonderful Life's first
ever screening at a big private dinner for team members
and friends.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
The stars came out for a hush hot screening of
hit film director Frank Kappra's latest flick, It's a Wonderful Life,
starring Jimmy Stewart and Lionel barrymar at the Ambassador Hotel
Decembin nine.
Speaker 9 (29:40):
Blue Seal Ball in a short evening suit of silver
and gold, brocaded in La may and trimmed with mink.
There's Roz Russell with a sequin scarf over her head
in a black dinner dress topped with stone Martin coat.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
High powered gossip queen Virginia mcperson dishes all about the
secret screening in her let's gossip movie call Um.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Usually it's the movie queens who round up a couple
hundred guests and tossed the glittery parties. But this time
a studio gets a deep curtsey from this corner of
the fanciest wingding in many a movie moon. Yes, Liberty Films,
and they took over half the sprawling Ambassador Hotel to
do it. Frank Capra was the official house said he
(30:25):
wanted everyone to celebrate the completion of his film It's
a Wonderful Life, and every star in Hollywood showed up
to help him. They drank toasts and champagne cocktails and
packed away a scrumptious six course dinner. After dinner, all
three hundred stars had a special showing of It's a
Wonderful Life. And it really was. As far as that
(30:47):
evening was concerned.
Speaker 20 (30:48):
I thought it was the greatest film I ever made.
Better yet, I thought it was the greatest film anybody
had ever made.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I want to do something fat and something.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Important Christmas Day, and Frank's Greatest film opens in fifty
theaters across the nation the following January nineteen forty seven.
It goes into wide release, but few go to see
it over its first year in theaters. It's twenty seventh
(31:17):
among all movies. Liberty is unable to recoup their movie's
high production cost, and Frank and his partners find themselves
racing to find a studio to buy the film before
the bank forecloses.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And then Liberty, when it goes under the contracts, get
bought up by Paramount Pictures, and Capra and Wiler and
George Stevens, who had tried to save Liberty by increasing
their commitment from three films each to five films each,
(31:52):
are now under what amounted to very very long term
contracts to Paramount, which is exactly the kind of situation
that they were bent on avoiding when they came back
from the war. For Capra, the failure of It's a
Wonderful Life was really in many meaningful ways the end
of his career. He made several more features, but none
(32:14):
of them had anything like the cultural impact of the
movies he made before the war. And he really was
for the fifteen or so years after It's a Wonderful
Life until he finally retired, he was kind of at
sea professionally and creatively. I think the failure of It's
(32:36):
a Wonderful Life was so devastating for him that he
kind of thought, well, I played my best card and
it wasn't good enough.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Less than a decade later, Paramount resells Wonderful Life and
it soon ends up at National Telefilm Associates, the company
you heard about in the first episode that will eventually
make those whoops that sees it popularized with all of you,
and RKO, the studio that backed the picture, is taken
over by Howard Hughes, who kind of runs it into
(33:07):
the ground. They sell the ranch where the Bedford Falls
set stands in nineteen fifty four, bulldozing it. The eighty
nine acres are merged with adjoining land to cater to
the needs of San Fernando Valley's growing communities. People live
there now. RKO close the shop three years later. Jimmy
(33:29):
Stewart goes on to make some of the best movies
of his career for other directors through the nineteen seventies
before retiring.
Speaker 7 (33:37):
You said, Jimmy, That's a Wonderful Life is your favorite.
Speaker 11 (33:39):
Movie of all of all the movies you made.
Speaker 14 (33:43):
Still when you think of it, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I'm sort of a serious thing and sort of the
troubles a man well people have gone through four years
of war and everything, and I think that I think
they sort they wanted Brud Skelton, and they wanted very laws.
They wanted oneed commedy when they when they'd got in
the movie.
Speaker 18 (34:04):
I think I was a young teenager and I thought,
I just thought it was so sad that George Bailey
had not been allowed to go travel like he wanted to.
And I just felt like it was a really sad movie.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Jimmy's daughter Kelly again.
Speaker 18 (34:20):
Poor George Bailey stuck in this town. And that's what
I got from the film at that time, which was
very different than what I get from it now. He
might not have had everything that he wanted, but what
he wanted didn't really mean that much to him. What
mattered more is being kind to people and giving you
(34:45):
know that that turns that turned out to be so
much more rewarding and wonderful than what he wanted. The
movie means different things at different times, like in these
troubled times in this country. You know those scenes where
he's he's talking to mister Potter, evil mister Potter. You
(35:10):
know the speech he makes, It means so much more
than it used.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
To Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett write a string of
classics into the end of the nineteen fifties, including The
Diary of Anne Frank that wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Speaker 13 (35:27):
I still believe in spite of everything, and people are
really good at heart.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
I want to see something now, not one thousand years
from now.
Speaker 14 (35:40):
Someday when we get outside again, I'm.
Speaker 20 (35:44):
Going to.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Francis joins us up here first, leaving Albert alone for
a little over a decade. He's never the same without
his beloved partner. The reunion up here was really something
their nephew David again.
Speaker 11 (36:02):
I never heard Francis or Albert use the word faith
and connection with their life together, and despite having worked
on It's a wonderful life, they surely did not believe
in angels.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
But Clifford Odettes returns to Broadway for four more plays,
one is shortlisted for the Pulitzer. He returns to Hollywood
one more time with a movie classic, Sweet Smell of Success.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
Hej it's one thing away a dark color when it
turns into winnows.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I'd rather have my freedom. The man in jail is
always for freedom.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
This is Ao Scott, the movie critic describing what he
takes from Clifford's last major movie.
Speaker 22 (36:39):
There are people who lead modest, quiet and virtuous lives,
and there are people who are obsessively devoted to the
maintenance of their own prestige and influence. And then there's
everybody else, drawn to power, like bees to a blossom or.
Speaker 14 (36:52):
Moth to a flame.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Clifford joins us up here soon after in nineteen sixty three.
Not long before for that, he gives some life advice
to his son Walt.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
He said, so, what do you think you might want
to deal with your life when you get older? And
I just kind of shrugged, you know, a fourteen year old. Yougo,
I don't know. And he said, well, you'll think about
it when you get older. But the only things worth
doing are to be an artist or to do something
(37:26):
that helps other people. And I remember that's exactly what
he said to me.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Philip van doren Stern mostly returns to nonfiction, writing often
about the Civil War and also biographies of Americans he
considers great. His beloved only child, Marguerite, goes on to
make a big impact on the world, inspired in part
by wonderful life, as we'll look at in the next
(37:52):
episode that house.
