The It's A Wonderful Life Book

George Lassos Book

The It's A
Wonderful Life Book
by Jeanine Basinger
Knopf Books
ISBN: 0394747194

It’s been over twenty years since I first borrowed this book from a library and read it... but I was never able to afford a copy and, well I think it’s come back into print now but, this October, I managed to stumble on the exact same, first edition I read all those years ago for the less than princely sum of £2.12... an opportunity I immediately took advantage of. It’s A Wonderful Life (reviewed here), of course, is not just a much loved Christmas movie but, also, one of the all time greats. So I was pretty surprised when I revisited this tome to find that some of the stories about its production and reception were things I’d managed to forget over the years.

If you’ve not read this one and, like me, you have a passion for the film, then I would definitely recommend it. It covers the film from its infancy to its initially disappointing reception and then goes into the life it gained for itself afterwards (the nearest modern equivalent I can think of, of this phenomenon, would be Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner... reviewed here). It’s a very interesting look at the classic movie and it’s done with the aid of key witnesses and participants of the production... as well as by referencing some interesting visual artefacts surrounding the movie.

It starts with both the director, Frank Capra and star James Stewart both returning from active duty in the Second World War... both wanting to get back into their previously successful careers and both very nervous about it. Capra set up an independent film company, Liberty Films, with a few people like director William Wyler but only this and Wyler’s The Best Years Of Our Lives were, I believe, released by them. My understanding, or at least it’s strongly hinted at, is that the perceived box office failure of It’s A Wonderful Life (bearing in mind it was still one of the top ten grossing box office films of the year of its release), lead to the premature downfall and liquidation of Liberty Films.

The tale begins properly when a property bought by RKO for their star Cary Grant proved to be something that they just couldn’t figure out how to make work. They had already made three script attempts by three writers, all of them quite different and based on The Greatest Gift, a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern. This was a story which Stern couldn’t get published so, in frustration, he had it printed up as 200 Christmas cards to give to his friends. Someone at RKO saw it, liked it enough to develop a film about it and bought the rights. But, yeah, they couldn’t make a go of it so it was sold to Capra, who also took custody of the three prior scripts (none of which he ended up using other than a few similar scenes, for his rewrites).

The book then goes through the production process with various artefacts presented such as alternate casting ideas jotted down by Capra and also ideas about the various characters. For instance, for the wonderful Violet, played brilliantly by Gloria Grahame in her first big break, he wrote “She doesn’t count sheep to go to sleep, she counts men.” And there are a lot of stories told, many of them by first hand witnesses as the author of this book researched her tome, where she sorts out the truth from the publicity to the best of her knowledge. There were stories which I did remember from the last time I read it... such as the snow developed especially for the film (shot on an exterior set through a very long hot summer) and the fact that the special effects team who developed this new, more realistic snow for the film received a Motion Picture Academy Class III Certificate of Honourable Mention for this invention. Also, when Donna Reed has to throw a stone a good long distance and break one of the windows in the old, abandoned house which would eventually become Mary and George Bailey’s home, her experiences growing up as a farm girl with plenty of brothers meant that she was able to pitch the pebble and break the far off window first go, without resorting to the sniper Capra had standing by to shoot the window out.

Then there’s the story about the loud clatter of objects as drunk Uncle Billy walks off screen at one point in the movie... the tale going that this was recorded by accident as an electrician accidentally knocked over a stack of props during the take and, with the voice of Uncle Billy improvising against it, a new ending to the scene was born (for which Capra rewarded the electrician with 10 dollars for improving his film).

And there’s also the occasional behind the scenes info I’d forgotten recounted in here, such as Lionel Barrymore being too well associated with nice guy roles so, as the villainous Potter, he was fitted with a prosthetic to change the shape of his forehead to make him look less sympathetic (something I still never notice to this day... I’ll have to remember to look out for it again next time I watch it).

In addition, there are lots of dates and facts about the production, such as when Capra was forced to give the cast and crew the day off due to extreme heat and, also, lots of talk about the picnic party he and Stewart threw for everybody, not long after the picture had wrapped production.

The first hundred or so pages of this book detail all this stuff and the press reaction to it, followed by a look at the modern day renaissance of the film through television showings throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, interviews with James Stewart and Jospeh Biroc (one of the three cinematographers on the film) and even a reprint of the original story, The Greatest Gift, which started the ball rolling. This last is a very interesting read because the essence is there to a degree but Capra and his people sure did more than just add a heap of window dressing. This is all followed by a reprint of the final shooting script, again heavily illustrated by production stills... which was again changed, of course, as it was being filmed with improvised and improved replacement lines and actions directly on set (so yeah, that’s a pretty interesting read too). The last item before a few appendices of more documentation and artefacts is a transcript of a Q&A session with Frank Capra at a College screening of the film he attended in the 1960s. Which certainly gives an insight into how this much celebrated director worked with his casts and crews.

And that’s me done, for another couple of decades (at least) with Jeanine Basinger’s pretty great The It’s A Wonderful Life Book. Certainly a recommendation to lovers of the cinema as an insight into the production of a well loved motion picture and, of course, an absolute must read for those who have discovered and loved the film over the years. One of the more interesting film books you can buy.