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It's a Wonderful Life

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Directed by: Frank Capra
Written by:
Release date: 1946
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Characters:
Merchandise:

It's a Wonderful Life is a film directed by Frank Capra, starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Henry Travers, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, and Lionel Barrymore.

Although the film begins and ends on Christmas Eve, this film is not a strict "Christmas movie." Most of the film is actually a straight dramatic story of the life of George Bailey, who keeps trying to get out of his small town of Bedford Falls, but keeps getting pulled back in for various reasons, most of them having to do with Henry F. Potter, the richest man in town. The film chronicles George's life from childhood, graduating from high school, and his many battles with Potter, as he tries to take over George's family-owned bank, the Bailey Building and Loan.

One Christmas Eve, George finds that the bank is short $8,000, and Potter accuses George of having stolen it. Rather than face the entire town (and possible jail time), George tries to jump off of a bridge, but he's stopped by an eccentric little elderly man named Clarence, who tells George that he's his guardian angel, and that he has to help him, so he can earn his wings. When George tells Clarence that he wishes that he'd never been born, Clarence shows him an alternate Bedford Falls, now named Pottersville. All of the people that George and the bank have helped over the years are now virtual slaves to Mr. Potter, and the Building and Loan no longer exists. As George visits his friends and family all over the town (none of whom know who he is), he sees that they have all become bitter, sad and depressed people. Finally, George can take it no more. He runs back to the bridge, and yells to an unseen Clarence (and to God) to please put everything back the way it was, even if it means that he has to go to jail for something he didn't do.

Suddenly, a local policeman finds him, and calls him by name. George is so happy, he hugs the policeman, and starts running home to his family. By the time he gets there, the entire town has gathered in his house, with a basket of money to repay the bank's missing funds. As they sing "Auld Lang Syne", George's daughter notices that one of their Christmas tree's bells is ringing. She tells George that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. George agrees, and looks up to Heaven and says, "Atta boy, Clarence!"

Contents

[edit] Soundtrack

A CD, featuring excerpts from the film's soundtrack, including music, dialogue and sound effects, was released in 1997 on Nick at Nite Records, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment.

[edit] Television airings

When the original copyright expired in 1974 due to a clerical error by National Telefilm Associates, the rights holders at that time, the film went into public domain, meaning anyone could broadcast the film without the copyright holder getting paid. Paramount Pictures laid claim to a copyright in the 1990's, and is the current rights holders, and since 2002, granted NBC broadcast rights to air the movie twice a year, including Christmas Eve in the USA. In the UK, Universal Pictures, the owners of NBC, holds the rights. Oddly enough, Paramount held the rights to the movie from 1951 until 1955 when they bought Capra's production company, Liberty Pictures. They sold the right to U.M. and M. Company in 1955, then were purchased by NTA several years later.

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] Parodies

[edit] Other Christmas films

[edit] Non-Christmas parodies

  • Don Rosa wrote a special Donald Duck comic story for the character's 60th birthday, titled "The Duck Who Never Was", in which Donald, who feels that he is as much of a nobody as George, meets a genie who grants wishes to whoever rubs his lamp on their birthday (which in Donald's case is June 9th) and wishes he were never born. Donald is then thrown into an alternate reality where, because of him never being born, everyone he cares for is much worse off than they were with him around (except his irritatingly lucky cousin Gladstone Gander, much to Donald's dismay). Needless to say, Donald immediately wishes things were back to the way they were.
  • The Rugrats episode "Chuckie's Wonderful Life" parodies this movie with Chuckie in the George Bailey role.
  • Garfield and Friends did a parody in a U.S. Acres segment in which Wade Duck rescues an angel who, like Clarence, takes people into fantasy sequences to show what the world would be like without them ("like that movie they show seven million times every Christmas"). Ironically, the alternate Wade-less reality is not very different from the regular one, but Wade does find out how Orson's brothers were stealing the vegetables he was trying to guard earlier.
  • The Donkey Kong Country cartoon had an episode parodying the movie (and even having the same title) in which Donkey Kong gets everybody upset with him and decides to run away, but falls unconscious during his trek. He has a dream where Eddie the Yeti, as his guardian angel, shows him an alternate version Kongo Bongo Island where he doesn't exist, in which Diddy is an evil dictator, Candy is married to Bluster, and K. Rool is protecting a papier-mache lilypad.
  • An episode of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, titled "Shredderville", has the Turtles thinking maybe the world would be better off without them, and then having a dream where they wake up in a world in which they never existed and Shredder succeeded in his plans to taking over the world. The whole city is a mess, and not even Shredder is happy with it.
  • Issue #16 of the comic book Cartoon Network Presents featured a Top Cat story, "It's a Wonderful Strife", in which both T.C. and Officer Dibble, tired of putting up with each other, wish they'd never come to the city. The both of them are then shown alternate realities by their guardian angels, played respectively by Huckleberry Hound and Snagglepuss. Huck shows T.C. that, without guidance from a crafty leader, his gang has to resort to crime for sustenance, and Snagglepuss shows Dibble that if he never became a police officer, T.C. is an anarchist bossing around the entire police force.
  • Issue #18 of The Flintstones and the Jetsons features a treatment of the movie's story given to The Flintstones, titled "It's a Wonderful Prehistoric Life", with Fred Flintstone in the George Bailey role and The Great Gazoo in the role of Clarence.
  • A two-part story in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, entitled "Two Futures", lets Wheeler, who was chosen by Gaia to possess the ring of Fire, see what Earth would be like in the future, had he never joined the Planeteers. In the end, he discovers just how important his role in the team really is.
  • In 1986 SNL did a sketch called "The Lost Ending of "It's a Wonderful Life," with Dana Carvey portraying George Bailey. Depicts Potter receiving quite the violent confrontation when it's discovered he has withheld the lost $8,000.

[edit] References

  • In Elmo Saves Christmas, one of the side-effects of Christmas coming every day is that It's a Wonderful Life is the only thing on TV. At one point, Ernie and Bert pass by a TV set playing the movie and pause for thought when they hear George Bailey saying, "Bert! Ernie! What's the matter with you two guys? You were here on my wedding night." This is in reference to the rumor that Ernie and Bert are named after the taxi driver and the cop.
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