Grinching a Sacred Cow

This, George, Is the Distance to Put Between Yourself and Bedford Falls

It's a Wonderful Lie

Would Frank Capra or his writers have chosen to live in Bedford Falls? I say Pottersville was more their speed. It certainly was Hollywood’s speed. Mine too if I’m honest. What is Bedford Falls but a place to be managed and manipulated through an unsatisfied life giving it up time and again for little people and plain folk looking after Number One as surely but less honestly than Mr. Potter, who yes, is my hero, just like Edward Arnold was in Meet John Doe and Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (truth is I want these to always get what they want in every picture they did). Mr. Potter speaks truth to suffocating power that is small town expectation and do-right-thing by chumps like George Bailey who, come to think of it, is the only Bedford Fallsian to lay down sacrifice of any sort while all of others suck life blood out of him. Me watching this time and George buying the beat-up suitcase to world travel: Go George, no run George, to the train station, get aboard. Never mind even a toothbrush. And don’t leave a forwarding address. Check back after ten years to find out what happened while you bridge-built and island hopped. We only go around once, George. Your ingrate neighbors know it. Mr. Potter certainly knows it.

But Face It, George Will Never See These Places, and Where's the Happy Ending in That?

Everyone in Bedford Falls wants a friend like George who will give and give and then some. Real life laughs at the Georges of the world. Hollywood certainly laughs at them and exploits them. I want Capra to have made It’s a Wonderful Life in 1932 with Lee Tracy as George Bailey, or better yet Ted Healy. I don’t get a sense of creatives here really believing their bromides. And what’s so wrong about Pottersville? Looks like a live wire spot to me. I’d like going inside those bars and clubs, maybe find out what Violet Bick did to be dragged out bodily by cops. I’m guessing Mr. Potter manufactured neon among sidelines because look at those fabulous fronts, and so many! A tenderloin any town could revel in. Nobody judging you here, George, or lining up for you to forfeit hope and dreams to put roofs over their heads. Maybe George should stick around Pottersville a week or two and find out if maybe it’s an improvement. Think of freedom he now has for not having been born. How many middle-age men stooped by responsibility and disappointment would gladly swap places with new and clean-slate George? I bet plenty. George may have lots to thank Clarence for if only he sticks around Pottersville to smell the roses. How about “Bailey’s Palace” with George a latter-day Blackie Norton? He could regale drinker pals and revolving mistresses with tales of a life he misspent before this new one was angel-sent. So who is this new guy Bailey that seems to know the score on everybody in town? Never mind, figures an impressed if bemused Potter: this is my kind of sharp-thinking partner to trim suckers coming and going at Pottersville. Yes, it can be a wonderful life after all.

Mary Smashes the Record When George Momentarily Slips Free of Her Snare

Sam Wainwright has the right idea. He just goes the hell and does what he pleases. Sam has everyone’s number early on. He got rich for seeing life as it is. Sam doesn’t have to fly from Europe to save hick bacon back home. He just wires cash enough to beat all their time at rescuing George and themselves. Frank Albertson played Sam. I wish he had been Sam again in Psycho, because his “Tom Cassidy” is essentially the same guy, realists both, and bulged with money for it (“I never carry more than I can afford to lose”). Speaking of others: Would maybe a little jail term curb Uncle Billy’s big mouth? Him shooting it off, loudly insulting Mr. Potter at the bank, leads directly to Potter happily lifting the $8000 that will put the lot square behind an eight ball. And what of birds and squirrels loose around the Saving and Loan, Uncle Billy drinking on the job and overall dimwittedness? Just another pack for George to carry on his back. Yes, more I think of it, Pottersville would be his deliverance, if George had sense enough to realize it. Mary Manipulate stakes her quarry and wins with barely a struggle. It is she, not George, who lassoes the moon, latter being hapless him of course, Sam the lucky voice at the other end of the phone with loose gal nuzzling him and NY night lights and life beckoning from without. Sam, you are my takeaway role model from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Keep Digging Your Hole and Then Jump In, Uncle Billy, as Fault for $8000 Loss Lies Largely with You

Lionel Barrymore was gruff but essentially kind Dr. Gillespie in MGM’s Blair Hospital series. As Mr. Potter, he is gruff and not kind, but like Gillespie, makes sense. Such was cobra in the basket that was Barrymore. He was never outright wrong, even where villainous. Audiences then, as in knowing Lionel better than we would, listened when the sage spoke. They weighed his words, figured him at least part right whatever he said. George gets his back up and brays at Potter, a by comparison young man trying to take down oaken age and wisdom that is Barrymore and by extension all of characters he played. Niggling is possibility that Potter has a point, “ideals without common sense can ruin this town” an argument similar to what Mr. Milton told Al Stephenson during a same year, only their difference of opinion didn’t last a lifetime as George and Mr. Potter’s undoubtedly will. And what happens with the next Building and Loan crisis, or ones after that? Rest assured a determined Potter, endlessly provoked by George and his borrowers, will get the Pottersville he wants, age and a lifetime of give-give having left George spent-spent, Bedford Falls to submit like Hadleyville had the Miller gang taken over. Back of screen happenings was James Stewart doubting he could re-enter his pre-war occupation, Lionel Barrymore there to supply reassurance. Imagine listening in on that conversation.

Thick Eyebrows Were Always Movie Shorthand for Spinster-Losers, So Am I a Loser for Preferring Them?

Endless apocrypha say It’s a Wonderful Life “failed,” reality being but three surpassing it for domestic rentals on RKO ledgers: The Kid from Brooklyn, Song of the South, and The Best Years of Our Lives, all, including Wonderful Life, outside projects distributed by the company. Nothing produced in-house at RKO that year came close to It’s a Wonderful Life. High negative cost was the bugaboo and cause of loss for a show well liked and certainly a hit in terms of attendance. We could wish to know what outcoming crowds said in 1946-47. Theirs surely was a different experience from ours of fifty-years-going embrace of It’s a Wonderful Life as a certified Christmas classic. Public domain status helped, notwithstanding often lousy prints. Paramount and NBC seized exclusivity by claiming it was still copyrighted after all, a specious claim I wish someone would challenge, but old-becoming-too-old makes for battle less worth waging. There is of late a 4K, okay if wonky in spots. I pushed the accelerator at times, George rousting Uncle Billy as if he’d do anything other than forgive the old man and cover for him (Mr. Potter is quietly amused upon realizing that) … George saving Clarence which leads to lengthy explanation of who Clarence is and why he's there, me for quicker to Pottersville … George exulting to be back among alleged living, kissing the knob off the stair banister and such. Stewart wearies a little with all this, or again, is it me? Felt Liberty Valance withdrawal symptoms at times. It’s a Wonderful Life cuts close because my grandfather stayed home and ran the family business (clothing, dry goods, mercantile) so that his eight younger brothers and sisters could go to college, he and his father having opened the store in 1899 when my Grandfather was eighteen. He was beloved by his family and the local people he helped over many years. He started a bank in the twenties that went down in the Crash and resulting Depression with all hands. My grandfather tried making up losses suffered by the community but could not cover them all. He lived another twenty years less wonderfully, events having imitated art, or in this instance, prefigured it.