November 21, 2023 • 64 mins
A fan love letter to It's a Wonderful Life, this episode dives deeply into the period over the 1970s and ‘80s when the movie played around the clock on local TV and Americans fell in love with it, asking why writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s sliding-doors butterfly-effect concept of each person’s value and impact on all others acquired such currency with Americans of that place and time. What resurrected Wonderful Life after nearly three decades? We become the first to tell the tale of how the combination of a whoops by Rashida Jones’ grandfather and a decade-long NYC viewing party launched this movie from obscurity to American icon. We look at the endless string of TV episodes and movies inspired by Wonderful Life and talk with the writers of one of the very first, a 1979 Robin Williams starring sitcom’s “Wonderful Mork” episode, to understand the deep universal appeal of considering what the world would be like without you. Finally, we come to 1989, peak year for “take-offs” on this movie, many decidedly dark. Why? SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Oh, it's a great story. It's an absolutely great story.
I would was it during college.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I think we were still in college.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Yeah, it's December nineteen seventy one, twenty five years since.
It's a Wonderful Life was released and quickly disappeared from
the collective memory, mostly taking its director of Frank Capra's
career with it. I'm taking you to New York City,
to a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Three childhood
(00:38):
friends reconnect while back home from college for Christmas break.
Christopher Little, back from Yale, brings his sister Suzanne for
dinner with David White at his parents' place. David's back
from Harvard.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
We're starting to watch a movie. After day, I think
we watched two movies and then it was literally about
three am, and the starter, It's a Wonderful Light, came
on with stars twinkling and talking to each other.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Charge is a good guy. Give him a break.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
God.
Speaker 6 (01:15):
He never thinks about himself and God, that's why he's
in trouble.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I love him.
Speaker 7 (01:20):
Dear Lord, what room tonight?
Speaker 8 (01:23):
Please God there with Daddy. Please bring back.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
In those days, it wasn't a popular movie. It appeared
perhaps once a year on some usually obscure station, not
not the networks.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
And I said, wow, this looks like the Loser. Let's
let's get that's it from the evening and Susan Christopher
sistant Christmas sister, said, no, absolutely, I've seen this movie,
the greatest movie in the world world, and we should
watch it.
Speaker 9 (02:02):
You've been given a great gift, George, a chance to
see what the world would be like without.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You, and that in nineteen seventy one, the first time
that you ever saw It's a Wonderful life for in
the morning during Christmas season from New York City, and
we were spellbound and were absolutely enraptured by it.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
David and his friend Christopher would soon become part of
a seemingly random series of events that would turn this
lost film into an American icon.
Speaker 7 (02:37):
Buffalo Girls, can't you come out tonight? Can't you come
out tonight? Can't you come out tonight? Buffalo Girls, can't
you come out tonight? And by the.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
Just if you make me start.
Speaker 10 (03:07):
Joe, when I was working at the clubs in the
early days and just hells angels and drunk people and
bombing like crazy. Jimmy Stewart is a waiter never didn't
save my act, like I'd be just tanking.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You're hearing Dana Carvey.
Speaker 10 (03:31):
The comedian Jimmy Stewart is a waiter, was always a
go to, like, well can I take your order?
Speaker 11 (03:38):
Well, what do you mean you don't know the specials?
Speaker 6 (03:39):
I told him to you ten minutes.
Speaker 10 (03:42):
What do you want me to stand here like a
trained monkey and tell them to you again?
Speaker 12 (03:47):
What did you say?
Speaker 6 (03:48):
Well?
Speaker 13 (03:49):
You fair.
Speaker 6 (03:54):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 14 (03:54):
Tonight, mark's a historic, not to say unique, moment in
the history of both television and cinema. After a search
of nearly forty years, the fabled lost ending to Frank
Capra's nineteen forty seven film It's a Wonderful Life has
been found tonight for the first time anywhere. Saturday Night
Live is proud to present this priceless footage, the fully
realized vision of an authentic American genius.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
We're still in New York City now, nineteen eighty six,
eight floors up in the Rockefeller's Center Building, an audience
watches a live taping of Dana Carvey and the rest
of the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live as
they perform a comedy sketch introduced by guest host William Shatner, Car.
Speaker 8 (04:38):
Jolsey, new Hardee Ardeny.
Speaker 15 (04:45):
Right, everyone, I remembered, I remembered when I did with
the money, the eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 8 (04:52):
Well, that's right, right, uncle Billy, Well what'd you do
with it?
Speaker 16 (04:55):
I just called Clarice at the bank.
Speaker 9 (04:57):
He told me that old man pottered positive, exactly eight
thousand dollars right after.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Right, half, Well, what are we waiting for?
Speaker 16 (05:07):
Let's go get it.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
Where did the second?
Speaker 16 (05:12):
I'll give you the money bag.
Speaker 17 (05:13):
I don't want the money.
Speaker 18 (05:14):
I want to pay for you fadder, Mary holding.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
Lawyer at Sea of Ja.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
At the start, you heard Christopher and David discovering a
mostly unknown movie in nineteen seventy one. A mere fifteen
years later, that same movie is now so well known
that it's fertile for parody by a beloved comedy show
What Happened? But perhaps we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.
(05:52):
I should introduce myself. I'm Joseph the Angel.
Speaker 19 (05:57):
You probably already know about me.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Nearly a human lifetime ago, my angel colleagues and I
interceded in the life of a man named George Bailey
to help him understand his impact on his world. We
took him to one part of the multiverse where he
had never been born. But if you're hearing this podcast,
you know George Bailey and his loved ones simply as
(06:23):
beloved characters in one of the most popular movies of
all time, It's a Wonderful Life, starring iconic Hollywood actor
Jimmy Stewart as George and Lionel Barrymore as his nemesis,
mister Potter. You'll remember that Potter, like Ebenezer Scrooge, is
(06:45):
consumed by greed, but in this tale, the bob Cratcheat
of sorts fights back on behalf of his town of
Bedford Falls. Driven by his good heart, George's efforts are
not quite enough, though, when his sense of failure drives
him to suicide, we angels intervene to show him what
(07:07):
things would be like without him. I'm the one you
hear every year narrating George's story as I tell it
to Clarence, then Angel second class. Well you hear Joseph Granby,
the actor playing me. But we'll get to.
Speaker 20 (07:23):
All that, you know.
Speaker 21 (07:25):
I think I think a lot of Americans don't really
recall the first time they saw.
Speaker 19 (07:29):
It's one of those movies.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's like airy, you know, it's like, when did you
start reading it?
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Oh?
Speaker 22 (07:35):
I saw when I was a small child's I saw
it with my cousin. I still remember to this day
watching it in her living room on their TV. And
it just was not like anything else that I had seen.
Speaker 23 (07:50):
My sister and I sort of curling up on under
big blankets on the couch and watching a little, tiny
black and white set. You know, I was probably ten
or eleven.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
I didn't get it.
Speaker 23 (07:59):
I don't think I got the full existential crisis and
drama on what was going on.
Speaker 24 (08:06):
Of a little kid. It was on Channel eleven in
New York City, you know, and it was on a
bunch of times. I remember not enjoying the movie very much.
I was just like, why are we watching this? This
is stupid, this is corny.
Speaker 25 (08:18):
So I've been trying to think about when the first
time is that I saw It's a Wonderful Light. And
my recollection is that I was in high school. It
was a Christmas season, it was in that era where
it was the movie was in public domain, so it
would be on twenty or thirty times like per day
on every channel, and I remember being home by myself,
(08:42):
kind of sick with the cold, and turning it on
and realizing that this movie that had become kind of
a punchline because of its omnipresence.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Was actually really good.
Speaker 25 (08:58):
And I remember sitting think through the whole thing and
getting kind of teary and emotional and thinking that I
was surprised at what a good movie it was.
Speaker 26 (09:08):
I think I saw it, oh probably I was ten
or eleven, and like its reputation proceeded it, and I
was very into alternate universe stories, and then I kind
of was surprised to find that it was like a
dark tale of you know this, this one man's like
descent into despair and then being saved through unlikely heavenly intervention.
Speaker 27 (09:30):
I was living alone for the first time, and there
was a very severe thunderstorm at about three am, so
I turned on the TV because I was awake and
I had to work early in the morning, and I
just decided to get up and the movie that happened
to be on was It's a Wonderful Life, And from
the moment I started watching, I was absolutely transfixed, blown away,
(09:54):
It really struck a chord with me.
Speaker 15 (09:56):
If you were to asking me the first time I
ever saw It's a Wonderful Life, I would have no idea.
I mean, I was born in nineteen seventy There's not
a time for me where I remember it not being on.
Speaker 20 (10:08):
I mean, it was always on.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
This is Jeff Williams, who goes by the pseudonym the
TV Professor. He's an investigator of a type into obscure
television history.
Speaker 15 (10:20):
The movie was not a total flop in the forties.
I mean, it was not a big blockbuster.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
What you may be less familiar about is that Frank
Capra's Liberty Films released Wonderful Life in movie theaters in
December nineteen forty six, and it ran for about a year.
Then it mostly disappeared. Few Americans ever knew what this
movie was until the arrival of television.
Speaker 15 (10:48):
From nineteen fifty six to nineteen seventy three, seventeen years,
It's a Wonderful Life would play on independent stations you
could find it, but it was often on the late
late movies. I remember reading a columnist who wrote a
column in nineteen seventy three that he had just watched
(11:09):
It's Wonderful Life, and it was on the Late Late Show,
and he kind of complained or criped that it should
have been earlier where more people could have seen it.
Then nineteen seventy four comes and it wasn't like the
floodgates came pouring out and suddenly Its Wonderful Life was
on all the time. But in nineteen seventy four it started.
(11:30):
I think a couple of TV stations they realized, hey,
it's in the public domain, we can run this. And
then other TV stations, you know, the executives talk or
they watch what other stations are doing, their competitors, and
they're realizing, oh wow, we could do this too.
Speaker 17 (11:45):
I was.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Young enough that, you know, I don't.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Remember the.
Speaker 28 (11:55):
Inflection point, the moment to change.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
This is Laura Robinson, one of three daughters born to
Philip and Doren Stern's only daughter. You'll meet the other
two in future episodes. Philip wrote the original short story
from which Wonderful Life was adapted.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
My grandfather, who was interested in important ideas, the multiverse,
the butterfly effect, you know, whatever it is. But I
think the man that I remember was a student of
the human condition, the desire to love and be loved, to.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Be an integral part of community, to contribute to our community.
Speaker 9 (12:37):
Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and was
drowned at the age of nine.
Speaker 29 (12:42):
That's a lie.
Speaker 16 (12:43):
Harry Bailey went to war, He got the Congressional Medal
of Honor. He saved the lives of every man on
that transport.
Speaker 9 (12:48):
Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to
save them because you weren't there to save Harry. Strange,
isn't it Each man's life touches so many other lives.
When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
He That little idea that came to Philip van doren
Stern in nineteen thirty eight in a mysterious dream, Each
person's impact on all others proves captivating to Americans a
full thirty years later, and thereafter.
Speaker 28 (13:20):
It became you think of it?
Speaker 13 (13:22):
Will you welcome please the incredible Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's nineteen eighty one. Steven Spielberg, the movie director, has
just released something called Indiana Jones, and he's working on
his latest called e t. He's talking to Dick Cavott
the talk show host.
Speaker 13 (13:46):
I have three or four films that I'll always watch
if they're on the Late show or at a festival nearby.
Do you have a little handful of ones like that?
I have an apple barrel full of them. Yeah, but
I mean among my favorite films. I'll watch anytime The
Searchers The Searcher, Yes, and I'll watch it anytime.
Speaker 19 (14:02):
And it's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Anytime it's on Christmas summer livers want to watch that.
