Enjoy the Holidays With Our Inside Look at the Making of the Classic Film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

What was it about ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ that made you want to write this book?

I was very good friends with Frank Capra. I liked him very much, he liked me, we got along, and I’d always really liked the film. I like his work, period, but I really liked It’s a Wonderful Life. At that time, he had asked me to become the curator of his papers. He gave them to me and trusted them to me, no strings attached. I could do whatever I wanted with them, and I in turn gave them to Wesleyan to place them in an archive, which I then started. We had a couple of other things at Wesleyan, among them Elia Kazan’s papers, so I began the Wesleyan Cinema Archives that way. To raise money for Frank’s collection, because universities are neither rich nor generous, to put it nicely, I thought, “This film is very beloved, and I have all this material that people would like to see and know, and so I’m going to do this book as a fundraiser to care for his collection,” because we had to process everything, and it’s, again, expensive to take care of an archive.

What was the next step?

One of my former students was an agent. She said, well, let’s just go to the top. She called Bob Gottlieb at Knopf, and he happened to be a giant fan of It’s a Wonderful Life, and so we signed the deal and I did in fact give every single penny of the royalties from this book into the archive. It went into 11 printings and made a lot of money. And the only money we ever paid to anyone for anything, we had to pay $400 to the Philip Van Doren Stern estate [to reprint the short story the film is based on]. So I undertook the book, because the material on the film was so wonderful. The cast list, consideration of other people, lots of photos that at that time had never been seen, different versions of the script, and people really wanted the story of It’s a Wonderful Life, so I wanted to share it with everybody, because I know how beloved that film is.

How much interaction do you have with fans of the film?

I can tell you that I get so many calls and letters from people who love this movie, they want to share, they want to talk, but I also get calls and letters from people who hate it, and want to beat up on me because I like it. It arouses emotion in people, and I always feel really sorry for the ones who hate it, because I think, “Wow, you hate this?” But people get all mad over stuff. A fellow that I know in New York, who’s a native New Yorker, born and raised in Manhattan, attacked me about this film on the basis that there was never a small town like Bedford Falls; that this is no portrait of a small town. And I’m saying to him, “Hello, wait a second, you were born and raised in Manhattan, NYC. I’m from Brooking, South Dakota, population 5,000 people, and you’re gonna tell me this isn’t a legitimate small town?” One of the things that Frank Capra managed to catch nicely is a sort of authentic feeling of a small town world. Like I said, the film has emotion in it, and it touches people. Nobody is bland about this film. If they love it, they love it, and if they don’t love it, they hate it. Nobody’s indifferent.

Why do you suppose it provokes such strong emotions?

We all anticipate Christmas. We think it’s going to be like when we were kids, and it isn’t when we’re grown up. It’s good. For many of us who are lucky and have loving families in our life, where things have gone well, knock on wood, Christmas is fine. But there’s a sadness to Christmas. There’s a sad nostalgia that you aren’t young anymore, that somebody’s gotta cook the darn turkey, you know? And you didn’t have to when you were little. There are a lot of families that don’t get along; they come together, there’s tension. There’s disappointment, and the thing about It’s a Wonderful Life is that it connects to the sadness and the disappointment and the angers of life, as effectively as it does to the positives, to the love and the joy and the humor and the loyalties.

There’s a tragic element to the film as well.

A terrible tragedy. The hero goes out to kill himself and that is, really, the success of Capra. He could do that and make it credible and make it work, as much as he could do comedy. This movie is not simple-minded. It isn’t easy joy. It isn’t sentimental. It isn’t like that at all. There is a Potter here, and there is a threat of Pottersville, and we all know that, in life, blink once and you’re in Pottersville.

The world kind of feels like we’ve made a shift towards Pottersville.

It was true at the end of World War II, it was true during World War II — there’s always sadness and loss and negligence and inequality, and some years you feel it more than others. And this has been a tough year. We all look around, California is burning down. Inexplicable shootings of people inside a synagogue. I mean, there’s been a great deal of news this year that makes us wonder what is going on, where are we, where do we go, what is it? A film that reaffirms positives, that reminds us that there are things … that there is good in the world, is important. I think a lot more people will be crying watching the film this year even than last. People are cranky and have anxiety and stress because it’s been a year that has made us all feel worried and concerned. It hasn’t been an easy year.