Speaker 14 (37:53):
That he bought in Brooklyn Heights using the proceeds of
the South of movie rights. They lived in for almost
twenty years. In sixty three, they sell the house and
they spend all that time travel on from many locations
in Europe, so they were kind of found a footloose
for those couple of years. Loved he loved that house,
and he talks about how the house featured in his
(38:14):
dreams for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Frank Capra never again makes another movie that critics consider important,
retiring from his beloved profession in nineteen sixty one and
Wonderful Life mostly languishes in an obscure company's vaults, unknown
to the world, and then, well, you know all the rest.
The powerful role the movie ended up playing in your
(38:38):
world and might still have to play in your future.
In an earlier episode, I told you that despite George
Bailey being born in another universe, his story made it
to you thanks to this movie. How is that possible?
You may have been asking yourself, have you figured it
out yet? Phillip's Dream in nineteen thirty eight, Frank being
(38:59):
in the Seneca Falls area in nineteen forty five, Those
specific writers Clifford Francis and Albert finding their way to
the production Rashida Jones's grandfather somehow letting the movies copyright
slip in nineteen seventy four. A lot of happy coincidences,
some might say, But well, you don't think we only
(39:21):
interceded that one time to save George on that one
Christmas Eve in his universe?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Let's let Frank again provide our concluding thought.
Speaker 20 (39:32):
Wonderful Life sums up my philosophy of filmmaking, first to
exalt the worth of the individual. Second, the champion man
plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit
or divinity. And third, to dramatize the viability of the individual.
(39:53):
I wanted to reflect the compelling words of Fra Giviani
of nearly five centuries ago. The gloom of the world
is but a shadow behind it, Yet within reach is joy.
There's a radiance and glory in the darkness. I beseech
you to look for myself. I can only say it
(40:14):
was my kind of film, for my kind of people.
Speaker 16 (40:23):
George Bailey was never born. Visit Savegeorge Bailey dot com
to join the mission. There you'll find links to works
by this episode's participants. Learn more about how to celebrate
George Bailey Day on Saturday, December ninth and annually the
second Saturday of December hereafter by hosting your own Wonderful
Life viewing party. Tell your friends to listen to this show, subscribe, like, comment,
(40:46):
and post about it on social media hashtags Save George Bailey.
Subscribe to our Patreon to hear uncut interviews and bonus content.
Podcasts also available on YouTube. iHeartMedia presents a double ass risk.
iHeartMedia co production in association with True Stories Created, written
and directed by Joseph kurt Angfer and Reyno Vashlski. Kurt
(41:09):
Angfer producer and supervising editor, Reno Vashlsky producer and journalist,
Elizabeth Marcus editor, Roy Sillings narrator. George Bailey theme song
by Carolyn Sills Buyer albums soundtrack composed by Zachary Walter
by his Albums and the original soundtrack to this podcast
available wherever you get your music. Malory Keenoy co producer,
(41:32):
writer's assistant, archival producer and fact checker. John Autry sound engineer,
additional editing, sound design, and Mix Executive producers Dave Cassidy,
Kurt Angfer, Lindsay Hoffman and Bethan Mcaluso for iHeartMedia, John
Duffy for Double Asterisk, Ruth Vaka for True Stories, Reyno
Vashlsky for Double Asterisk and True Stories, Elizabeth Hankouch Associate
(41:56):
producer Brandon Lavoy and Ryan Pennington. Sulting producers Keith Sklar,
Contract Legal, Peter Yazzi Copyright and Fair Use Legal, Mattie
Acres archival Specialist, ron Coaddition, Benji Michaels, Publicists Caveasanthanam and
Marley Weaver. Marketing and Promotions. Art and web designed by
(42:17):
Aaron Kim. Interns were Kyra Gray, Emma Ramirez, Eva Stewart
and Tia Wilson. Podcast license for Philip Van Doren Stearns
The Greatest Gift provided by the Greatest Gift Corporation. Their
attorney is Kevin Koloff. Recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios
in Bloomington, Indiana. This episode featured in chronological orders Sarah Robinson,
(42:39):
Mark Harris, Monica Capra Hodges, Kelly Stewart, Harcourt, Laura Robinson,
Perene Robinson, Geller, Seth Kennedy, Walt Whitman, Odetts, and the
cast of Wonderful Life, and the brief voices, music and
artistry of the movies of Frank Capra from various studios
and writers, The Diary of Anne Frank Sweet Smell of Success,
and news media professionals including Ao Scott for The New
(42:59):
York Times and Jimmy Stewart heard speaking to Michael Parkinson
for BBC and Johnny.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Carson for NBC.
Speaker 16 (43:05):
The Eclipse used under the still existing legal doctrine of
fair use. The Potters are working on that one, though
The voice of Philip van doren Stern was played by
Reino Voshlsky, with the blessing of his granddaughters based on
words he spoke or wrote. His talk of dreams and
writing was pulled from his unpublished work on Dreams, Creativity,
and the Unconscious Mind, provided by his granddaughters Laura Parene
(43:27):
and Sarah, and from his forward to the short story
collection he edited, The Moonlight Traveler, Great Tales of Fantasy
and Imagination, and his accounts related to his short story
on which Wonderful Life was based come from Philip's words
included by his daughter Marguerite Stern Robinson in her afterward
to the edition she published of Phillips The Greatest Gift,
the original story that inspired the Christmas classic It's a
(43:49):
Wonderful Life. Philip's description of his subject of democracy meeting
was paraphrased from his words as provided by his granddaughters.
The voice of Edith H. Walton was played by Elizabeth Marka,
based on words Edith wrote in her Drums of Morning
review for The New York Times. The voice of Frank
Capra was played by Mark Granby, grand nephew of Joseph Granby,
the man who narrated Wonderful Life, based in part on
(44:12):
Frank's words over the years stated publicly to reporters and
in his autobiography the name above the title, and he
quotes words written by Fra Giovanni. Much of this collected
by Janine Bassinger during her incomparable work as longtime head
of the Frank Capra Archive at Wesleyan University and her
the It's a Wonderful Life book. The voice of David Goodrich,
(44:32):
nephew of Francis Goodrich, was played by Danny Ramirez, based
on words he wrote for his book The Real Nick
and Nora, for which he did much original research, and
the voice of Francis Goodrich played by Tess Stalker based
on words she said as found by David for his book.