Speaker 13 (14:06):
It shows that every human being on the planet Earth matters,
Every single human being on the face of the planet
makes a difference or calling Awson coming Awson.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Two years earlier, nineteen seventy nine, another television studio audience,
this one inside Stage twenty seven of the Paramount Pictures
Lot in Los Angeles, California, witnesses the filming of a sitcom,
Mark and Mindy, an unbeknownst to them, an odd little
footnote of history, the first instance of the nineteen seventies
(14:42):
in which TV series storytellers seek to use Wonderful Life's
core concept for their purposes, the first, as you know,
of what will become so many. This is Robin Williams,
the comedian.
Speaker 30 (14:58):
Seems no matter how hard I keep losting up the
lives of the people I care for, I've got to
come home, sir.
Speaker 16 (15:04):
I'm pig slack.
Speaker 31 (15:05):
Well perhaps, but let's make sure a newly developed process
which will enable you to see what past your friends
would have taken the past year had you not come
into their life.
Speaker 11 (15:16):
I guess we're flattered that we were the first ones
to use that premise to take off on it.
Speaker 19 (15:21):
But it seems natural.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
You're hearing Ed Sharlack, the television writer, and Tom Tenowitch,
his frequent writing partner. They drafted the Mork and Mindy
television episode. It's a wonderful mark, this is Tom.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
It's such a universal feeling.
Speaker 13 (15:39):
You know.
Speaker 30 (15:40):
On the surface, we all try to put on a
good face, but there are those private moments that we
often don't admit to anyone.
Speaker 11 (15:48):
But you're face to face with it yourself. By showing
how somebody what the world would be like without somebody,
you really get to know the value of somebody.
Speaker 16 (16:00):
Calling come here and your fanato now, baby, get down.
Don't you never guess what I learned.
Speaker 32 (16:07):
I learned that I'm okay, I'm not as bad as
I thought I was.
Speaker 31 (16:10):
That's a lesson one can only learn from the school
of oneself.
Speaker 33 (16:15):
Five Faminate for Me Survival, How do Ever? Corporated Saturday
Night movie It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart, The
story of a man who wishes he was never born.
This story of my life right now struck me.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Wish I was never born.
Speaker 16 (16:49):
Let's look at this case.
Speaker 34 (16:50):
There's an excursion into the real americane, like being part
of a Frank Capra movie. Frank Capra director, you know,
it's a wonderful life. Mister D's goes town Jimmy stuw,
Donna Reed, Gary Cooper, Pain streetam Manet the town square
(17:12):
with a bandstand smack in the middle.
Speaker 21 (17:14):
Ti Jo.
Speaker 20 (17:18):
Tijo?
Speaker 35 (17:19):
Is there?
Speaker 5 (17:21):
What is it?
Speaker 6 (17:21):
You want?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Mary?
Speaker 20 (17:23):
You want the moon?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around
it and pull it down. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart And
It's a wonderful life. What was it inside this movie
from the nineteen forties that's so resonated when received by
Americans of the nineteen eighties. What makes this question so
relevant is that the time period corresponds with a marked
(17:48):
rise in cynicism and hopelessness.
Speaker 19 (17:52):
More on that in a bit.
Speaker 28 (17:54):
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 36 (17:56):
How hi everywhere.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Philip van doren Stern's and daughter Laura Again.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
Honestly, I probably couldn't come up with a single long
running sitcom that haven't done. You know, it's a life episode.
Speaker 18 (18:08):
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
It's a wonderful life again. How many times a day
are they going to show this golden Moldy.
Speaker 28 (18:23):
Six from now until New Year's on Channel thirteen.
Speaker 19 (18:27):
It's a wonderful month.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Oh oh, here comes the gussiest part.
Speaker 20 (18:32):
Oh have they no shame?
Speaker 8 (18:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a clean ex six.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Let's go some.
Speaker 16 (19:05):
You're gonna miss. It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 10 (19:08):
Well it's on again at nine and nine thirty and eleven,
and then at midnight in Spanish when I beat out
wonderful man day.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
And uh to the point where you know, I'll be
watching a show and then I'll see that they're headed
down there direct flying.
Speaker 15 (19:23):
Oh it's their turn now, you know. I didn't watch
the ending.
Speaker 7 (19:32):
I was too depressed.
Speaker 24 (19:33):
It just kept getting.
Speaker 8 (19:34):
Worse and worse.
Speaker 34 (19:35):
It should have been called it's a.
Speaker 8 (19:36):
Sucky life, and just when you think it can't suck.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Anymore, it does.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Everybody does that.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Everybody does it because it's such a universal you know,
it's such a universal story.
Speaker 20 (19:51):
Got yourself, Jesus enough already, and.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The corollary to a world without you proves just as powerful.
Some call it sliding doors, or roads diverged, or simply
different choices.
Speaker 37 (20:18):
Hi, I'm Ray and I live here in Long Island
with my wife Deborah.
Speaker 16 (20:21):
Would you sleep with her?
Speaker 8 (20:25):
You don't exist.
Speaker 27 (20:26):
It's like it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 32 (20:27):
There's no Deborah.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Well, then it's not a wonderful life.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And now a movie named Mister Destiny uses the formula again,
but Michael came playing supernatural being who steps in when
James Blue she grows discontented with his life.
Speaker 31 (20:47):
Instead of missing the baseball, however, you hit it, then
you became a hero, married the prom queen.
Speaker 38 (20:54):
And so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Americans seem to become obsessed by the fork in the road,
whether the path chosen was the right one.
Speaker 20 (21:04):
Why.
Speaker 23 (21:05):
The breaking news just in the CNN is that actor
Robin Williams is dead at the age of sixty three
from an apparent suicide.
Speaker 37 (21:13):
Anything that can help people that are going in that
direction is really very very important and wonderful, and I'm
glad that there are organizations and professions that are there.
That was his decision to leave the pilot, so to speak.
(21:33):
But you know, he had a great gift that was
making other people happy and giving pleasure people's.
Speaker 11 (21:44):
Lives, and to see that go away is said, we
lost something very special.
Speaker 30 (21:51):
And I hope he's at peace now and making Clarence
from the movie happy.
Speaker 9 (22:02):
Sir.
Speaker 32 (22:03):
I don't know how much value I have in this universe,
but I do know that I made a few people
happier than there would have been without me.
Speaker 11 (22:08):
As long as I know that, I'm as rich as
ever need to be.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
A mere twenty years after Robin Williams first recorded his
take on a still mostly unknown old movie. By the
late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, the American Film
Institute conducts a series of polls of filmmakers, journalists, historians,
and well known Americans looking at forty thousand American films.
(22:35):
Wonderful Life is voted the eleventh greatest movie ever, eighth
greatest love story, third greatest fantasy movie, and the most
inspiring of all time. George Bailey is ninth greatest hero
in all American movies, and mister Potter sixth greatest villain.
(22:56):
Many comment that their vote is driven by its central theme,
the impact of every individual, whether considered big or small,
on everyone else on earth. But how exactly had this
incredible comeback story happened beginning in the nineteen seventies, resulting
(23:17):
in Wonderful Life suddenly everywhere in your pop culture, now
widely considered among the greatest I'm taking you closer to
that story now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
One year we just said to ourself, let's have a party. Yeah,
and it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
As the party was born David White again. From the
very beginning of this episode, December after December, over the
nineteen seventies, Christopher Little and he hosted a group of
friends and like minded associates to watch Wonderful Life. The
party often took place in Christopher's Manhattan loft in the
(23:55):
Flat Iron District, where he also kept his photography studio,
a good screening room.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Just out of college students. And we used to go
to astor Place liquor store in Manhattan and by the
cheapest a Bourbon and Scotch.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
We had to scour.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
TV guide trying to find out that there's this pre Betamax, PREVSVCR,
and we weren't rich enough to rent a projector and
read the film, and then we would just have the
party whenever it was on.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The really impressive thing that struck me that the party
was an instant hit. Everybody just loved the movie and
it took off instantly and became an instant tradition. That
first night we got together, and the same people came
next year and we had some more people, so we
(24:48):
finally became I don't know, crowded, seventy people, sixty to
seventy people.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
There were rules, there were rules. You definitely weren't allowed
to watch it at any other time than at the party.
And secondly, if you missed the year, you were pretty
you were in pretty bad trouble. Took a couple of
(25:19):
years to get back on the list. You'd have to
beg and scrabble to get back on our list.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
We had to applaud when Zusan's rose pedals were found
in George Bailey's pockets.
Speaker 27 (25:36):
What do you know about that?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I can tell you that, well, we get to our party.
The room was full of weeping people of like mind
who just adored all the elements of that almost perfect movie.
I guess you'd have to say, with all humility, it
(26:01):
was a fairly intellectual It is not the right word,
but it's a fairly bright crowd. We had a couple
of architects who attended, two of my favorite people on Earth.
One was called Ralph Wolf and the other one was
a guy called Patrick Curley.
Speaker 29 (26:17):
And then I'm gonna build things.
Speaker 32 (26:19):
I'm gonna build airfield, I'm gonna build skyscrapers one hundred
stories high.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I'm gonna build bridges a mile long. Two marriages would
result from the decade long party.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Ralph and Betty marry my family's house on shore on
Long Island Sound, and Patrick and Jane. I was a
wedding present and a surprise. Hired a h an airplane
touring one of those long banners, and the banner read
Ralph and Betty, It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
More on the impact of their party in a bit,
but first, something important to this story happening elsewhere. I'm
taking you across the country to America's other coast, to
Marina del Rey, part of the metropolitan sprawl of Los Angeles.
It's summer nineteen seventy four. We're outside a building that
(27:16):
looks like a warehouse, the new offices of National Telefilm Associates,
known as NTA. A convertible tea bird pulls up out
front Hunter Green with a lion hood on. The man
getting out of this beautiful automobile is Bernie Tobaccan, president
(27:38):
of NTA. He doesn't know it yet, but he and
his team are about to be part of the biggest
hoops in American cinematic history.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Bernie Kboccan is my uncle. I'm a filmmaker. I was
there between projects that I was editing various projects for
my uncle Burne.
Speaker 20 (27:59):
This is Jerry.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Then, a young up and coming independent filmmaker working for
his uncle while making cult film classic Teenager.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
When I moved to la Vernie helped me get my
first job in the film businesses I would Tuckham. I
ended up in the film and I lived with them
for the first month first few months I came out
to California. NTA was probably the largest single owner of
movies that ran on television stations around the country. So
if you were anywhere in the US watching movies after
certain hour, you know, after midnight. The movies that are
(28:31):
running all gay from NTA. There was a fairly large
legal team at NTA because they had thousands and thousands
of copyrights to manage. The in house council was a
guy named Lipton. His daughter was Peggy Lipton, who was
on the television show.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
If you're not of the age to be familiar with
Peggy Lipton, the actress and her hit show that had
just wrapped up at the time, the mod Squad, then
you're probably of the age to be familiar with Peggy's
actress daughters with musician Quincy Jones, Kidada and Rashida Jones.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Every time she laughs, an angel dies.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
This moment, they had just taken over a large warehouse
in Marina del Rey. We obviously weren't. At some point
Bernie Menetia with Kerrie Grant and there was a I
think Brittany must have handed him a check for a
million dollars at some point, and a picture of that
was on Bernie's wall. I was lived in running legal.
(29:41):
I was in the end of the front third of
the building was my cutting room, which when I walked
out of it. I walked into the warehouse that was
the two thirds that was occupied by racks of films.
It was a bustling, busy place. So the one end
was there was a toe in the water of glamorous Hollywood,
(30:01):
and the back end was the real world of you know,
shipping and running out movies in bulk. That was That
was the vibe. I was just there during a year,
and I remember listening to the Watergate hearings during at lunchtime.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
What did the president know.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
And when did he know it?
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Steve knew every important film that NPA had in the
warehouse there, and I said, what should I see? So
they said, oh, this is this film that Frank.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Kapra Maid called It's a Wonderful Wife, and we just struck.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
A new point of it. She used to run it.
