The Frank Capra film It's A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, was shown for the first time on this date in 1945. It was a charity screening at New York's Globe Theatre. 10 things you might not know about this favourite Christmas film:
- It's said to be the only film to have been based on a greeting card. It's not strictly true. It was based on a short story, The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern, which was itself loosely based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The greeting card idea comes from the fact that Van Doren Stern was unable to find a publisher for his story so he decided to self publish it and had it printed as a booklet gift he could send to his family and friends.
- The plot concerns a thoroughly nice guy called George Bailey who has put his own dreams on one side in order to help others, and is considering suicide on Christmas Eve. His guardian Angel intervenes to show George the huge differences he made to the lives of the people in his family and community.
- As befitting any tale based on A Christmas Carol, it needed a Scrooge-like character. In this case it was the miserly banker, Mr Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore. After considering a number of actors for the role, including Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart, Claude Rains and Vincent Price, Barrymore got the part because he'd already played Scrooge in radio adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Making the villain a banker, however, set off a furore in the 1940s equivalent of political correctness gone mad. The FBI decided that since the capitalist was depicted as evil and heartless, the film therefore had to be Communist propaganda. They claimed that two of the screenwriters "were very close to known Communists and on one occasion in the recent past practically lived with known Communists and were observed eating lunch every day with known Communists" and wanted to get the film banned as "Un-American". The House Un-American Activities Committee, however, presumably disagreed, because they took no action.
- It was the first film to use chemical Snow. Up to that point, snow would be simulated by painting Corn flakes White. However, anyone who had ever poured cornflakes into a bowl will guess that this could get quite noisy, so the dialogue would have to be dubbed in later. Director Frank Capra wanted to record the sound live, so he had to come up with a solution. The crew used a fire fighting chemical called foamite mixed with soap and Water to make the snow, which was pumped at high pressure through a wind machine. 6,000 gallons of this stuff was used in the film. The RKO Effects Department received a Class III Scientific or Technical Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the new film snow.
- The film is set in a fictional American small town called Bedford Falls. The real town of Seneca Falls, New York, claims that Capra based Bedford Falls on their town after he visited there in 1945. The town has an annual "It's a Wonderful Life Festival" in December and has a hotel called Hotel Clarence, named after the guardian angel. However, film historian Jeanine Basinger has been through all of Capra's notes and diaries and found no firm evidence for this.
- The location for Bedford Falls was a studio lot in Culver City, California. The set had originally been designed for another film, Cimarron, and Capra re-used and adapted it. It was one of the largest studio sets ever, covering 4 acres. The town consisted of a main street stretching 300 yards (three city blocks) with 75 buildings and a residential neighbourhood. Capra added a working bank and a tree lined street, for which he re-planted 20 real Oak trees. To make the set feel even more real, Cats, Dogs and Pigeons were allowed to roam on it.
- Olivia de Havilland, Martha Scott and Ann Dvorak were all considered for the role of Mary Bailey. Ginger Rogers was offered the role, but turned it down because she thought the character was too bland. Henry Fonda was in the running for the role of George.
- The film took exactly 90 days to shoot, which was exactly Frank Capra's estimate of how long it would take.
- There's a rumour that the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie were named after characters in this film – the cab driver and the cop. Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu, insisted this was true because It's a Wonderful Life was Jim Henson's favourite film, but Henson's writing partner Jerry Juhl insisted that Ernie and Bert were not named after the movie's characters, but rather simply because one of the puppets "looked like a Bert" and the other "looked like an Ernie". Nevertheless, in the 1996 holiday special Elmo Saves Christmas there's a scene where Bert and Ernie walk by a TV set, which is showing the film. The Muppets are surprised by the line: "Bert! Ernie! What's the matter with you two guys? You were here on my wedding night!"
- In one scene, Donna Reed throws a rock through the window of the Granville house. Capra hired a marksman to shoot out the window, but he wasn't needed in the end. What Capra hadn't realised was that Reed had played Baseball in high school and was perfectly capable of breaking the window herself.
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The Power of Love
Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic ordering and the significance of chance encounters. She believes there's a spiritual explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.
A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.
Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.
When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.
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