The voice of the Hollywood News reporter was played by
TBD stating words from a nineteen forty six news story
(44:52):
about the Wonderful Life Ambassador Hotel party, as collected by
Janine Bassinger. The voice of unseen reporter for that party
was played by Rayel of Vishelsky, stating words spoken by
an unknown nineteen forty six on scene reporter, as collected
by Janine. The voice of Virginia McPherson was played by
Mallory keenoid from words Virginia wrote for her syndicated Let's
Gossip column, some original research provided by Mark Harris, who
(45:16):
did it for his book In limited documentary series Five
Came Back, some original research provided by Philip van doren
Stern's granddaughters Laura Parene and Sarah and their Greatest Gift Corporation,
based in part on original research done by their mother, Marguerite,
and thanks to their attorney, Kevin Koloff. Check out Philip
van doren Stern's books, especially The Drums of Morning, An
End of Valor, The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Life
(45:38):
and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, The Man Who Killed Lincoln,
The Secret Missions of the Civil War Communications in the
Civil War, The Confederate Prologued to Sumpter, Robert E. Lee,
The Man and the Soldier, Henry David Thereaux, Writer and Rebel,
The Annotated Walden, Prehistoric Europe from the Stone Age to
the Modern Greeks, and Phillip's Works of science fiction and Fantasy.
Go to Double Asteriskmedia dot com to hear are other
(46:01):
limited run podcasts, Who is rich Blee After the Uprising
with a bold new season in Saint Louis coming Summer
twenty twenty four and Origins Birth of a Pandemic, And
subscribe to True Stories New Weekly. Everybody Has a Podcast
with Ruth and Ray. If you are feeling like you're
on the bridge, please call the AFSP's Suicide and Crisis
(46:22):
Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight into your phone, or
contact the crisis text line by texting seven four to
one dash seven four to one. Consider donating to our
volunteering with AFSP or your local Habitat for Humanity and
make George Bailey proud we're not affiliated with them though.
Copyright twenty twenty three Double Asteriskink
We are looking down on the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn,
New York. Well, I'm looking down. You'll have to listen
to my description. It's the night of February eleventh, nineteen
thirty eight, in many ways, the beginning of this story.
In your universe. The Great Depression has been decimating the
(00:46):
lives of working Americans for a long eight years, and
signs from overseas abound that for right fascists may soon
start another World war. Inside an apartment, in one of
the bedrooms stands Philip van doren Stern, a thirty seven
year old father's spouse and writer. A struggling one, he
(01:10):
kisses his toddler daughter good night and settles into bed
next to his spouse. As he sleeps, Philip has a
vivid dream it hadn't been for me.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Everybody be all a better off.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
My wife and my kids and my friends are look Lord,
follow while you go up and haunt somebody else.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I said, I wish I'd never been born.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
That you wish you'd never been born. Mother.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
This is George.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
I thought sure you'd remember me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Probably it's George. Don't you know me?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
What's happened to us?
Speaker 6 (01:42):
Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and was
drowned at the age of nine.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's a life strange, isn't it.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
Each man's life touches so many other lines. When he
isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't he?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I wouldn't live again? Please God let me live again?
Speaker 5 (02:00):
H mh.
Speaker 8 (02:04):
Buffalo girls, can't you come out tonight? Can't you come
out tonight?
Speaker 9 (02:08):
Can't you come out tonight?
Speaker 10 (02:10):
Buffalo girls?
Speaker 8 (02:11):
Can't you come out tonight?
Speaker 11 (02:14):
By the lie?
Speaker 12 (02:16):
Oh no, Joe say I'd love to play at night?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Joe say.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 13 (02:31):
The Christmas Eve you make me sid Joe.
Speaker 14 (02:58):
It wasn't an epiphany. It was dream and it's a
dream that he remembered when he was shaving the next morning.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You remember Sarah Robinson, one of three daughters who will
be born to Philip van doren Stern's only daughter, Marguerite.
You will meet her sister, Perene Robinson Geller shortly.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So.
Speaker 15 (03:17):
One thing about that our grandfather is that he was
always extremely interested in his dreams.
Speaker 14 (03:23):
One of his last manuscripts was a manuscript called Dreams
and Creativity.
Speaker 16 (03:27):
Unpublished dreams are important sources for creativity. But the ideas
they provide have to be implemented. Unconscious and conscious minds
must work together, unconscious trigger polished with conscious mind. Only
in this way will the stuff of dreams become reality.
The artful author skillfully leads us past the border that
separates the outer world from the world of the imagination.
(03:51):
This wildly improbable country is not utterly impossible. It has
always existed, locked away somewhere within ourselves. The authors whose
work I have edited were interested in fantasy, mystery, and dreams.
Henry David Threaux was a potent dreamer. So was Abraham Lincoln,
who had many remarkable dreams besides those that forecast major
(04:11):
battles and his own death. I have written books on
prehistoric art, art in which early man did his dream
images on the walls of caves.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
If you're one of the millions in your universe who
have watched Wonderful Life multiple times over the years, chances
are it means something special to you. Over this podcast,
I've taken you to hear many talk about what meanings
they have personally taken away from watching it, and each
of their takes is just as real and true as
(04:42):
what the movie's creators may have intended, but those creators
did have their own intentions. Are you curious to know
what those were and who they were? Over this episode,
I'm going to take you backwards to the nineteen thirties
and forties to get to know them and expect the
moments of epiphany that birthed one of the most popular
(05:04):
movies ever made. Beginning with Philip's strangely vivid Dream, there
are a number of other people who come into the story,
each adding something important to what becomes the whole. Before
we can get to know each of them, we should
first consider who qualifies who belongs in the small club
of significant creators of the movie. That straightforward question became
(05:29):
a matter of debate for a number of people involved
in the making of it, and continues today amongst their descendants.
Speaker 14 (05:36):
I have looked at that initial outline.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Sarah again.
Speaker 14 (05:40):
This story has a man named George, who's a banker
in a small town, standing on a bridge contemplating jumping in.
It has George's wish never to be born, and the
grant of the wish by this nondescript Cheerry Stranger, and then,
of course, the tour of the never born George to
the town that he had you in initial life had
(06:02):
lived in, in his desperate visits to his non parents
and his non wife, his return to the bridge and
the stranger to ask for his life back in his
re emergence with new eyes in the world in which
George had never been born, the bank that he worked
in had failed, and his brother had drowned because he
had not been there to save him as a child,
(06:23):
and Mary lived a hard, sad life. This is all
from the initial draft, the initials writing of the dream.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Now here's Mark Harris, whom you know from a previous episode.