And I sat down in a screening room by myself
the thirty five millimeter projector and ran that film real
by reel by reel by reel, and it just was
an overwhelming, unbelievable experience. I'm like, oh my god, this
(31:04):
is a masterpiece. And there I am sitting with us
thing in a staggeringly gorgeous print. It was an incredible experience,
one of the best experiences of my life, certainly as
a filmmaker.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And it was around this time that the future grandfather
of Rashida Jones and his legal team somehow, some way
simply overlooked the renewal of one of their movies with
the US Copyright Office quietly without much notice. Wonderful Life
seemed to have slipped for the first time, as if
(31:38):
by magic, out of the hands of ownership of any
corporation and into the legal public domain. It was suddenly
widely understood to be the property of you and all
the people. Early that December, the programmer at an Allentown,
Pennsylvania television station abruptly swaps it in to replace the
(32:01):
scheduled airing of a Jimmy Cagney movie. Other stations around
the country began to follow suit, and Bernie tobakan who
is Jewish but loves Christmas and goes caroling each year
with Bob Hope, never mentions a word about what happened
with Wonderful Life. This is his son, John.
Speaker 28 (32:23):
My father put it close to the vest, never mentioned
any word about it.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
As I think I was saying. My father was sort
of tight about Percy and Storm.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
It may have been Lipton's responsibility because that was his
department managing copyrights. I do not know why in the
world did they strike this gorgeous new print at the
same time they were losing the copyright. It doesn't make sense.
There's something going on with that.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
As far as what became of Bernie.
Speaker 39 (32:54):
Well, I think he wanted to make the movie and
never quite realized that. I think he's proud of what
he did in NTA and sort of poineering work, and
he didn't Ultimately he didn't mind being in the distribution finis.
Speaker 28 (33:10):
He wanted to be in production.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I think in film didness you.
Speaker 28 (33:15):
Have to miss it all to be successful. You can't
your tone the water.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
But Frank Keepra did risk it all when he went
all in on wonderful life to start his company, Liberty Films.
It failed and his dream of independence died with it.
I will take you much closer to that in a
future episode. But thanks in part to Bernie Tobaccan and
(33:43):
Rashida Jones's grandfather, his film would get a second chance.
Speaker 32 (33:48):
So I want to speak to you first night about
a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I
want to talk to you right now about a fundamental
threat to American democracy.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Now it's five years after the events with MTA, we're
back in the year nineteen seventy nine again, around the
time of the taping of the more conmindy episode from
the White House. You're hearing Jimmy Carter the President.
Speaker 32 (34:19):
It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis
that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit
of our national will. We can see this crisis in
the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives,
and in the loss of a unity of purpose for
(34:40):
our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future
is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric
of America. We've always believed in something called progress. We've
always had a faith that the days of our children
(35:01):
would be better than our own. Our people are losing
that faith, not only in government itself, but in the
ability as citizens to serve as ultimate rulers and shapers
(35:21):
off our democracy.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Around the same time that a national malaise comes to
concern Jimmy, an article in The New Yorker will raise
the profile of the now apparently public domain wonderful life
and the butterfly effect of it becomes impactful in your universe.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
The publication of that piece not only put us on
the map, but it had a huge role in putting
It's a Wonderful life back on the map.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
This is Christopher again, the Wonderful Life party thrower.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
One of the sort of mid mid period invitees was
a guy called Mark Singer with whom I went to
college and became great friends with. And Mark was at
that time a writer at the actually still is a
writer at The New Yorker, And after a couple of
(36:15):
times of coming, he said to us, would you mind, guys,
mind if I wrote a talk piece, Talk of the
Town piece about this? And we said, of course, Matt.
Speaker 40 (36:31):
The New Yorker, January fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Talk of
the Town Wonderful For reasons of the round, Christopher Little
and David White firmly believe that this life, damn it
is a wonderful life. Annually they throw a small party
to celebrate that shared perception of reality. What they do
(36:52):
at the party is this, They have a few drinks
and eat a few ham sandwiches, and then they watch
an old movie on television. Specifically, they watch It's a
Wonderful Life.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
I was in bed asleep in my minuscule apartment on
West twenty first rate, which costs two hundred and thirty
nine dollars a month.
Speaker 41 (37:16):
And.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The phone rang, waking me up, and I answered, and
the person on the other end of the film said.
Speaker 17 (37:27):
Mister Little.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And I said, yes, nobody ever called me mister little.
Still don't. And he said, and these are his very words.
Speaker 17 (37:36):
My name is Frank Capra, and you have given me
the best Christmas present of my entire life. And I
want to thank you, guys, And if you ever think
of me, I would love to come to your party,
So please bear me in mind. And if you'd like
to send me an invitation, I would be thurled.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So Christophernat put our heads together and we composed the
letter and I sent it off the holiday he would
and Capra wrote back saying I will be there and
that Christmas. Frank Capra and his son Pound Capra walked
into Christopher's Law, and when let down their hair, there
(38:14):
was no formality.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
He brought with him a print.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Four reels, which he told us he'd been showing to
his family ever since nineteen forty six. And one of
the amazing treats was he might call it the director's cut,
because there were scenes we'd never seen.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
What a lovely guy.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
We had a memorial chair, and we would always invite
somebody who without letting them know that we thought was
particularly despairing that year, and so we would always have
a special guest, and shere he never knew that they were,
in fact the special guest.
Speaker 37 (39:00):
Live Again.
Speaker 19 (39:01):
I wouldn't live again.
Speaker 6 (39:04):
I wouldn't live again.
Speaker 29 (39:05):
Please God let me live again.
Speaker 36 (39:08):
I have one I have one notion about this movie
which I think should should be up high, and that
is it has a direct relevance to today because it.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Centers around a suicide attempt. It's a Christmas movie, but
it also centers around a suicide attempt, and we have
a suicide epidemic in this country. And Clarence, an angel
is sent down for Heaven.
Speaker 42 (39:32):
To talk George out of jumping off the bridge, and
he does it by a wonderful method which is not
therapy or counseling. He shows George what his life would
have been like if he had never lived in me
jumped off from bridge, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
It's like having suicide discussed by Mark Twain or Winslow
Homer or Sinclair Lewis or Nolan Rockwell. And I think
it's it's a real issue that needs to be addressed today,
and this movie addresses it with the softest, warmest glove
that you can imagine.
Speaker 6 (40:10):
We had a question and answer session.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, and Christopher I stood up and said, Frank is
saying he'd be happy to take any questions that anyone
in the audience might have. And there were a lot
of questions and answers.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
At one point when it was venture kind of whining down,
Frank Capra said, Oh, I just remembered a story about
Lionel Barrymore.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Would you like to hear it?
Speaker 17 (40:36):
Do I have any time left?
Speaker 6 (40:38):
And I said, you got all night? My friend.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Christopher felt he saw clearly Frank's own recognition that the
widespread belief that his movie was now public domain, combined
with the new cool factor coming from the party written
about in The New Yorker, was finally turning wonderful life
into something it had never been before, a hit.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Capra was so vocal about how important he felt this
was to him. His life changed to really believe that,
and I think he felt. I think he knew that
that was happening, and that would be happening. It's the
damnedest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 17 (41:20):
The film has a life of its own now, and
I can only look at it as if I had
nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president.
Speaker 14 (41:31):
Hi, fellow Americans, this is the thirty fourth time I'll
speak to you from the Oval Office and the last.
Speaker 6 (41:37):
We've been together eight years now, and soon it'll be
time for me to go.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
It's nineteen eighty nine now. In just ten years, pop
culture takes on wonderful life have become so plentiful as
to now be seen as cliche. And something seems to
take a turn around this time.
Speaker 15 (41:57):
How can you hate?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 19 (42:00):
Stinks, it bites, it blows.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
It's worth considering why the value of every individual was
considered in such short supply that its currency went up
so drastically over the nineteen eighties. If at the start
of the decade, Americans seemed to be responding to something
inside this movie almost desperately, as if it were an antidote.
(42:26):
By the end of the Reagan years, Hope seems lost,
and it's right at this time that media inspired by
the movie reaches a crescendo, and there's never been more
than in this period. But suddenly they all seem to
embrace a certain cynicism.
Speaker 19 (42:45):
Well, I'll show you what I mean.
Speaker 20 (42:47):
I'm a guardian angel. I'm looking for an ol Bundy.
Speaker 6 (42:53):
You know now, Bundy, I'm ol Bundy.
Speaker 31 (42:57):
Now to stop playing it, and you got me into
goa bad.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
American storytellers are looking for ways to reflect the realities
they see around them, and strangely, despite being from forty
years in the past, Clarence and George and Potter seem
to offer much in that regard. I love you, I
love you, I love.
Speaker 19 (43:28):
You, I love you, I love you.
Speaker 17 (43:32):
Love you.
Speaker 16 (43:35):
Now that's the straw that broke the camel's back.
Speaker 20 (43:39):
I'm sorry, Bundy, I fail you.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Rupert Murdoch, one of the richest and some say meanest
men in the world, has just launched his new television network, Fox,
and the makers of its very first primetime series, Married
with Children, decide to again show someone what the world would.
Speaker 19 (44:00):
Be like without them, but with a new twist.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
I'm supposed to show you why he should live but
I can't think of.
Speaker 20 (44:07):
One darn reason.
Speaker 43 (44:08):
Wait a second, I want to be back with my family.
Why look at them, They're happy, not a care in
the world. You think I'm going to let that happen
after all the grief they put me through.
Speaker 6 (44:26):
I want to live.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
I know it's funny, but if you think about it,
this is a little dark, isn't it. A father discovering
his entire family is better off if he'd never been born.
It's perhaps telling that at this moment others seem to
be considering the inverse of George Bailey's lesson that if
each person's life touches so many others, some bad actors
(44:52):
may be responsible for an outsized negative impact on everyone.
Speaker 6 (44:57):
So pick up on Christmas. It's the one I want
it for, It's the one in the previous generation. It's
a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You're hearing. John McTiernan, the movie director.
Speaker 38 (45:08):
Specifically the Potterville sequence, which is what happens when the
evil banker gets to do what he wants in the
community without Jimmy Stewart getting in a way to stop,
and it's the clearest criticism of runaway, unregulated cowboy capital.
(45:29):
Listeners ever done in an American movie, and I wondered,
how did that wind up in a Christmas movie?
Speaker 6 (45:33):
And the answer came back screen, God, there was a
Christmas movie you fall. So I went to Joel, you
know my name?
Speaker 17 (45:41):
And who are you?
Speaker 12 (45:43):
Just another American who saw too many movies as a child,
another orphan of a bankrupt culture. This is John Wayne Rambo,
Nashal Dylan.
Speaker 20 (45:54):
There's always kind of partial tole Roy Rogers, actually.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
And that.
Speaker 6 (45:59):
Is how die Hard became it.
Speaker 38 (46:02):
We hadn't intended it to be a Christmas movie, but
the joy that came from it is what turned it
into a Christmas.
Speaker 31 (46:10):
No, I have a machine gun.
Speaker 6 (46:17):
Is die Hard a Christmas movie? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
This is George Clooney, the actor, talking to Stephen Colbert,
the comedian.
Speaker 16 (46:28):
He realized it's a controversial answer.
Speaker 44 (46:29):
I will tell you it is not a Christmas and
I'll tell you what Christmas movies are for the family
together around and celebrate being together and celebrate life and
you know, and love and Diehard is a spectacular film,
as I've just picked it as my action film, but
it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 19 (46:50):
Is your Christmas movie?
Speaker 34 (46:51):
Are you sitting you don't want to sit around with
a whole family, with the kids and grandma and watch
Hans Gruber fall off of Knokotomy Plaza.
Speaker 44 (46:59):
Well, I'll tell you why. And this is actually a
very important thing. Grandma's dead, and that would be really
hard to sit.
Speaker 19 (47:06):
That would be difficult.
Speaker 16 (47:08):
Prior to this point in time.
Speaker 34 (47:10):
Somewhere in the past, the timeline stewed into this tangent,
creating an alternate nineteen.