But what allows the film to transcend from one generation to the next the way that it does?

There are certain things that have a kind of inexplicable truth in them, and the ability to connect somewhere to people at a very human level. And certain things don’t change. We still look for someone to love and share our lives. We still deal with our fathers and mothers. We still have to worry about money problems. We still have dreams of riches and fame and leaving Bedford Falls and going out into the world. These things get different names, and they up the level of sophistication, possibilities get bigger or smaller, but there’s certain basics that don’t change. And so, in the end, after all, the basics of this film are always in place, no matter how much everything else changes.

George’s ‘lesson,’ if you will, at the end is pretty powerful.

In the end, when George is made to realize that his life meant something very important to a great many people, and that without him they would not have had the joy or the success or the security in life, it’s brought home to him. He is valuable to people, that his life has meant something. This is something that doesn’t go away. It might become unfashionable. It might get labeled sentiment, whatever, but it doesn’t actually go away, and this film has that, and because it comes wrapped in a lot of great humor, with some really great people playing in every single role, it connects.

What impact did the film have on the life and career of Donna Reed?

Donna Reed became a big TV star, and she became an Oscar-winning movie star. But at the American Film Institute life achievement for Frank Capra, a lot of my students were there and one, who, by the way, is a big writer in Hollywood now, came up to Donna Reed and said, “I can’t tell you how hard you’ve made it for every female that I ever meet in my life.” She was so thrilled, she kissed him. But I think this movie makes an icon of her. People may or may not watch From Here to Eternity [which stars her], but they are watching this movie. And she’s lovely. She was the perfect choice for this part. I think it’s made a huge impact in her career.

And Jimmy Stewart?

For Jimmy Stewart, there’s so much to his career. His work with Capra, his work with Anthony Mann, his work with Alfred Hitchcock, and everything else he did, plus his own personal life — what he did with becoming a brigadier general in World War II — the man is a pretty phenomenal guy. I think that he’s the perfect person for George Bailey. Frank never considered anybody else for the role except him, but you know, it’s part of his legend, it isn’t his only legend. He has Mr. Smith, he has Vertigo and Rear Window. He has all those great Anthony Mann Westerns so, like I said, it’s a part of his legend, it isn’t his only legend.

How about the impact on Frank Capra?

For Capra, this is the movie that kept all of his other films alive, and this is the movie that brought him into his old age with great feeling — which he did not expect to happen. He said he woke up one morning and a letter came saying somebody had seen It’s a Wonderful Life on TV, and they loved it. He said, “I sat down to answer that letter and I never got up out of that chair again,” because he kept writing, and people kept writing, and it re-birthed his fame. He started going to college campuses, talking to students, and he came alive again. And it really, I think, was related to this.

And this was the first movie for both James Stewart and Frank following World War II, right?

Yes, and everybody was anticipating it. It didn’t have the impact or the singular success of the pre-war Capra’s, or the pre-war Stewart’s, or particularly the pre-war Capra/Stewart’s, so I think this movie was something they both really believed in and liked a lot, and felt it maybe should have done better — but then it did do better. Capra and Stewart are too big to be defined only by the enduring success of this movie, but the enduring success of this movie, for both of them, opens doors for people to their other movies. People will see this and go look at their earlier work, and this triggers that interest from young people a lot.

So for people who haven’t seen this film — if they’re out there — why should they watch it?

If you’re a person who likes movies, and you want to see an example of first rate filmmaking in all possible categories, this is a good film to watch as an example of what Hollywood could do with a reasonable amount of money. There’s even technical experimenting here, when they learned how to create this new snow-making machine and everything. So this movie is a very high level of achievement, but that would not be the reason to watch it, for technical or craft issues, although they’re there.

If you want to see what made Hollywood great, the ability to tell a story to you, take you to a place, define the place, show you people who lived in that place, and what happened to them, and have you believe in it and get involved in it and care about it, this is really that film. And if you want to feel something, and you want to feel something positive, something that reassures you, but not in an easy way — you have to earn your tears, you have to earn your laughter — this is a good film to look at. Some directors can do comedy, some directors can do drama, not too many can do both effectively.

It’s a Wonderful Life is available in the 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray/DVD formats from Paramount Home Entertainment.