Remember he became a Frank Capra expert while researching his
book Five Came Back and the much watched documentary series
based on it that he helped make with Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Is there an author of a film? It depends. I mean,
some movies really do come from one sensibility, and many
many movies are collaborative in ways that nobody who doesn't
understand how they were made will ever understand.
Speaker 17 (07:03):
That's a tough one because it was Grandpa's Like I
would say he's the author, but he's not the only author.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
You've met. Frank Kapra's granddaughter Monica in a previous episode
when she visited Seneca Falls.
Speaker 17 (07:16):
I think it was his heart. I think it was
the story he wanted to tell. He credits all those
people too for what he created, but he did always
put his name first because he felt like he was
the one who created his creation. It was his creation
with everybody else's help. It would be an insult to
him if I didn't say he was the author, because
I do believe that that's what he thought.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
In another previous episode, I took you to Nutley, New Jersey,
where writer Francis Goodrich grew up while Wonderful Life was
still being made. Frances and her co writer husband Albert
would raise this very issue of credit before a Screenwriter's
Guild arbitration. Frank Capra is given third position credit after
Franz's and Albert and Frank's writer for the the final
(08:00):
shooting script. Joe Swirling gets credit for additional scenes. Philip
is credited for the short story Clifford Odette's a playwright
you will soon come to know, who contributes much to
the first act isn't credited at all.
Speaker 18 (08:14):
I don't think that many actors could have made a
story like that so believable.
Speaker 14 (08:19):
He was being shown what his life would be like
if he hadn't been born.
Speaker 18 (08:23):
You know, it just didn't seem ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You also met Kelly previously to be born five years
after the release of Wonderful Life. She thinks only her father,
Jimmy Stewart could have brought to life so impactfully the
driving force of the movie George Bailey, And given how
important George is to the film, that makes Jimmy a
creator too.
Speaker 18 (08:45):
I mean, the film is Copper Dad?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Really whoever deserves the greatest credit. With a little help
from the Angels, the right remarkable people came together at
the right time to infuse each one's ethos into a
time capsule of sorts to be opened by each new
generation that watches this movie. Let's look closer at how
(09:08):
that happened. What was each of these creators about and
what brought each into the picture that allowed them to
add something of themselves to Wonderful Life. First, who was
Philip van doren Stern and what was going on with
him as he woke from his dream on Lincoln's birthday?
Speaker 14 (09:25):
First he did the biography of Lincoln, and then he
went to the Drums of the Morning, which was another
extremely deeply researched work in a novelistic form. It's a
story about the abolitionists in the years leading to the
Civil War.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
The New York Herald Tribune declares Philip's fiction book The
Drums of Mourning the long overdue answer to Gone with
the Wind, the massively successful movie which has swept the
nation three years earlier, bringing audiences inside the perspective of
the prose slavery South during the Civil War.
Speaker 19 (09:57):
New York Times, August ninth, nineteen teen forty two. The
Abolitionists through the eyes of his hero Jonathan Bradford, mister
Stern gives readers a panoramic picture of America during the
decade before the war, shows one how the issue of
slavery came to a head in both the North and
the South, and introduces one to famous abolitionists. More, he
(10:18):
does not minimize the eternal dissensions and failings of the
anti slavery movement, nor fail to link it as he should,
with the larger struggle for human freedoms.
Speaker 15 (10:27):
They didn't suffer fools lately.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's Peren now joining her sister Sarah as they discussed
what their grandfather Philip is all about in the early
nineteen forties.
Speaker 14 (10:38):
Kaween says he didn't suffer fools. Very true. He also
didn't suffer people who didn't respect the dignity of human beings.
Speaker 15 (10:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 14 (10:47):
Let me offer a speculation. He was very, very engrossed
in the story of Lincoln and a sort of the
man who killed Lincoln when he had this dream and
if there's ever a man right for whom the world
would have been different if he hadn't existed, I mean,
as Abraham Lincoln. I mean it's too simplistic. I don't
really want to make much of it, which is that
(11:08):
it's not about the story of the greatest gift. It's
not about the story of remarkable people who live on
a world stage. It's a story about every single one
of us. He was born of a mixed marriage.
Speaker 15 (11:21):
His mother was Christian and his father was Jewish, which
was extremely unusual in the eighteen nineties nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 14 (11:30):
The Van Door and grandfather he had been somehow involved
in John Brown's harper Fery raid.
Speaker 15 (11:36):
I know that his mother was definitively anti slavery. He
was sensitized to some extent about discrimination and isolation and
whatever by being half Jewish and having definitely experienced anti
Semitic events in his life, and part of what he
was doing in the library was avoiding the people who
were who were being blatantly anti Semitic and unpleasant to
(11:59):
a kind of a bookish boy who was half Jewish.
He was always very He tried a bunch of different
things before he settled on writing. He didn't really know
what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a chemist,
he wanted to be an engineer. He tried out these things,
but he didn't like it at all. He just just
missed being in World War One. He was supposed to
(12:19):
report for officers training for two days after armistice was declared,
and once armisist was declared, he decided he wasn't inter
You know, he didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Talk about a sliding doors moment.
Speaker 14 (12:32):
He keeps a very close eye on what's going on
around the world, and he's terrified about this Spata fascism.
Speaker 16 (12:40):
Today. I had lunch with someone. I told him about
the Lincoln book, and I said I would rather write
a different book at this moment. There's much I want
to say that needs saying about the subject of democracy.
Speaker 14 (12:50):
And I think his idea that it was time to
write about democracy was tie into his ideas about abolitionism,
about anti fascism, about respect for human beings, and I think,
you know, I think that's what his story about George's about.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Finally, Philip knows he has a wonderful idea after his
dream in nineteen thirty eight, but he also believes he's
not yet the fiction writer to bring it to life.
Years pass, those right wing fascists do start another World war,
and America's attacked and joins it. Philip goes to work
(13:22):
running their office that provides books to soldiers overseas. In
the spring of nineteen forty three, he decides it's time
to write the final draft of his story, naming it
The Greatest Gift.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
My name is Kennedy. I'm part of the It's a
wonder Life Festival. Storytelling is one of my favorite things
to do, and so they'd asked me again to read
The Greatest Gift, which is the short story that It's
a Wonderful Life is based on. But as some people know,
this story actually is pretty near and dear to me,
(14:00):
to me and to my family. This was one of
those you would read it every year kind of stories
with my family, so it would be part of our
family traditions. The little town straggled up the hill and
was bright with colored Christmas lights, but George Bailey did
not see them. He was leaning over the railing of
(14:21):
the iron bridge, steering down moodily into the black waters.