Speaker 17 (47:15):
Eighty five and which Biff is corrupt and powerful and
married to your mother.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
And which.
Speaker 20 (47:25):
This has happened to me.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Many fans of this nineteen eighty nine sequel to Back
to the Future notice a heavy dose of Pottersville inspiration
in the dark alternate nineteen eighties, in which a school
bully type Biff Tannin manages to achieve wealth and power,
even becoming a casino owner.
Speaker 19 (47:46):
Can you imagine if something like that ever happened in
real life.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
To writers Bob Gail and Bob Zamechis, the idea was
then the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 35 (48:00):
Gambling and good fortune turn him into one of America's
greatest living heroes. His charm attracted the world's most sought
after beauties, his power and influence made him the model
of world leaders and heads of state.
Speaker 14 (48:14):
Inside you will learn how Biff Pennon became one of
the richest and most powerful men in America.
Speaker 23 (48:19):
I just want to say one thing, God bless America.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
When a producer from my team messaged Bob Gail inviting
him to be part of this podcast, his agent responded
with a statement, Bob doesn't give comments out regarding Biff
and Trump hmmm, out of respect for him. Then I
won't bring you inside any of his private conversations on
(48:49):
the matter. But Americans on Twitter have certainly felt they
noticed a connection. At Jay Underscore ha III twenty fifteen.
Does anyone else make the connect between Biff Tannan and
mister Potter running their cities and Donald Trump running for prez?
(49:10):
Hashtag it didn't end well At Jeff o'cial December twenty fourth,
twenty seventeen. I just watched It's a Wonderful Life for
the first time. The two thoughts one, it's surprisingly very
anti capitalist and Back to the Future Part two totally
ripped off that movie. Also, Potter equals Biff equals Trump
(49:35):
at Dave J two January twenty eighteen, Cross Biff Tannan
and mister Potter and their surrealistic icky towns, and you
get Donald Trump with everything on a large scale because
he is Bigley at David S. Buchanan one May twenty twenty.
(49:56):
In this version of populism, mister Potter would be the
hit zero great connection. Trump is some weird combination of
Biff and Potter. Well, you get the idea. There are
hundreds more I could read.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
I wonder what my life would have been like if
I'd never seen that movie.
Speaker 21 (50:19):
Attention all personnel, please keep working during the following announcement
and now our boss and friend mister Burns.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Also on Murdoch's channel. In nineteen eighty nine, The Simpsons
begins its long television run with a Christmas episode. Some
suspect that mister Burns is meant to be a mister
Potter for what's become of the American workplace.
Speaker 21 (50:46):
Hello, I'm proud to announce that we've been able to
increase safety here at the plant without increasing the cost
to the consumer or affecting management pay races. However, for
you semi skilled workers, they will be Christmas bonuses. And
one more thing, this Marry Christmas.
Speaker 16 (51:07):
Is it Shirley, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 20 (51:09):
Who's that?
Speaker 8 (51:11):
It's It's me Clark, Chriswall.
Speaker 4 (51:13):
What do you want?
Speaker 24 (51:16):
My wife and I came up with a little sum
specials hits a gift.
Speaker 19 (51:21):
Put it over there with the others.
Speaker 45 (51:22):
Prince Ball, John Hughes bringing into a little bit of
that Capricorn of shall we say, into Christmas Vacation, which
he did manage to bring into Capricorn.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Frank Kepper the third is Frank's grandson who became a
successful Hollywood producer in his own right. Back in nineteen
eighty nine, he is brought on by the team of
writer and producer John Hughes to assist and direct another
movie destined to become a Christmas classic.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
National and Jun's Christmas Vacation. It's another one of these movies.
It's going to be around a long time. We all
know about. It's Waterful Life. That's not going anyway anywhere
anytime soon.
Speaker 45 (52:06):
I was very close to my grandfather, probably the ten grandchildren,
three kids, I was the closest to him out of
all of them.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I've asked Frank Kappra the first, who will neither confirm
nor deny this assertion.
Speaker 45 (52:20):
So for me, it was I was still very young,
you know, that was the mid eighties for me, so
I was still an upcoming second assistant director, worth of
my way up to being a first ad producer. And
it's funny because there's one scene in the kitchen where
Jeremiah said to me, Hey, Frankie, can we put a
(52:44):
clip of It's a Wonderful Life on the TV? In
the kitchen with Chevy. I was like, why wouldn't you?
It's a public domain.
Speaker 20 (52:52):
We'll clear it.
Speaker 6 (52:53):
No problem.
Speaker 16 (53:00):
Yet, folks, Folks, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Frank believes that any portrait at the end of the
nineteen eighties of a working American and his family during
the holidays had to find a way to balance hope
and despair, and John Hughes surely looked to Wonderful Life
for inspiration.
Speaker 16 (53:49):
Fix the North Post.
Speaker 45 (53:51):
So in doing that whole final scene, you know, in
that living room and Chevy pouring his frustration and his
love and heart for his family out, was actually pretty
pretty cold to do.
Speaker 29 (54:06):
It's for my company, your bonus, my bonus, what is it?
One year membership in the Jelly of the Month club?
Speaker 45 (54:24):
Okay, Park, that's the gift that keeps on given the
whole year.
Speaker 6 (54:28):
That's the whole thing about Christmas vacation.
Speaker 45 (54:32):
In a strange way, he kept a little of the
dark undertones that your grandpa had instated in It's a
Wonderful Life. Not I think on purpose so much, but
a driving home the theme of the movie.
Speaker 29 (54:50):
I lost my temper when I got my bonus, and
I guess I said a few things I shouldn't have bonus.
Speaker 6 (54:56):
How did you get a bonus? I cut out bonuses
this year corporate hotshot world.
Speaker 45 (55:02):
And you know this poor guy trying to do everything
for his family, the light for Christmas tree and pardon
my language, everything he touches, he fucks up.
Speaker 29 (55:12):
Seventeen years with a company, I've gotten a Christmas bonus
every year with this one.
Speaker 16 (55:16):
You don't want to get bonuses, fine, but when people
count on him as part of their salary, Oh what
you did?
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Just planing sucks?
Speaker 29 (55:25):
Thank you Russ for an unfortunate Well, what's the family
for if you can't take car of its losers.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
The defining potter of nineteen eighties media is perhaps JR.
Ewing win it all cost inheritor of Ewing Oil Company.
Speaker 12 (55:41):
I'm going to bring Bobby down.
Speaker 6 (55:43):
I'm going to cut him out if I have to
destroy ewing or to do it.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
And like many of the potters of that decade, he
is more dangerous because he makes it seem fun and
as they say, is sexy.
Speaker 9 (55:57):
Tell me, JR.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Which slut are you going to stay with tonight?
Speaker 6 (56:01):
What difference does it make?
Speaker 20 (56:03):
Whoever?
Speaker 19 (56:04):
It is got to be more interesting than the slot
I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
Two years after Married with Children explored whether the world
might not be better off without certain people. The storytellers
behind Dallas are trying to find the perfect way to
end their hit show and Jr's popular story when they
decide to take this thought even darker.
Speaker 12 (56:26):
Did you some sort of a press angel? And I'm
your good deed?
Speaker 4 (56:29):
Huh?
Speaker 23 (56:33):
We got it upside down and backwards, but in essence
it's by it.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
When JR. Becomes suicidal, a fantastical being arrives to show
him another universe where he was never born. Some things
are better, some are worse. Ultimately, the message to JR
seems to be that this one man's existence has made
no real difference at all, good or bad. But is
(56:59):
what he is shown real or a mean spirited trick?
At the end a revelation, And why don't you go
ahead and kill yourself.
Speaker 11 (57:10):
And send you back to heaven a failure?
Speaker 19 (57:12):
You'll never become an angel?
Speaker 15 (57:18):
What makes you think I'm from.
Speaker 19 (57:26):
Earlier?
Speaker 3 (57:27):
I told you that you know George as a character
in a movie. It's a wonderful life. Have you figured
out what that means yet? Like when we took George
to Pottersville, you too live in one of the universes
where George Bailey was never born. This is why I'm
coming to you. Over the next nine episodes of this podcast,
(57:52):
We're going to look at how the potters have gained
the upper hand in nearly every aspect of life in
your universe. We are going to meet some of the
people trying to fill the void for George Bailey and
his partner Mary, who might be more important than you thought.
And like George, you're wrestling not only with external enemies,
(58:16):
but internal ones. So keep listening for now, let's conclude
with this only four months after that Dallas TV episode
Upside Down to Philip Van doren Stern's beautiful message that
every person makes a deep impact to push JR. Ewing
(58:36):
to commit suicide. Frank Capra a man who made a
positive impact on your universe, joins us up here. I'm
taking you to one of his last public appearances in
Los Angeles. Wonderful life has just risen again like a phoenix.
Most of the movie industry and Frank spouse, children and
(58:59):
grand children.
Speaker 19 (59:01):
Look on as he's awarded for his life's work.
Speaker 45 (59:05):
Everybody should watch that Airfly tribute speech he gave for
twelve minutes at the Airfi Award.
Speaker 6 (59:12):
Because that basically sums it all up.
Speaker 18 (59:15):
What capital was Tonight, I'm going to tell you the
real secret of the whole thing. It's the love of people.
And add two simple ideals to this love of people,
the freedom of each individual and the equal importance of
(59:37):
each individual, and you have the principle upon which I've
based all my films.
Speaker 46 (59:44):
And may I say a word to this new generation.
Don't follow trends, God.
Speaker 18 (59:55):
Trends, Go compromise. Believe in yourself, because only the valiant
can create, only the daring should make films, and only
the marley courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow
(01:00:16):
men for two hours.
Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
And of the dark.
Speaker 41 (01:00:35):
George Bailey was never born. Visit Savegeorge Bailey dot com.
Speaker 20 (01:00:39):
To join the mission.
Speaker 41 (01:00:40):
There you'll find links to works by this episode's participants.
Learn more about how to celebrate George Bailey Day on Saturday,
December ninth, and annually the second Saturday of December hereafter
by hosting your own Wonderful Life viewing party. Tell your
friends to listen to this show, subscribe, like, comment, and
post about it on social media hashtags Save George Bailey.
(01:01:02):
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(01:01:26):
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(01:01:49):
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David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana. This episode featured
in chronological order, David White, Christopher Little, Jeff Williams, Laura Robinson,
(01:02:53):
Jerry Sindel, John Tobaccan Ed Sharlack, Tom Tenowitch, and Frank Kappra,
The IID with a Peering by Neil Howe, Paul Zimmy Finn,
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(01:03:16):
legal doctrine of fair use. The Potters are working on
that one, though the voice of Mark Singer was played
by his son Paul Mayilhos Singer, reading the words written
by Mark Singer for The New Yorker. The voice of
Frank Capra was played by Mark Granby, grandnephew of Joseph Granby,
the man who narrated Wonderful Life, based in parts on
accounts by Little White and Singer, and in one part
(01:03:38):
by Frank's words spoken to the Wall Street Journal in
nineteen eighty four. Frank's afi speech is spoken by Frank himself.
Some original research by Jeff Williams for this episode. Go
to double Asteriskmedia dot com to Here are other limited
run podcasts who is rich Blee after the Uprising with
a bold new season in Saint Louis coming summer twenty
(01:03:59):
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subscribe to True Stories New weekly Everybody Has a podcast
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(01:04:21):
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Copyright twenty twenty three double asteriskkink
Oh, it's a great story. It's an absolutely great story.
I would was it during college.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I think we were still in college.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Yeah, it's December nineteen seventy one, twenty five years since.
It's a Wonderful Life was released and quickly disappeared from
the collective memory, mostly taking its director of Frank Capra's
career with it. I'm taking you to New York City,
to a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Three childhood
(00:38):
friends reconnect while back home from college for Christmas break.
