Why “It’s a Wonderful Life” needed an angel’s helping hand

By E.W.

IN THE late summer of 1945, Colonel James Stewart returned from Europe aboard the Queen Elizabeth; like the hundreds of other men aboard, Stewart wondered what post-war life might hold. His contemporary John Wayne had avoided service in the second world war, but since his enlistment in 1941 Stewart had risen from the rank of private, flying 20 combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe: he re-entered civilian life as a decorated hero. The year before Pearl Harbour, he had won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role as a tabloid reporter in George Cukor’s “The Philadelphia Story”—but his contract with MGM had expired during the war. “I just got a phone call one day,” Stewart said years later of this uncertain time. “It was Frank Capra, and he said, I’ve got an idea for a story, why don’t you come down and I’ll tell it to you. Well, I couldn’t get down there quick enough,” Stewart recalled.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” was released seventy years ago, in December, 1946. The Sicilian-born Capra had also served America's army, winning the Distinguished Service Medal for his documentary series, “Why We Fight”. Director and star had worked together before the war on “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) and “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), but it is “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the story of George Bailey, his guardian angel Clarence, and the fate of the little town of Bedford Falls which epitomises their partnership. “It shows values that are really very close to an awful lot of us, and are really very basic American values,” Stewart would say decades later.

In the 21st century it can be hard to talk of “American values” with a straight face; but even at the time critics recognised that Capra’s film—much darker than it’s often remembered to be, as full of shadow as it is of light—worked a kind of alchemy of emotion. Capra “again proves he can fashion what ordinarily would be homilising hokum into gleaming, engaging entertainment for all brows—high, low or beetle,” wrote Variety when the film appeared. The Hollywood Reporter echoed the praise. But the box office was not as kind as the reviews, and the film was by no means a hit; it was only when, thanks to what was essentially a clerical error, the film temporarily fell out of copyright in 1974 that it became the cast-iron Christmas classic it is today. It was picked up by American television networks eager for holiday fodder, and it has never been off the airwaves since.

But the story of an ordinary man who discovers that riches and success are nothing to do with money didn’t start with Capra and Stewart. The source of the film is a short story, “The Greatest Gift”, by an American author and editor called Philip Van Doren Stern. The idea for the story had come to him in a dream in 1938, but his agent was never able to sell it. Finally, in 1943, Stern had it privately printed and sent it out as a Christmas card. One found its way into the hands of Capra, who worked with Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett to craft film’s screenplay.

It’s a mark of Capra’s vision that he recognised the potential in Stern’s tale. Plainly put, “The Greatest Gift” isn’t a very good story. There’s no antagonist, for a start: no Henry F. Potter, the wicked financier who, if it hadn't been for George Bailey, would have transformed lovely Bedford Falls into wretched Pottersville. The George of the story is full of self-pity, rather than in stuck in genuine practical and moral peril; Stern’s writing is flat and clichéd. It would be nice to say that the editors of the Saturday Evening Post missed a trick when they turned the piece down, but they didn’t.

The little tale, it seems, was waiting for an angel: Capra as Clarence, transforming the ordinary into something transcendent. Seventy years have gone by, but George Bailey is still the richest man in town.