The current eddied and swirled like liquid glass, and occasionally
a bit of pipes detached from the shore and it
would go sliding downstream to be swallowed up in the
shadows under the bridge. The water looked paralyzingly old. George
(14:47):
wondered how long a man could stay alive in it.
The glassy blackness had a strange hypnotic effect. He leaned still.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Further over the railgh Philip shop system to magazines, but
finds no one willing to publish. December arrives nineteen forty three.
Speaker 16 (15:06):
By that time, I'd become fond of the story that
nobody wanted. I revised it again and had two hundred
and twenty four page pamphlets printed at my own expense.
I sent these out as Christmas cards.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
One of the Christmas cards with the story finds its
way to a Hollywood producer named David Hempstead, who takes
it to his boss, Charles Kerner, the head of RKO's studios.
Kerner sees the potential he buys the story from Philip
for ten thousand dollars the equivalent of about one hundred
and seventy eight thousand dollars in today's money, to turn
(15:38):
it into a movie. Clifford Odetts, the successful playwright, is
brought on by RKO to craft an early draft. This
is Clifford's son, Walt Whitman Odetts.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
He had actually no interest in money.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
You know.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
His father, whom he couldn't stand, was interested in nothing
but money. And the kids, meaning my sister and I
I weren't permitted to sing him. My father didn't want
us exposed to someone like that.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Mister Potter, What makes use as a Herd's gold character?
Speaker 7 (16:10):
The guy who sat behind the desk and of looked
like my grandfather. He's got his tie on on his
coat and he's stating behind the desk. He's got someone
who sits right next to him, right on the left
side there. And my father wouldn't admire someone like that.
He wouldn't admire someone whose life was about collecting money.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Clifford adds the story of George Bailey's youth in Bedford Falls,
his childhood friends Merry and Violet, George b I Guy,
the school dance, and George's nighttime stroll with Mary.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
You want the moon, just say the word and I'll
throw a lat or on it, pull it down.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Nineteen forty five arrives Americans managed to win the war,
and the man who has spent those war years working
under the General in Charge of the Army at the
Office of War Information in Washington, d c. The man
charged with defining for so many the meaning and reason
behind their colossal sacrifices, comes home a changed man.
Speaker 20 (17:18):
This is my first picture, having been in uniform and
out of the theatrical films for five years. I was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
This is Frank Capra, the director.
Speaker 20 (17:29):
People are numb after the catastrophic events of the last
ten or fifteen years. It is the individual that must
be built up in his beliefs, his hopes and his aspirations.
And then, as a matter of course, you will find
the new world we all talk about developing in a
larger way.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Frank's granddaughter Monica again, his.
Speaker 17 (17:49):
Whole entire family came over and they didn't really leave
anybody but one sister back in Sicily, and they came
and got off the boat and went to La and
my startup farm there. You know, he was treated differently
as a kid. He couldn't go to the regular public school.
(18:10):
He had to go to the manual arts school because
he was Italian. That was all very impactful to him,
you know, just like I know I can get out
of this, I know I can figure this out. He
would tell about renting a limo and driving up and
pretending he was a director, and that's how he got
his first job and all that, whatever it was. I
think he must have taken those experiences and just basically
like started making movies and then he became this Academy
(18:33):
Award winning Director's.
Speaker 12 (18:35):
Good Night's Rest Lot of good Side.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
You got nothing to worry about the wolves of Jerry
Gold protecting from the big bad Wolf.
Speaker 21 (18:43):
Who's a pay is the big bad Wolf?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The big bad Wolf, are big bad Wolf. She's afraid
of the they bad Wolf. La la, la la la.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I guess this is just another lost cause.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
Mister Paine, you killed a Johndo movement.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
All right, you're going to see it borne.
Speaker 14 (19:03):
All over again.
Speaker 10 (19:05):
Oh John, if it's worth dying for, it worth living for.
Speaker 17 (19:10):
So he had kind of this oh Henry story, you know,
told himself up, made himself what he was, and then
left all of that Hollywood stuff that he had built
up and went to DC and was the head of
propaganda for the US government, made all the Y we
Fight films.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
What are these two worlds of which mister Wallace spoke,
the free and the slave? Let's take the free world first?
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Our world?
Speaker 6 (19:42):
How did it become free? Only through a long and
unceasing struggle inspired by men of vision.
Speaker 14 (19:49):
He also watched all the newsreels.
Speaker 17 (19:52):
I mean he had to watch all the footage, and
then they made the newsreels out of us.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Frank got a visceral sins of the damage done to
so many people by the right wing fascist philosophy about
humanity taken to its conclusion.
Speaker 17 (20:06):
And I think seeing all that, he's like, what do
we do now?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Frank is back in Hollywood and asking himself what the
so called common man American needs and wants.
Speaker 20 (20:18):
We were at RKO and Charles Corner, the studio head
came in. I've got just the story for you.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
You got to read it.
Speaker 20 (20:29):
Well, my goodness, this thing hit me like a ton
of bricks. It was the story I had been looking
for all my life. Wow, what an idea, The kind
of idea that when I gets old and sick and
scared and ready to die, they'll say he made it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
The greatest gift. Frank buys the rights to Philip's Story
from RKO to be his first movie for his new
independent production company, the aptly named Liberty Films.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Capra, after the war, really wanted to be a leader.
I mean a lot of directors came back from the
war thinking, after what we've experienced, we're never going to
put ourselves in a position of being enslaved by studios again.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
You're hearing Mark Harris again.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Capra was really in the vanguard of that. He started
this company, Liberty Pictures, with George Stevens and William Wiler,
that was going to be essentially a kind of independent
director run mini studio. He gambles his brand new company
on this one film, and the gamble gets more and
more out of control. The movie was supposed to cost
(21:40):
two million dollars to make.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Frank hires Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett to craft wonderful
life their work, especially defining its long middle and the
George Versus Potter battles. This is their nephew, David.
Speaker 11 (21:54):
It's often said that nice people don't win in show business,
but Francis and Albert were unquestionable winners, and over and
over they were described as kind, warm, generous, gracious, wonderful,
as people of extraordinary goodness. The Hacket's friend told me,
it's unusual for people today to be humanly and professionally
(22:14):
successful for an incredibly long time without compromising their principles
and without being untrue to themselves. And they did that
self taught as writers, drawing on their acting experience, Francis
and Albert pushed themselves.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Reviewing three scripts commissioned by RKO before Frank Capra took
the lead. Francis and Albert see elements of clifford O
death script they can use, but the ones by Dalton
Trumbo and Mark Connley go by the wayside Entirely.