Christopher Little, back from Yale, brings his sister Suzanne for
dinner with David White at his parents' place. David's back
from Harvard.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
We're starting to watch a movie. After day, I think
we watched two movies and then it was literally about
three am, and the starter, It's a Wonderful Light, came
on with stars twinkling and talking to each other.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Charge is a good guy. Give him a break.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
God.
Speaker 6 (01:15):
He never thinks about himself and God, that's why he's
in trouble.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I love him.
Speaker 7 (01:20):
Dear Lord, what room tonight?
Speaker 8 (01:23):
Please God there with Daddy. Please bring back.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
In those days, it wasn't a popular movie. It appeared
perhaps once a year on some usually obscure station, not
not the networks.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
And I said, wow, this looks like the Loser. Let's
let's get that's it from the evening and Susan Christopher
sistant Christmas sister, said, no, absolutely, I've seen this movie,
the greatest movie in the world world, and we should
watch it.
Speaker 9 (02:02):
You've been given a great gift, George, a chance to
see what the world would be like without.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You, and that in nineteen seventy one, the first time
that you ever saw It's a Wonderful life for in
the morning during Christmas season from New York City, and
we were spellbound and were absolutely enraptured by it.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
David and his friend Christopher would soon become part of
a seemingly random series of events that would turn this
lost film into an American icon.
Speaker 7 (02:37):
Buffalo Girls, can't you come out tonight? Can't you come
out tonight? Can't you come out tonight? Buffalo Girls, can't
you come out tonight? And by the.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
Just if you make me start.
Speaker 10 (03:07):
Joe, when I was working at the clubs in the
early days and just hells angels and drunk people and
bombing like crazy. Jimmy Stewart is a waiter never didn't
save my act, like I'd be just tanking.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You're hearing Dana Carvey.
Speaker 10 (03:31):
The comedian Jimmy Stewart is a waiter, was always a
go to, like, well can I take your order?
Speaker 11 (03:38):
Well, what do you mean you don't know the specials?
Speaker 6 (03:39):
I told him to you ten minutes.
Speaker 10 (03:42):
What do you want me to stand here like a
trained monkey and tell them to you again?
Speaker 12 (03:47):
What did you say?
Speaker 6 (03:48):
Well?
Speaker 13 (03:49):
You fair.
Speaker 6 (03:54):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 14 (03:54):
Tonight, mark's a historic, not to say unique, moment in
the history of both television and cinema. After a search
of nearly forty years, the fabled lost ending to Frank
Capra's nineteen forty seven film It's a Wonderful Life has
been found tonight for the first time anywhere. Saturday Night
Live is proud to present this priceless footage, the fully
realized vision of an authentic American genius.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
We're still in New York City now, nineteen eighty six,
eight floors up in the Rockefeller's Center Building, an audience
watches a live taping of Dana Carvey and the rest
of the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live as
they perform a comedy sketch introduced by guest host William Shatner, Car.
Speaker 8 (04:38):
Jolsey, new Hardee Ardeny.
Speaker 15 (04:45):
Right, everyone, I remembered, I remembered when I did with
the money, the eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 8 (04:52):
Well, that's right, right, uncle Billy, Well what'd you do
with it?
Speaker 16 (04:55):
I just called Clarice at the bank.
Speaker 9 (04:57):
He told me that old man pottered positive, exactly eight
thousand dollars right after.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Right, half, Well, what are we waiting for?
Speaker 16 (05:07):
Let's go get it.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
Where did the second?
Speaker 16 (05:12):
I'll give you the money bag.
Speaker 17 (05:13):
I don't want the money.
Speaker 18 (05:14):
I want to pay for you fadder, Mary holding.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
Lawyer at Sea of Ja.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
At the start, you heard Christopher and David discovering a
mostly unknown movie in nineteen seventy one. A mere fifteen
years later, that same movie is now so well known
that it's fertile for parody by a beloved comedy show
What Happened? But perhaps we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.
(05:52):
I should introduce myself. I'm Joseph the Angel.
Speaker 19 (05:57):
You probably already know about me.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Nearly a human lifetime ago, my angel colleagues and I
interceded in the life of a man named George Bailey
to help him understand his impact on his world. We
took him to one part of the multiverse where he
had never been born. But if you're hearing this podcast,
you know George Bailey and his loved ones simply as
(06:23):
beloved characters in one of the most popular movies of
all time, It's a Wonderful Life, starring iconic Hollywood actor
Jimmy Stewart as George and Lionel Barrymore as his nemesis,
mister Potter. You'll remember that Potter, like Ebenezer Scrooge, is
(06:45):
consumed by greed, but in this tale, the bob Cratcheat
of sorts fights back on behalf of his town of
Bedford Falls. Driven by his good heart, George's efforts are
not quite enough, though, when his sense of failure drives
him to suicide, we angels intervene to show him what
(07:07):
things would be like without him. I'm the one you
hear every year narrating George's story as I tell it
to Clarence, then Angel second class. Well you hear Joseph Granby,
the actor playing me. But we'll get to.
Speaker 20 (07:23):
All that, you know.
Speaker 21 (07:25):
I think I think a lot of Americans don't really
recall the first time they saw.
Speaker 19 (07:29):
It's one of those movies.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's like airy, you know, it's like, when did you
start reading it?
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Oh?
Speaker 22 (07:35):
I saw when I was a small child's I saw
it with my cousin. I still remember to this day
watching it in her living room on their TV. And
it just was not like anything else that I had seen.
Speaker 23 (07:50):
My sister and I sort of curling up on under
big blankets on the couch and watching a little, tiny
black and white set. You know, I was probably ten
or eleven.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
I didn't get it.
Speaker 23 (07:59):
I don't think I got the full existential crisis and
drama on what was going on.
Speaker 24 (08:06):
Of a little kid. It was on Channel eleven in
New York City, you know, and it was on a
bunch of times. I remember not enjoying the movie very much.
I was just like, why are we watching this? This
is stupid, this is corny.
Speaker 25 (08:18):
So I've been trying to think about when the first
time is that I saw It's a Wonderful Light. And
my recollection is that I was in high school. It
was a Christmas season, it was in that era where
it was the movie was in public domain, so it
would be on twenty or thirty times like per day
on every channel, and I remember being home by myself,
(08:42):
kind of sick with the cold, and turning it on
and realizing that this movie that had become kind of
a punchline because of its omnipresence.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Was actually really good.
Speaker 25 (08:58):
And I remember sitting think through the whole thing and
getting kind of teary and emotional and thinking that I
was surprised at what a good movie it was.
Speaker 26 (09:08):
I think I saw it, oh probably I was ten
or eleven, and like its reputation proceeded it, and I
was very into alternate universe stories, and then I kind
of was surprised to find that it was like a
dark tale of you know this, this one man's like
descent into despair and then being saved through unlikely heavenly intervention.
Speaker 27 (09:30):
I was living alone for the first time, and there
was a very severe thunderstorm at about three am, so
I turned on the TV because I was awake and
I had to work early in the morning, and I
just decided to get up and the movie that happened
to be on was It's a Wonderful Life, And from
the moment I started watching, I was absolutely transfixed, blown away,
(09:54):
It really struck a chord with me.
Speaker 15 (09:56):
If you were to asking me the first time I
ever saw It's a Wonderful Life, I would have no idea.
I mean, I was born in nineteen seventy There's not
a time for me where I remember it not being on.
Speaker 20 (10:08):
I mean, it was always on.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
This is Jeff Williams, who goes by the pseudonym the
TV Professor. He's an investigator of a type into obscure
television history.
Speaker 15 (10:20):
The movie was not a total flop in the forties.
I mean, it was not a big blockbuster.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
What you may be less familiar about is that Frank
Capra's Liberty Films released Wonderful Life in movie theaters in
December nineteen forty six, and it ran for about a year.
Then it mostly disappeared. Few Americans ever knew what this
movie was until the arrival of television.
Speaker 15 (10:48):
From nineteen fifty six to nineteen seventy three, seventeen years,
It's a Wonderful Life would play on independent stations you
could find it, but it was often on the late
late movies. I remember reading a columnist who wrote a
column in nineteen seventy three that he had just watched
(11:09):
It's Wonderful Life, and it was on the Late Late Show,
and he kind of complained or criped that it should
have been earlier where more people could have seen it.
Then nineteen seventy four comes and it wasn't like the
floodgates came pouring out and suddenly Its Wonderful Life was
on all the time. But in nineteen seventy four it started.
(11:30):
I think a couple of TV stations they realized, hey,
it's in the public domain, we can run this. And
then other TV stations, you know, the executives talk or
they watch what other stations are doing, their competitors, and
they're realizing, oh wow, we could do this too.
Speaker 17 (11:45):
I was.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Young enough that, you know, I don't.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Remember the.
Speaker 28 (11:55):
Inflection point, the moment to change.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
This is Laura Robinson, one of three daughters born to
Philip and Doren Stern's only daughter. You'll meet the other
two in future episodes. Philip wrote the original short story
from which Wonderful Life was adapted.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
My grandfather, who was interested in important ideas, the multiverse,
the butterfly effect, you know, whatever it is. But I
think the man that I remember was a student of
the human condition, the desire to love and be loved, to.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Be an integral part of community, to contribute to our community.
Speaker 9 (12:37):
Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and was
drowned at the age of nine.
Speaker 29 (12:42):
That's a lie.
Speaker 16 (12:43):
Harry Bailey went to war, He got the Congressional Medal
of Honor. He saved the lives of every man on
that transport.
Speaker 9 (12:48):
Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to
save them because you weren't there to save Harry. Strange,
isn't it Each man's life touches so many other lives.
When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hold, isn't.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
He That little idea that came to Philip van doren
Stern in nineteen thirty eight in a mysterious dream, Each
person's impact on all others proves captivating to Americans a
full thirty years later, and thereafter.
Speaker 28 (13:20):
It became you think of it?
Speaker 13 (13:22):
Will you welcome please the incredible Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's nineteen eighty one. Steven Spielberg, the movie director, has
just released something called Indiana Jones, and he's working on
his latest called e t. He's talking to Dick Cavott
the talk show host.
Speaker 13 (13:46):
I have three or four films that I'll always watch
if they're on the Late show or at a festival nearby.
Do you have a little handful of ones like that?
I have an apple barrel full of them. Yeah, but
I mean among my favorite films. I'll watch anytime The
Searchers The Searcher, Yes, and I'll watch it anytime.
Speaker 19 (14:02):
And it's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Anytime it's on Christmas summer livers want to watch that.
Speaker 13 (14:06):
It shows that every human being on the planet Earth matters,
Every single human being on the face of the planet
makes a difference or calling Awson coming Awson.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Two years earlier, nineteen seventy nine, another television studio audience,
this one inside Stage twenty seven of the Paramount Pictures
Lot in Los Angeles, California, witnesses the filming of a sitcom,
Mark and Mindy, an unbeknownst to them, an odd little
footnote of history, the first instance of the nineteen seventies
(14:42):
in which TV series storytellers seek to use Wonderful Life's
core concept for their purposes, the first, as you know,
of what will become so many. This is Robin Williams,
the comedian.
Speaker 30 (14:58):
Seems no matter how hard I keep losting up the
lives of the people I care for, I've got to
come home, sir.
Speaker 16 (15:04):
I'm pig slack.
Speaker 31 (15:05):
Well perhaps, but let's make sure a newly developed process
which will enable you to see what past your friends
would have taken the past year had you not come
into their life.
Speaker 11 (15:16):
I guess we're flattered that we were the first ones
to use that premise to take off on it.
Speaker 19 (15:21):
But it seems natural.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
You're hearing Ed Sharlack, the television writer, and Tom Tenowitch,
his frequent writing partner. They drafted the Mork and Mindy
television episode. It's a wonderful mark, this is Tom.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
It's such a universal feeling.
Speaker 13 (15:39):
You know.
Speaker 30 (15:40):
On the surface, we all try to put on a
good face, but there are those private moments that we
often don't admit to anyone.
