It's a Wonderful Life
About It's a Wonderful Life
George Bailey gives up travel and college to keep the Bailey Building and Loan open in Bedford Falls, the one business Mr. Potter does not own. On Christmas Eve his uncle loses $8,000. George is about to jump from a bridge when the angel Clarence Odbody stops him and shows the town as it would be if George had never been born. George asks to live again. The town replaces the missing money.
Cast & crew
More about It's a Wonderful Life
Frank Capra directed and produced for Liberty Films. Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Jo Swerling, and Capra wrote it from Philip Van Doren Stern’s 1943 story The Greatest Gift. It premiered at the Globe Theatre in New York on 20 December 1946 and went into general release on 7 January 1947. RKO released it. The theatrical gross is listed at $3.3 million against a $3.18 million cost. Break-even was $6.3 million.
Themes
Making
Capra needed silent falling snow on a four-acre set. Shearman’s department sprayed the Foamite mix and blew it with a fan. Plaster and gypsum covered roofs and sills.
Look
Joseph Walker, Joseph F. Biroc, and Victor Milner shot Bedford Falls on the Encino ranch and the RKO stages in Culver City, including the bridge in the snow.
Technique
Russell Shearman’s snow, shared with Marty Martin and Jack Lannan, used water, soap flakes, Foamite, and sugar so actors could walk and speak while it fell. Painted cornflakes had forced later dubbing.
Music
Dimitri Tiomkin composed the score.
Preservation
The film copyright lapsed in 1974 when NTA failed to renew it. The underlying story, The Greatest Gift, had been renewed by Stern in 1971.
Notes
- James Stewart plays George. Donna Reed plays Mary. Lionel Barrymore plays Potter. Henry Travers plays Clarence. Thomas Mitchell plays Uncle Billy.
- It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Capra), Best Actor (Stewart), Best Film Editing (William Hornbeck), and Best Sound (John Aalberg). It did not win those.
- At the 19th Academy Awards, Russell Shearman, Marty Martin, and Jack Lannan received a Technical Achievement Award for the artificial snow. It was the film’s only Academy Award.
- The snow mix was water, soap flakes, Foamite, and sugar, used because painted cornflakes were too loud under dialogue.
- The Bedford Falls set reused the Cimarron street built on the Encino ranch. Joseph Walker, Joseph F. Biroc, and Victor Milner photographed it. Dimitri Tiomkin wrote the music.
- The U.S. copyright was not renewed in 1974, after a clerical error at NTA, and the picture entered the public domain. Stern had renewed the copyright on The Greatest Gift in 1971, so stations that broadcast the film still paid for the story.
- The National Board of Review listed it among its top ten films.
Awards
- Academy Technical Achievement Award (Russell Shearman, Marty Martin, Jack Lannan, artificial snow)
- National Board of Review: Top Ten Films
Scenes
- Uncle Billy loses the $8,000.
- Clarence shows George a Bedford Falls where he was never born.
- The town brings in the missing money.
Influenced by
- Philip Van Doren Stern’s The Greatest Gift (1943), loosely from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
Also available
- Paramount Home Entertainment, 75th-anniversary limited-edition Blu-ray