Speaker 10 (22:43):
Those were fine, fine writers who had worked on it
before us, but they had gone off track. They had
gone off into stories of politics and other things. But
basically it was a simple story. So we went back
to the Christmas card.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
After the war, I got home and I, uh, my
contract would run out at MGM, and I so I
was independent and after four years I said, maybe can
you forget how to act?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I didn't know this is Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
When Frank Frank Capra called me on the telephone, he said, Jim,
I have I have an idea for a story. Why
don't you come down, I'll tell you about it.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, I ran.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
And he said, well, now you're in a small town
and you'd be saving the loan thing and you're having
a tough time and things aren't going well, and so
you've decided to commit suicide. And an angel named Clarence
he comes down. You're out in the bridge and he
(23:56):
jumps into the water to save you, and you saved him.
And he said, I'm not telling this very well. I said, Frank,
if you want to do a picture about an angel
named Clarence who hadn't won his wing yet, and I
saved him and he teaches me something, I'm your man.
Speaker 18 (24:18):
I knew that he had been a hero in the
war because we had photographs of of him getting a medal.
You know, I have a picture right here of him
receiving the Quada Gara, the flying Cross Kelly. Again, Dad
didn't talk about the war at all. He just did
not talk about it. Mom would say, your father used
(24:39):
to sometimes wake up in the night with a nightmare,
screaming as if he's in a plane and he's yelling
fighter down to the left. And that's as close as
Dad ever got to talk about the war. I think
part of that was that he didn't want to glorify
his war experience, and that's why he didn't make war
movies when he got back. He did not want to
(25:02):
conflate his military service with his acting career. Nothing was
more important to Dead in his life than his military service,
and it was nothing to do with Hollywood, and it
was nothing to do with.
Speaker 14 (25:12):
Fame and rasmeatas or any of that.
Speaker 18 (25:14):
By choosing Dad to be George Bailey, Capra must have
intended for that character to convey a certain type, to
convey us certain emotions that Dad did very well.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Over two months at the top of nineteen forty six,
across four acres on the Rko Ranch in Encino in
Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, a reconstruction of Bedford Falls
is built. It's one of the most elaborate constructions and
movies up to that point. They do a brilliant job.
It's a spitting image of the place. Lionel Barrymore is
(25:49):
cast as iconic villain Henry F. Potter and Donna Reed
as George's partner Mary Hatch. April eighth, nineteen forty six,
the three and a half months of filming begins with
a stellar crew and supporting cast. And I have to say,
Jimmy Stewart looks and sounds just like the real George Bailey.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
I'm not a gray man.
Speaker 16 (26:18):
If you're a player, and you can.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
Hear me.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Show going.
Speaker 16 (26:25):
At the end of my rope.
Speaker 21 (26:29):
Say, when I first read the first draft of the
script and that scene the little prayer affected.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Me, and when I read it, when I did it
in the movie, it did, and it did the same
to me right now.
Speaker 18 (26:52):
His favorite scene in mine is the scene in the bar,
and I watched It's a Wonderful Life recently. I don't
think i'd realized before what a fantastic film it was
and what a fantastic performance it was, because Dad changes
through the movie and he is such a happy innocent
(27:15):
in the beginning, and he looks so young and fresh.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I wish I had a million dollars.
Speaker 18 (27:24):
And in a very short time he ages. He really
ages in the film with no makeup.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
I can't think, George, I.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Did, where's that money?
Speaker 4 (27:39):
You're silly, stupid, old fool.
Speaker 13 (27:41):
Where's that money?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Do you realize what this means?
Speaker 9 (27:44):
It means bankruptcy and scandal and present, that's what it means.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
One of us is going to jail.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
Well, it's not gonna be me.
Speaker 14 (28:01):
I mean, he just.
Speaker 18 (28:03):
His whole aspect changes. And that's the effect of hardship
and despair and feeling like you're a failure.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Only one way you can help me. You don't have
to have eight thousand bucks on you.
Speaker 20 (28:15):
No, we don't use money in him.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. It comes in pretty handy
down here, Bob.
Speaker 18 (28:23):
And the transformation to something else, to the weight to
the wage of responsibility and the weight of problems was
just to me remarkable.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Two million dollars was quite expensive for a movie in
nineteen forty six, and then the movie starts to go
over budget, and so it ends up costing almost three million.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Forty seven million today, And that.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Is a huge investment. There was supposed to be enough
money so that Capra and William Weiler and George Stevens
would each make three movies over the same period of
time for total of nine.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But Frank is optimistic. He and his editors spend the
summer and fall cutting the movie. December ninth arrives at
the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood. He hosts Wonderful Life's first
ever screening at a big private dinner for team members
and friends.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
The stars came out for a hush hot screening of
hit film director Frank Kappra's latest flick, It's a Wonderful Life,
starring Jimmy Stewart and Lionel barrymar at the Ambassador Hotel
Decembin nine.
Speaker 9 (29:40):
Blue Seal Ball in a short evening suit of silver
and gold, brocaded in La may and trimmed with mink.
There's Roz Russell with a sequin scarf over her head
in a black dinner dress topped with stone Martin coat.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
High powered gossip queen Virginia mcperson dishes all about the
secret screening in her let's gossip movie call Um.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Usually it's the movie queens who round up a couple
hundred guests and tossed the glittery parties. But this time
a studio gets a deep curtsey from this corner of
the fanciest wingding in many a movie moon. Yes, Liberty Films,
and they took over half the sprawling Ambassador Hotel to
do it. Frank Capra was the official house said he
(30:25):
wanted everyone to celebrate the completion of his film It's
a Wonderful Life, and every star in Hollywood showed up
to help him. They drank toasts and champagne cocktails and
packed away a scrumptious six course dinner. After dinner, all
three hundred stars had a special showing of It's a
Wonderful Life. And it really was. As far as that
(30:47):
evening was concerned.
Speaker 20 (30:48):
I thought it was the greatest film I ever made.
Better yet, I thought it was the greatest film anybody
had ever made.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I want to do something fat and something.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Important Christmas Day, and Frank's Greatest film opens in fifty
theaters across the nation the following January nineteen forty seven.