Speaker 11 (15:48):
But you're face to face with it yourself. By showing
how somebody what the world would be like without somebody,
you really get to know the value of somebody.
Speaker 16 (16:00):
Calling come here and your fanato now, baby, get down.
Don't you never guess what I learned.
Speaker 32 (16:07):
I learned that I'm okay, I'm not as bad as
I thought I was.
Speaker 31 (16:10):
That's a lesson one can only learn from the school
of oneself.
Speaker 33 (16:15):
Five Faminate for Me Survival, How do Ever? Corporated Saturday
Night movie It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart, The
story of a man who wishes he was never born.
This story of my life right now struck me.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Wish I was never born.
Speaker 16 (16:49):
Let's look at this case.
Speaker 34 (16:50):
There's an excursion into the real americane, like being part
of a Frank Capra movie. Frank Capra director, you know,
it's a wonderful life. Mister D's goes town Jimmy stuw,
Donna Reed, Gary Cooper, Pain streetam Manet the town square
(17:12):
with a bandstand smack in the middle.
Speaker 21 (17:14):
Ti Jo.
Speaker 20 (17:18):
Tijo?
Speaker 35 (17:19):
Is there?
Speaker 5 (17:21):
What is it?
Speaker 6 (17:21):
You want?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Mary?
Speaker 20 (17:23):
You want the moon?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around
it and pull it down. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart And
It's a wonderful life. What was it inside this movie
from the nineteen forties that's so resonated when received by
Americans of the nineteen eighties. What makes this question so
relevant is that the time period corresponds with a marked
(17:48):
rise in cynicism and hopelessness.
Speaker 19 (17:52):
More on that in a bit.
Speaker 28 (17:54):
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 36 (17:56):
How hi everywhere.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Philip van doren Stern's and daughter Laura Again.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
Honestly, I probably couldn't come up with a single long
running sitcom that haven't done. You know, it's a life episode.
Speaker 18 (18:08):
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
It's a wonderful life again. How many times a day
are they going to show this golden Moldy.
Speaker 28 (18:23):
Six from now until New Year's on Channel thirteen.
Speaker 19 (18:27):
It's a wonderful month.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Oh oh, here comes the gussiest part.
Speaker 20 (18:32):
Oh have they no shame?
Speaker 8 (18:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a clean ex six.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Let's go some.
Speaker 16 (19:05):
You're gonna miss. It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 10 (19:08):
Well it's on again at nine and nine thirty and eleven,
and then at midnight in Spanish when I beat out
wonderful man day.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
And uh to the point where you know, I'll be
watching a show and then I'll see that they're headed
down there direct flying.
Speaker 15 (19:23):
Oh it's their turn now, you know. I didn't watch
the ending.
Speaker 7 (19:32):
I was too depressed.
Speaker 24 (19:33):
It just kept getting.
Speaker 8 (19:34):
Worse and worse.
Speaker 34 (19:35):
It should have been called it's a.
Speaker 8 (19:36):
Sucky life, and just when you think it can't suck.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Anymore, it does.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Everybody does that.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Everybody does it because it's such a universal you know,
it's such a universal story.
Speaker 20 (19:51):
Got yourself, Jesus enough already, and.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The corollary to a world without you proves just as powerful.
Some call it sliding doors, or roads diverged, or simply
different choices.
Speaker 37 (20:18):
Hi, I'm Ray and I live here in Long Island
with my wife Deborah.
Speaker 16 (20:21):
Would you sleep with her?
Speaker 8 (20:25):
You don't exist.
Speaker 27 (20:26):
It's like it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 32 (20:27):
There's no Deborah.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Well, then it's not a wonderful life.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And now a movie named Mister Destiny uses the formula again,
but Michael came playing supernatural being who steps in when
James Blue she grows discontented with his life.
Speaker 31 (20:47):
Instead of missing the baseball, however, you hit it, then
you became a hero, married the prom queen.
Speaker 38 (20:54):
And so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Americans seem to become obsessed by the fork in the road,
whether the path chosen was the right one.
Speaker 20 (21:04):
Why.
Speaker 23 (21:05):
The breaking news just in the CNN is that actor
Robin Williams is dead at the age of sixty three
from an apparent suicide.
Speaker 37 (21:13):
Anything that can help people that are going in that
direction is really very very important and wonderful, and I'm
glad that there are organizations and professions that are there.
That was his decision to leave the pilot, so to speak.
(21:33):
But you know, he had a great gift that was
making other people happy and giving pleasure people's.
Speaker 11 (21:44):
Lives, and to see that go away is said, we
lost something very special.
Speaker 30 (21:51):
And I hope he's at peace now and making Clarence
from the movie happy.
Speaker 9 (22:02):
Sir.
Speaker 32 (22:03):
I don't know how much value I have in this universe,
but I do know that I made a few people
happier than there would have been without me.
Speaker 11 (22:08):
As long as I know that, I'm as rich as
ever need to be.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
A mere twenty years after Robin Williams first recorded his
take on a still mostly unknown old movie. By the
late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, the American Film
Institute conducts a series of polls of filmmakers, journalists, historians,
and well known Americans looking at forty thousand American films.
(22:35):
Wonderful Life is voted the eleventh greatest movie ever, eighth
greatest love story, third greatest fantasy movie, and the most
inspiring of all time. George Bailey is ninth greatest hero
in all American movies, and mister Potter sixth greatest villain.
(22:56):
Many comment that their vote is driven by its central theme,
the impact of every individual, whether considered big or small,
on everyone else on earth. But how exactly had this
incredible comeback story happened beginning in the nineteen seventies, resulting
(23:17):
in Wonderful Life suddenly everywhere in your pop culture, now
widely considered among the greatest I'm taking you closer to
that story now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
One year we just said to ourself, let's have a party. Yeah,
and it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
As the party was born David White again. From the
very beginning of this episode, December after December, over the
nineteen seventies, Christopher Little and he hosted a group of
friends and like minded associates to watch Wonderful Life. The
party often took place in Christopher's Manhattan loft in the
(23:55):
Flat Iron District, where he also kept his photography studio,
a good screening room.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Just out of college students. And we used to go
to astor Place liquor store in Manhattan and by the
cheapest a Bourbon and Scotch.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
We had to scour.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
TV guide trying to find out that there's this pre Betamax, PREVSVCR,
and we weren't rich enough to rent a projector and
read the film, and then we would just have the
party whenever it was on.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The really impressive thing that struck me that the party
was an instant hit. Everybody just loved the movie and
it took off instantly and became an instant tradition. That
first night we got together, and the same people came
next year and we had some more people, so we
(24:48):
finally became I don't know, crowded, seventy people, sixty to
seventy people.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
There were rules, there were rules. You definitely weren't allowed
to watch it at any other time than at the party.
And secondly, if you missed the year, you were pretty
you were in pretty bad trouble. Took a couple of
(25:19):
years to get back on the list. You'd have to
beg and scrabble to get back on our list.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
We had to applaud when Zusan's rose pedals were found
in George Bailey's pockets.
Speaker 27 (25:36):
What do you know about that?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I can tell you that, well, we get to our party.
The room was full of weeping people of like mind
who just adored all the elements of that almost perfect movie.
I guess you'd have to say, with all humility, it
(26:01):
was a fairly intellectual It is not the right word,
but it's a fairly bright crowd. We had a couple
of architects who attended, two of my favorite people on Earth.
One was called Ralph Wolf and the other one was
a guy called Patrick Curley.
Speaker 29 (26:17):
And then I'm gonna build things.
Speaker 32 (26:19):
I'm gonna build airfield, I'm gonna build skyscrapers one hundred
stories high.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I'm gonna build bridges a mile long. Two marriages would
result from the decade long party.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Ralph and Betty marry my family's house on shore on
Long Island Sound, and Patrick and Jane. I was a
wedding present and a surprise. Hired a h an airplane
touring one of those long banners, and the banner read
Ralph and Betty, It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
More on the impact of their party in a bit,
but first, something important to this story happening elsewhere. I'm
taking you across the country to America's other coast, to
Marina del Rey, part of the metropolitan sprawl of Los Angeles.
It's summer nineteen seventy four. We're outside a building that
(27:16):
looks like a warehouse, the new offices of National Telefilm Associates,
known as NTA. A convertible tea bird pulls up out
front Hunter Green with a lion hood on. The man
getting out of this beautiful automobile is Bernie Tobaccan, president
(27:38):
of NTA. He doesn't know it yet, but he and
his team are about to be part of the biggest
hoops in American cinematic history.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Bernie Kboccan is my uncle. I'm a filmmaker. I was
there between projects that I was editing various projects for
my uncle Burne.
Speaker 20 (27:59):
This is Jerry.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Then, a young up and coming independent filmmaker working for
his uncle while making cult film classic Teenager.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
When I moved to la Vernie helped me get my
first job in the film businesses I would Tuckham. I
ended up in the film and I lived with them
for the first month first few months I came out
to California. NTA was probably the largest single owner of
movies that ran on television stations around the country. So
if you were anywhere in the US watching movies after
certain hour, you know, after midnight. The movies that are
(28:31):
running all gay from NTA. There was a fairly large
legal team at NTA because they had thousands and thousands
of copyrights to manage. The in house council was a
guy named Lipton. His daughter was Peggy Lipton, who was
on the television show.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
If you're not of the age to be familiar with
Peggy Lipton, the actress and her hit show that had
just wrapped up at the time, the mod Squad, then
you're probably of the age to be familiar with Peggy's
actress daughters with musician Quincy Jones, Kidada and Rashida Jones.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Every time she laughs, an angel dies.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
This moment, they had just taken over a large warehouse
in Marina del Rey. We obviously weren't. At some point
Bernie Menetia with Kerrie Grant and there was a I
think Brittany must have handed him a check for a
million dollars at some point, and a picture of that
was on Bernie's wall. I was lived in running legal.
(29:41):
I was in the end of the front third of
the building was my cutting room, which when I walked
out of it. I walked into the warehouse that was
the two thirds that was occupied by racks of films.
It was a bustling, busy place. So the one end
was there was a toe in the water of glamorous Hollywood,
(30:01):
and the back end was the real world of you know,
shipping and running out movies in bulk. That was That
was the vibe. I was just there during a year,
and I remember listening to the Watergate hearings during at lunchtime.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
What did the president know.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
And when did he know it?
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Steve knew every important film that NPA had in the
warehouse there, and I said, what should I see? So
they said, oh, this is this film that Frank.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Kapra Maid called It's a Wonderful Wife, and we just struck.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
A new point of it. She used to run it.
And I sat down in a screening room by myself
the thirty five millimeter projector and ran that film real
by reel by reel by reel, and it just was
an overwhelming, unbelievable experience. I'm like, oh my god, this
(31:04):
is a masterpiece. And there I am sitting with us
thing in a staggeringly gorgeous print. It was an incredible experience,
one of the best experiences of my life, certainly as
a filmmaker.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And it was around this time that the future grandfather
of Rashida Jones and his legal team somehow, some way
simply overlooked the renewal of one of their movies with
the US Copyright Office quietly without much notice. Wonderful Life
seemed to have slipped for the first time, as if
(31:38):
by magic, out of the hands of ownership of any
corporation and into the legal public domain. It was suddenly
widely understood to be the property of you and all
the people. Early that December, the programmer at an Allentown,
Pennsylvania television station abruptly swaps it in to replace the
(32:01):
scheduled airing of a Jimmy Cagney movie. Other stations around
the country began to follow suit, and Bernie tobakan who
is Jewish but loves Christmas and goes caroling each year
with Bob Hope, never mentions a word about what happened
with Wonderful Life. This is his son, John.
Speaker 28 (32:23):
My father put it close to the vest, never mentioned
any word about it.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
As I think I was saying. My father was sort
of tight about Percy and Storm.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
It may have been Lipton's responsibility because that was his
department managing copyrights. I do not know why in the
world did they strike this gorgeous new print at the
same time they were losing the copyright. It doesn't make sense.