It goes into wide release, but few go to see
it over its first year in theaters. It's twenty seventh
(31:17):
among all movies. Liberty is unable to recoup their movie's
high production cost, and Frank and his partners find themselves
racing to find a studio to buy the film before
the bank forecloses.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And then Liberty, when it goes under the contracts, get
bought up by Paramount Pictures, and Capra and Wiler and
George Stevens, who had tried to save Liberty by increasing
their commitment from three films each to five films each,
(31:52):
are now under what amounted to very very long term
contracts to Paramount, which is exactly the kind of situation
that they were bent on avoiding when they came back
from the war. For Capra, the failure of It's a
Wonderful Life was really in many meaningful ways the end
of his career. He made several more features, but none
(32:14):
of them had anything like the cultural impact of the
movies he made before the war. And he really was
for the fifteen or so years after It's a Wonderful
Life until he finally retired, he was kind of at
sea professionally and creatively. I think the failure of It's
(32:36):
a Wonderful Life was so devastating for him that he
kind of thought, well, I played my best card and
it wasn't good enough.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Less than a decade later, Paramount resells Wonderful Life and
it soon ends up at National Telefilm Associates, the company
you heard about in the first episode that will eventually
make those whoops that sees it popularized with all of you,
and RKO, the studio that backed the picture, is taken
over by Howard Hughes, who kind of runs it into
(33:07):
the ground. They sell the ranch where the Bedford Falls
set stands in nineteen fifty four, bulldozing it. The eighty
nine acres are merged with adjoining land to cater to
the needs of San Fernando Valley's growing communities. People live
there now. RKO close the shop three years later. Jimmy
(33:29):
Stewart goes on to make some of the best movies
of his career for other directors through the nineteen seventies
before retiring.
Speaker 7 (33:37):
You said, Jimmy, That's a Wonderful Life is your favorite.
Speaker 11 (33:39):
Movie of all of all the movies you made.
Speaker 14 (33:43):
Still when you think of it, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I'm sort of a serious thing and sort of the
troubles a man well people have gone through four years
of war and everything, and I think that I think
they sort they wanted Brud Skelton, and they wanted very laws.
They wanted oneed commedy when they when they'd got in
the movie.
Speaker 18 (34:04):
I think I was a young teenager and I thought,
I just thought it was so sad that George Bailey
had not been allowed to go travel like he wanted to.
And I just felt like it was a really sad movie.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Jimmy's daughter Kelly again.
Speaker 18 (34:20):
Poor George Bailey stuck in this town. And that's what
I got from the film at that time, which was
very different than what I get from it now. He
might not have had everything that he wanted, but what
he wanted didn't really mean that much to him. What
mattered more is being kind to people and giving you
(34:45):
know that that turns that turned out to be so
much more rewarding and wonderful than what he wanted. The
movie means different things at different times, like in these
troubled times in this country. You know those scenes where
he's he's talking to mister Potter, evil mister Potter. You
(35:10):
know the speech he makes, It means so much more
than it used.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
To Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett write a string of
classics into the end of the nineteen fifties, including The
Diary of Anne Frank that wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Speaker 13 (35:27):
I still believe in spite of everything, and people are
really good at heart.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
I want to see something now, not one thousand years
from now.
Speaker 14 (35:40):
Someday when we get outside again, I'm.
Speaker 20 (35:44):
Going to.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Francis joins us up here first, leaving Albert alone for
a little over a decade. He's never the same without
his beloved partner. The reunion up here was really something
their nephew David again.
Speaker 11 (36:02):
I never heard Francis or Albert use the word faith
and connection with their life together, and despite having worked
on It's a wonderful life, they surely did not believe
in angels.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
But Clifford Odettes returns to Broadway for four more plays,
one is shortlisted for the Pulitzer. He returns to Hollywood
one more time with a movie classic, Sweet Smell of Success.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
Hej it's one thing away a dark color when it
turns into winnows.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I'd rather have my freedom. The man in jail is
always for freedom.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
This is Ao Scott, the movie critic describing what he
takes from Clifford's last major movie.
Speaker 22 (36:39):
There are people who lead modest, quiet and virtuous lives,
and there are people who are obsessively devoted to the
maintenance of their own prestige and influence. And then there's
everybody else, drawn to power, like bees to a blossom or.
Speaker 14 (36:52):
Moth to a flame.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Clifford joins us up here soon after in nineteen sixty three.
Not long before for that, he gives some life advice
to his son Walt.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
He said, so, what do you think you might want
to deal with your life when you get older? And
I just kind of shrugged, you know, a fourteen year old. Yougo,
I don't know. And he said, well, you'll think about
it when you get older. But the only things worth
doing are to be an artist or to do something
(37:26):
that helps other people. And I remember that's exactly what
he said to me.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Philip van doren Stern mostly returns to nonfiction, writing often
about the Civil War and also biographies of Americans he
considers great. His beloved only child, Marguerite, goes on to
make a big impact on the world, inspired in part
by wonderful life, as we'll look at in the next
(37:52):
episode that house.
Speaker 14 (37:53):
That he bought in Brooklyn Heights using the proceeds of
the South of movie rights. They lived in for almost
twenty years. In sixty three, they sell the house and
they spend all that time travel on from many locations
in Europe, so they were kind of found a footloose
for those couple of years. Loved he loved that house,
and he talks about how the house featured in his
(38:14):
dreams for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Frank Capra never again makes another movie that critics consider important,
retiring from his beloved profession in nineteen sixty one and
Wonderful Life mostly languishes in an obscure company's vaults, unknown
to the world, and then, well, you know all the rest.
The powerful role the movie ended up playing in your
(38:38):
world and might still have to play in your future.
In an earlier episode, I told you that despite George
Bailey being born in another universe, his story made it
to you thanks to this movie. How is that possible?
You may have been asking yourself, have you figured it
out yet? Phillip's Dream in nineteen thirty eight, Frank being
(38:59):
in the Seneca Falls area in nineteen forty five, Those
specific writers Clifford Francis and Albert finding their way to
the production Rashida Jones's grandfather somehow letting the movies copyright
slip in nineteen seventy four. A lot of happy coincidences,
some might say, But well, you don't think we only
(39:21):
interceded that one time to save George on that one
Christmas Eve in his universe?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Let's let Frank again provide our concluding thought.
Speaker 20 (39:32):
Wonderful Life sums up my philosophy of filmmaking, first to
exalt the worth of the individual. Second, the champion man
plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit
or divinity. And third, to dramatize the viability of the individual.
(39:53):
I wanted to reflect the compelling words of Fra Giviani
of nearly five centuries ago. The gloom of the world
is but a shadow behind it, Yet within reach is joy.
There's a radiance and glory in the darkness. I beseech
you to look for myself. I can only say it
(40:14):
was my kind of film, for my kind of people.
Speaker 16 (40:23):
George Bailey was never born. Visit Savegeorge Bailey dot com
to join the mission. There you'll find links to works
by this episode's participants. Learn more about how to celebrate
George Bailey Day on Saturday, December ninth and annually the
second Saturday of December hereafter by hosting your own Wonderful
Life viewing party. Tell your friends to listen to this show, subscribe, like, comment,
(40:46):
and post about it on social media hashtags Save George Bailey.
Subscribe to our Patreon to hear uncut interviews and bonus content.
Podcasts also available on YouTube. iHeartMedia presents a double ass risk.
iHeartMedia co production in association with True Stories Created, written
and directed by Joseph kurt Angfer and Reyno Vashlski. Kurt
(41:09):
Angfer producer and supervising editor, Reno Vashlsky producer and journalist,
Elizabeth Marcus editor, Roy Sillings narrator. George Bailey theme song
by Carolyn Sills Buyer albums soundtrack composed by Zachary Walter
by his Albums and the original soundtrack to this podcast
available wherever you get your music. Malory Keenoy co producer,
(41:32):
writer's assistant, archival producer and fact checker. John Autry sound engineer,
additional editing, sound design, and Mix Executive producers Dave Cassidy,
Kurt Angfer, Lindsay Hoffman and Bethan Mcaluso for iHeartMedia, John
Duffy for Double Asterisk, Ruth Vaka for True Stories, Reyno
Vashlsky for Double Asterisk and True Stories, Elizabeth Hankouch Associate
(41:56):
producer Brandon Lavoy and Ryan Pennington. Sulting producers Keith Sklar,
Contract Legal, Peter Yazzi Copyright and Fair Use Legal, Mattie
Acres archival Specialist, ron Coaddition, Benji Michaels, Publicists Caveasanthanam and
Marley Weaver. Marketing and Promotions. Art and web designed by
(42:17):
Aaron Kim. Interns were Kyra Gray, Emma Ramirez, Eva Stewart
and Tia Wilson. Podcast license for Philip Van Doren Stearns
The Greatest Gift provided by the Greatest Gift Corporation. Their
attorney is Kevin Koloff. Recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios
in Bloomington, Indiana. This episode featured in chronological orders Sarah Robinson,
(42:39):
Mark Harris, Monica Capra Hodges, Kelly Stewart, Harcourt, Laura Robinson,
Perene Robinson, Geller, Seth Kennedy, Walt Whitman, Odetts, and the
cast of Wonderful Life, and the brief voices, music and
artistry of the movies of Frank Capra from various studios
and writers, The Diary of Anne Frank Sweet Smell of Success,
and news media professionals including Ao Scott for The New
(42:59):
York Times and Jimmy Stewart heard speaking to Michael Parkinson
for BBC and Johnny.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Carson for NBC.
Speaker 16 (43:05):
The Eclipse used under the still existing legal doctrine of
fair use. The Potters are working on that one, though
The voice of Philip van doren Stern was played by
Reino Voshlsky, with the blessing of his granddaughters based on
words he spoke or wrote. His talk of dreams and
writing was pulled from his unpublished work on Dreams, Creativity,
and the Unconscious Mind, provided by his granddaughters Laura Parene
(43:27):
and Sarah, and from his forward to the short story
collection he edited, The Moonlight Traveler, Great Tales of Fantasy
and Imagination, and his accounts related to his short story
on which Wonderful Life was based come from Philip's words
included by his daughter Marguerite Stern Robinson in her afterward
to the edition she published of Phillips The Greatest Gift,
the original story that inspired the Christmas classic It's a
(43:49):
Wonderful Life. Philip's description of his subject of democracy meeting
was paraphrased from his words as provided by his granddaughters.
The voice of Edith H. Walton was played by Elizabeth Marka,
based on words Edith wrote in her Drums of Morning
review for The New York Times. The voice of Frank
Capra was played by Mark Granby, grand nephew of Joseph Granby,
the man who narrated Wonderful Life, based in part on
(44:12):
Frank's words over the years stated publicly to reporters and
in his autobiography the name above the title, and he
quotes words written by Fra Giovanni. Much of this collected
by Janine Bassinger during her incomparable work as longtime head
of the Frank Capra Archive at Wesleyan University and her
the It's a Wonderful Life book. The voice of David Goodrich,
(44:32):
nephew of Francis Goodrich, was played by Danny Ramirez, based
on words he wrote for his book The Real Nick
and Nora, for which he did much original research, and
the voice of Francis Goodrich played by Tess Stalker based
on words she said as found by David for his book.
The voice of the Hollywood News reporter was played by
TBD stating words from a nineteen forty six news story
(44:52):
about the Wonderful Life Ambassador Hotel party, as collected by
Janine Bassinger. The voice of unseen reporter for that party
was played by Rayel of Vishelsky, stating words spoken by
an unknown nineteen forty six on scene reporter, as collected
by Janine. The voice of Virginia McPherson was played by
Mallory keenoid from words Virginia wrote for her syndicated Let's
Gossip column, some original research provided by Mark Harris, who
(45:16):
did it for his book In limited documentary series Five
Came Back, some original research provided by Philip van doren
Stern's granddaughters Laura Parene and Sarah and their Greatest Gift Corporation,
based in part on original research done by their mother, Marguerite,
and thanks to their attorney, Kevin Koloff. Check out Philip
van doren Stern's books, especially The Drums of Morning, An
End of Valor, The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Life
(45:38):
and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, The Man Who Killed Lincoln,
The Secret Missions of the Civil War Communications in the
Civil War, The Confederate Prologued to Sumpter, Robert E. Lee,
The Man and the Soldier, Henry David Thereaux, Writer and Rebel,
The Annotated Walden, Prehistoric Europe from the Stone Age to
the Modern Greeks, and Phillip's Works of science fiction and Fantasy.
Go to Double Asteriskmedia dot com to hear are other
(46:01):
limited run podcasts, Who is rich Blee After the Uprising
with a bold new season in Saint Louis coming Summer
twenty twenty four and Origins Birth of a Pandemic, And
subscribe to True Stories New Weekly. Everybody Has a Podcast
with Ruth and Ray. If you are feeling like you're
on the bridge, please call the AFSP's Suicide and Crisis
(46:22):
Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight into your phone, or
contact the crisis text line by texting seven four to
one dash seven four to one. Consider donating to our
volunteering with AFSP or your local Habitat for Humanity and
make George Bailey proud we're not affiliated with them though.
Copyright twenty twenty three Double Asteriskink
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