There's something going on with that.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
As far as what became of Bernie.
Speaker 39 (32:54):
Well, I think he wanted to make the movie and
never quite realized that. I think he's proud of what
he did in NTA and sort of poineering work, and
he didn't Ultimately he didn't mind being in the distribution finis.
Speaker 28 (33:10):
He wanted to be in production.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I think in film didness you.
Speaker 28 (33:15):
Have to miss it all to be successful. You can't
your tone the water.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
But Frank Keepra did risk it all when he went
all in on wonderful life to start his company, Liberty Films.
It failed and his dream of independence died with it.
I will take you much closer to that in a
future episode. But thanks in part to Bernie Tobaccan and
(33:43):
Rashida Jones's grandfather, his film would get a second chance.
Speaker 32 (33:48):
So I want to speak to you first night about
a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I
want to talk to you right now about a fundamental
threat to American democracy.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Now it's five years after the events with MTA, we're
back in the year nineteen seventy nine again, around the
time of the taping of the more conmindy episode from
the White House. You're hearing Jimmy Carter the President.
Speaker 32 (34:19):
It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis
that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit
of our national will. We can see this crisis in
the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives,
and in the loss of a unity of purpose for
(34:40):
our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future
is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric
of America. We've always believed in something called progress. We've
always had a faith that the days of our children
(35:01):
would be better than our own. Our people are losing
that faith, not only in government itself, but in the
ability as citizens to serve as ultimate rulers and shapers
(35:21):
off our democracy.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Around the same time that a national malaise comes to
concern Jimmy, an article in The New Yorker will raise
the profile of the now apparently public domain wonderful life
and the butterfly effect of it becomes impactful in your universe.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
The publication of that piece not only put us on
the map, but it had a huge role in putting
It's a Wonderful life back on the map.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
This is Christopher again, the Wonderful Life party thrower.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
One of the sort of mid mid period invitees was
a guy called Mark Singer with whom I went to
college and became great friends with. And Mark was at
that time a writer at the actually still is a
writer at The New Yorker, And after a couple of
(36:15):
times of coming, he said to us, would you mind, guys,
mind if I wrote a talk piece, Talk of the
Town piece about this? And we said, of course, Matt.
Speaker 40 (36:31):
The New Yorker, January fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Talk of
the Town Wonderful For reasons of the round, Christopher Little
and David White firmly believe that this life, damn it
is a wonderful life. Annually they throw a small party
to celebrate that shared perception of reality. What they do
(36:52):
at the party is this, They have a few drinks
and eat a few ham sandwiches, and then they watch
an old movie on television. Specifically, they watch It's a
Wonderful Life.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
I was in bed asleep in my minuscule apartment on
West twenty first rate, which costs two hundred and thirty
nine dollars a month.
Speaker 41 (37:16):
And.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The phone rang, waking me up, and I answered, and
the person on the other end of the film said.
Speaker 17 (37:27):
Mister Little.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And I said, yes, nobody ever called me mister little.
Still don't. And he said, and these are his very words.
Speaker 17 (37:36):
My name is Frank Capra, and you have given me
the best Christmas present of my entire life. And I
want to thank you, guys, And if you ever think
of me, I would love to come to your party,
So please bear me in mind. And if you'd like
to send me an invitation, I would be thurled.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So Christophernat put our heads together and we composed the
letter and I sent it off the holiday he would
and Capra wrote back saying I will be there and
that Christmas. Frank Capra and his son Pound Capra walked
into Christopher's Law, and when let down their hair, there
(38:14):
was no formality.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
He brought with him a print.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Four reels, which he told us he'd been showing to
his family ever since nineteen forty six. And one of
the amazing treats was he might call it the director's cut,
because there were scenes we'd never seen.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
What a lovely guy.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
We had a memorial chair, and we would always invite
somebody who without letting them know that we thought was
particularly despairing that year, and so we would always have
a special guest, and shere he never knew that they were,
in fact the special guest.
Speaker 37 (39:00):
Live Again.
Speaker 19 (39:01):
I wouldn't live again.
Speaker 6 (39:04):
I wouldn't live again.
Speaker 29 (39:05):
Please God let me live again.
Speaker 36 (39:08):
I have one I have one notion about this movie
which I think should should be up high, and that
is it has a direct relevance to today because it.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Centers around a suicide attempt. It's a Christmas movie, but
it also centers around a suicide attempt, and we have
a suicide epidemic in this country. And Clarence, an angel
is sent down for Heaven.
Speaker 42 (39:32):
To talk George out of jumping off the bridge, and
he does it by a wonderful method which is not
therapy or counseling. He shows George what his life would
have been like if he had never lived in me
jumped off from bridge, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
It's like having suicide discussed by Mark Twain or Winslow
Homer or Sinclair Lewis or Nolan Rockwell. And I think
it's it's a real issue that needs to be addressed today,
and this movie addresses it with the softest, warmest glove
that you can imagine.
Speaker 6 (40:10):
We had a question and answer session.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, and Christopher I stood up and said, Frank is
saying he'd be happy to take any questions that anyone
in the audience might have. And there were a lot
of questions and answers.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
At one point when it was venture kind of whining down,
Frank Capra said, Oh, I just remembered a story about
Lionel Barrymore.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Would you like to hear it?
Speaker 17 (40:36):
Do I have any time left?
Speaker 6 (40:38):
And I said, you got all night? My friend.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Christopher felt he saw clearly Frank's own recognition that the
widespread belief that his movie was now public domain, combined
with the new cool factor coming from the party written
about in The New Yorker, was finally turning wonderful life
into something it had never been before, a hit.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Capra was so vocal about how important he felt this
was to him. His life changed to really believe that,
and I think he felt. I think he knew that
that was happening, and that would be happening. It's the
damnedest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 17 (41:20):
The film has a life of its own now, and
I can only look at it as if I had
nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president.
Speaker 14 (41:31):
Hi, fellow Americans, this is the thirty fourth time I'll
speak to you from the Oval Office and the last.
Speaker 6 (41:37):
We've been together eight years now, and soon it'll be
time for me to go.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
It's nineteen eighty nine now. In just ten years, pop
culture takes on wonderful life have become so plentiful as
to now be seen as cliche. And something seems to
take a turn around this time.
Speaker 15 (41:57):
How can you hate?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 19 (42:00):
Stinks, it bites, it blows.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
It's worth considering why the value of every individual was
considered in such short supply that its currency went up
so drastically over the nineteen eighties. If at the start
of the decade, Americans seemed to be responding to something
inside this movie almost desperately, as if it were an antidote.
(42:26):
By the end of the Reagan years, Hope seems lost,
and it's right at this time that media inspired by
the movie reaches a crescendo, and there's never been more
than in this period. But suddenly they all seem to
embrace a certain cynicism.
Speaker 19 (42:45):
Well, I'll show you what I mean.
Speaker 20 (42:47):
I'm a guardian angel. I'm looking for an ol Bundy.
Speaker 6 (42:53):
You know now, Bundy, I'm ol Bundy.
Speaker 31 (42:57):
Now to stop playing it, and you got me into
goa bad.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
American storytellers are looking for ways to reflect the realities
they see around them, and strangely, despite being from forty
years in the past, Clarence and George and Potter seem
to offer much in that regard. I love you, I
love you, I love.
Speaker 19 (43:28):
You, I love you, I love you.
Speaker 17 (43:32):
Love you.
Speaker 16 (43:35):
Now that's the straw that broke the camel's back.
Speaker 20 (43:39):
I'm sorry, Bundy, I fail you.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Rupert Murdoch, one of the richest and some say meanest
men in the world, has just launched his new television network, Fox,
and the makers of its very first primetime series, Married
with Children, decide to again show someone what the world would.
Speaker 19 (44:00):
Be like without them, but with a new twist.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
I'm supposed to show you why he should live but
I can't think of.
Speaker 20 (44:07):
One darn reason.
Speaker 43 (44:08):
Wait a second, I want to be back with my family.
Why look at them, They're happy, not a care in
the world. You think I'm going to let that happen
after all the grief they put me through.
Speaker 6 (44:26):
I want to live.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
I know it's funny, but if you think about it,
this is a little dark, isn't it. A father discovering
his entire family is better off if he'd never been born.
It's perhaps telling that at this moment others seem to
be considering the inverse of George Bailey's lesson that if
each person's life touches so many others, some bad actors
(44:52):
may be responsible for an outsized negative impact on everyone.
Speaker 6 (44:57):
So pick up on Christmas. It's the one I want
it for, It's the one in the previous generation. It's
a wonderful life.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You're hearing. John McTiernan, the movie director.
Speaker 38 (45:08):
Specifically the Potterville sequence, which is what happens when the
evil banker gets to do what he wants in the
community without Jimmy Stewart getting in a way to stop,
and it's the clearest criticism of runaway, unregulated cowboy capital.
(45:29):
Listeners ever done in an American movie, and I wondered,
how did that wind up in a Christmas movie?
Speaker 6 (45:33):
And the answer came back screen, God, there was a
Christmas movie you fall. So I went to Joel, you
know my name?
Speaker 17 (45:41):
And who are you?
Speaker 12 (45:43):
Just another American who saw too many movies as a child,
another orphan of a bankrupt culture. This is John Wayne Rambo,
Nashal Dylan.
Speaker 20 (45:54):
There's always kind of partial tole Roy Rogers, actually.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
And that.
Speaker 6 (45:59):
Is how die Hard became it.
Speaker 38 (46:02):
We hadn't intended it to be a Christmas movie, but
the joy that came from it is what turned it
into a Christmas.
Speaker 31 (46:10):
No, I have a machine gun.
Speaker 6 (46:17):
Is die Hard a Christmas movie? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
This is George Clooney, the actor, talking to Stephen Colbert,
the comedian.
Speaker 16 (46:28):
He realized it's a controversial answer.
Speaker 44 (46:29):
I will tell you it is not a Christmas and
I'll tell you what Christmas movies are for the family
together around and celebrate being together and celebrate life and
you know, and love and Diehard is a spectacular film,
as I've just picked it as my action film, but
it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 19 (46:50):
Is your Christmas movie?
Speaker 34 (46:51):
Are you sitting you don't want to sit around with
a whole family, with the kids and grandma and watch
Hans Gruber fall off of Knokotomy Plaza.
Speaker 44 (46:59):
Well, I'll tell you why. And this is actually a
very important thing. Grandma's dead, and that would be really
hard to sit.
Speaker 19 (47:06):
That would be difficult.
Speaker 16 (47:08):
Prior to this point in time.
Speaker 34 (47:10):
Somewhere in the past, the timeline stewed into this tangent,
creating an alternate nineteen.
Speaker 17 (47:15):
Eighty five and which Biff is corrupt and powerful and
married to your mother.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
And which.
Speaker 20 (47:25):
This has happened to me.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Many fans of this nineteen eighty nine sequel to Back
to the Future notice a heavy dose of Pottersville inspiration
in the dark alternate nineteen eighties, in which a school
bully type Biff Tannin manages to achieve wealth and power,
even becoming a casino owner.
Speaker 19 (47:46):
Can you imagine if something like that ever happened in
real life.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
To writers Bob Gail and Bob Zamechis, the idea was
then the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 35 (48:00):
Gambling and good fortune turn him into one of America's
greatest living heroes. His charm attracted the world's most sought
after beauties, his power and influence made him the model
of world leaders and heads of state.
Speaker 14 (48:14):
Inside you will learn how Biff Pennon became one of
the richest and most powerful men in America.
Speaker 23 (48:19):
I just want to say one thing, God bless America.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
When a producer from my team messaged Bob Gail inviting
him to be part of this podcast, his agent responded
with a statement, Bob doesn't give comments out regarding Biff
and Trump hmmm, out of respect for him. Then I
won't bring you inside any of his private conversations on
(48:49):
the matter. But Americans on Twitter have certainly felt they
noticed a connection. At Jay Underscore ha III twenty fifteen.
Does anyone else make the connect between Biff Tannan and
mister Potter running their cities and Donald Trump running for prez?
(49:10):
Hashtag it didn't end well At Jeff o'cial December twenty fourth,
twenty seventeen. I just watched It's a Wonderful Life for
the first time. The two thoughts one, it's surprisingly very
anti capitalist and Back to the Future Part two totally
ripped off that movie. Also, Potter equals Biff equals Trump
(49:35):
at Dave J two January twenty eighteen, Cross Biff Tannan
and mister Potter and their surrealistic icky towns, and you
get Donald Trump with everything on a large scale because
he is Bigley at David S. Buchanan one May twenty twenty.
(49:56):
In this version of populism, mister Potter would be the
hit zero great connection. Trump is some weird combination of
Biff and Potter. Well, you get the idea. There are
hundreds more I could read.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
I wonder what my life would have been like if
I'd never seen that movie.
Speaker 21 (50:19):
Attention all personnel, please keep working during the following announcement
and now our boss and friend mister Burns.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Also on Murdoch's channel. In nineteen eighty nine, The Simpsons
begins its long television run with a Christmas episode. Some
suspect that mister Burns is meant to be a mister
Potter for what's become of the American workplace.
Speaker 21 (50:46):
Hello, I'm proud to announce that we've been able to
increase safety here at the plant without increasing the cost
to the consumer or affecting management pay races. However, for
you semi skilled workers, they will be Christmas bonuses. And
one more thing, this Marry Christmas.
Speaker 16 (51:07):
Is it Shirley, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 20 (51:09):
Who's that?
Speaker 8 (51:11):
It's It's me Clark, Chriswall.
Speaker 4 (51:13):
What do you want?
Speaker 24 (51:16):
My wife and I came up with a little sum
specials hits a gift.
Speaker 19 (51:21):
Put it over there with the others.
Speaker 45 (51:22):
Prince Ball, John Hughes bringing into a little bit of
that Capricorn of shall we say, into Christmas Vacation, which
he did manage to bring into Capricorn.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Frank Kepper the third is Frank's grandson who became a
successful Hollywood producer in his own right. Back in nineteen
eighty nine, he is brought on by the team of
writer and producer John Hughes to assist and direct another
movie destined to become a Christmas classic.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
National and Jun's Christmas Vacation. It's another one of these movies.
It's going to be around a long time. We all
know about. It's Waterful Life. That's not going anyway anywhere
anytime soon.
Speaker 45 (52:06):
I was very close to my grandfather, probably the ten grandchildren,
three kids, I was the closest to him out of
all of them.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
I've asked Frank Kappra the first, who will neither confirm
nor deny this assertion.
Speaker 45 (52:20):
So for me, it was I was still very young,
you know, that was the mid eighties for me, so
I was still an upcoming second assistant director, worth of
my way up to being a first ad producer. And
it's funny because there's one scene in the kitchen where
Jeremiah said to me, Hey, Frankie, can we put a
(52:44):
clip of It's a Wonderful Life on the TV? In
the kitchen with Chevy. I was like, why wouldn't you?
It's a public domain.
Speaker 20 (52:52):
We'll clear it.
Speaker 6 (52:53):
No problem.
Speaker 16 (53:00):
Yet, folks, Folks, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Frank believes that any portrait at the end of the
nineteen eighties of a working American and his family during
the holidays had to find a way to balance hope
and despair, and John Hughes surely looked to Wonderful Life
for inspiration.
Speaker 16 (53:49):
Fix the North Post.
Speaker 45 (53:51):
So in doing that whole final scene, you know, in
that living room and Chevy pouring his frustration and his
love and heart for his family out, was actually pretty
pretty cold to do.
Speaker 29 (54:06):
It's for my company, your bonus, my bonus, what is it?
One year membership in the Jelly of the Month club?
Speaker 45 (54:24):
Okay, Park, that's the gift that keeps on given the
whole year.
Speaker 6 (54:28):
That's the whole thing about Christmas vacation.
Speaker 45 (54:32):
In a strange way, he kept a little of the
dark undertones that your grandpa had instated in It's a
Wonderful Life. Not I think on purpose so much, but
a driving home the theme of the movie.
Speaker 29 (54:50):
I lost my temper when I got my bonus, and
I guess I said a few things I shouldn't have bonus.
Speaker 6 (54:56):
How did you get a bonus? I cut out bonuses
this year corporate hotshot world.
Speaker 45 (55:02):
And you know this poor guy trying to do everything
for his family, the light for Christmas tree and pardon
my language, everything he touches, he fucks up.
Speaker 29 (55:12):
Seventeen years with a company, I've gotten a Christmas bonus
every year with this one.
Speaker 16 (55:16):
You don't want to get bonuses, fine, but when people
count on him as part of their salary, Oh what
you did?
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Just planing sucks?
Speaker 29 (55:25):
Thank you Russ for an unfortunate Well, what's the family
for if you can't take car of its losers.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
The defining potter of nineteen eighties media is perhaps JR.
Ewing win it all cost inheritor of Ewing Oil Company.
Speaker 12 (55:41):
I'm going to bring Bobby down.
Speaker 6 (55:43):
I'm going to cut him out if I have to
destroy ewing or to do it.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
And like many of the potters of that decade, he
is more dangerous because he makes it seem fun and
as they say, is sexy.
Speaker 9 (55:57):
Tell me, JR.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Which slut are you going to stay with tonight?
Speaker 6 (56:01):
What difference does it make?
Speaker 20 (56:03):
Whoever?
Speaker 19 (56:04):
It is got to be more interesting than the slot
I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
Two years after Married with Children explored whether the world
might not be better off without certain people. The storytellers
behind Dallas are trying to find the perfect way to
end their hit show and Jr's popular story when they
decide to take this thought even darker.
Speaker 12 (56:26):
Did you some sort of a press angel? And I'm
your good deed?
Speaker 4 (56:29):
Huh?
Speaker 23 (56:33):
We got it upside down and backwards, but in essence
it's by it.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
When JR. Becomes suicidal, a fantastical being arrives to show
him another universe where he was never born. Some things
are better, some are worse. Ultimately, the message to JR
seems to be that this one man's existence has made
no real difference at all, good or bad. But is
(56:59):
what he is shown real or a mean spirited trick?
At the end a revelation, And why don't you go
ahead and kill yourself.
Speaker 11 (57:10):
And send you back to heaven a failure?
Speaker 19 (57:12):
You'll never become an angel?
Speaker 15 (57:18):
What makes you think I'm from.
Speaker 19 (57:26):
Earlier?
Speaker 3 (57:27):
I told you that you know George as a character
in a movie. It's a wonderful life. Have you figured
out what that means yet? Like when we took George
to Pottersville, you too live in one of the universes
where George Bailey was never born. This is why I'm
coming to you. Over the next nine episodes of this podcast,
(57:52):
We're going to look at how the potters have gained
the upper hand in nearly every aspect of life in
your universe. We are going to meet some of the
people trying to fill the void for George Bailey and
his partner Mary, who might be more important than you thought.
And like George, you're wrestling not only with external enemies,
(58:16):
but internal ones. So keep listening for now, let's conclude
with this only four months after that Dallas TV episode
Upside Down to Philip Van doren Stern's beautiful message that
every person makes a deep impact to push JR. Ewing
(58:36):
to commit suicide. Frank Capra a man who made a
positive impact on your universe, joins us up here. I'm
taking you to one of his last public appearances in
Los Angeles. Wonderful life has just risen again like a phoenix.
Most of the movie industry and Frank spouse, children and
(58:59):
grand children.
Speaker 19 (59:01):
Look on as he's awarded for his life's work.
Speaker 45 (59:05):
Everybody should watch that Airfly tribute speech he gave for
twelve minutes at the Airfi Award.
Speaker 6 (59:12):
Because that basically sums it all up.
Speaker 18 (59:15):
What capital was Tonight, I'm going to tell you the
real secret of the whole thing. It's the love of people.
And add two simple ideals to this love of people,
the freedom of each individual and the equal importance of
(59:37):
each individual, and you have the principle upon which I've
based all my films.
Speaker 46 (59:44):
And may I say a word to this new generation.
Don't follow trends, God.
Speaker 18 (59:55):
Trends, Go compromise. Believe in yourself, because only the valiant
can create, only the daring should make films, and only
the marley courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow
(01:00:16):
men for two hours.
Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
And of the dark.
Speaker 41 (01:00:35):
George Bailey was never born. Visit Savegeorge Bailey dot com.
Speaker 20 (01:00:39):
To join the mission.
Speaker 41 (01:00:40):
There you'll find links to works by this episode's participants.
Learn more about how to celebrate George Bailey Day on Saturday,
December ninth, and annually the second Saturday of December hereafter
by hosting your own Wonderful Life viewing party. Tell your
friends to listen to this show, subscribe, like, comment, and
post about it on social media hashtags Save George Bailey.
(01:01:02):
Subscribe to our Patreon to hear uncut interviews and bonus content.
Podcast also available on YouTube. iHeartMedia presents a double asterisk
iHeartMedia co production in association with True Stories Created, written
and directed by Joseph kurt Angfer and Reyno Vashlski. Kurt Angfer,
producer and supervising editor, Reyno Vashlsky producer and journalist, Elizabeth
(01:01:26):
Marcus editor, Roy Sillings narrator. George Bailey theme song by
Carolyn Sills Buyer Albums soundtrack composed by Zachary Walter by
His Albums and the original soundtrack to this podcast available
wherever you get your music. Mallory Kenoi co producer, writer's assistant,
archival producer and fact checker. John Autry sound engineer, additional editing,
(01:01:49):
sound design and mix. Executive producers Dave Cassidy, Kurt Angfer,
Lindsay Hoffman and Bethan Macaluso for iHeartMedia, John Duffy Forsk,
Ruth Vaka for True Stories, Reyno Voshewsky for Double Asterisk
and True Stories, Elizabeth Hankouch Associate producer Brandon Lavoy and
(01:02:10):
Ryan Pennington. Consulting producers Keith Sklar, contract Legal, Peter Yazi
Copyright and Fair Use Legal, Mattie Acres, archival specialist, Ron Kaddition,
Benji Michaels, Publicists Kavasanthanam and Marley Weaver. Marketing and Promotions.
Art and web designed by Aaron Kim. Interns were Kyra Gray,
(01:02:31):
Emma Ramirez, Eva Stewart, and Tia Wilson. Podcast license for
Philip Van Doren Stearns The Greatest Gift provided by the
Greatest Gift Corporation. Their attorney is Kevin Koloff. Recorded at
David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana. This episode featured
in chronological order, David White, Christopher Little, Jeff Williams, Laura Robinson,
(01:02:53):
Jerry Sindel, John Tobaccan Ed Sharlack, Tom Tenowitch, and Frank Kappra,
The IID with a Peering by Neil Howe, Paul Zimmy Finn,
Jennifer O'Neil, Jefferson, Cowie, Sharon Fogerty, Monica hesse Emily Saint,
James Lori, Lyn Dean, and the cast of Wonderful Life
and the brief voices, music and artistry of a who's
Who of Hollywood via clips used under the still existing
(01:03:16):
legal doctrine of fair use. The Potters are working on
that one, though the voice of Mark Singer was played
by his son Paul Mayilhos Singer, reading the words written
by Mark Singer for The New Yorker. The voice of
Frank Capra was played by Mark Granby, grandnephew of Joseph Granby,
the man who narrated Wonderful Life, based in parts on
accounts by Little White and Singer, and in one part
(01:03:38):
by Frank's words spoken to the Wall Street Journal in
nineteen eighty four. Frank's afi speech is spoken by Frank himself.
Some original research by Jeff Williams for this episode. Go
to double Asteriskmedia dot com to Here are other limited
run podcasts who is rich Blee after the Uprising with
a bold new season in Saint Louis coming summer twenty
(01:03:59):
two twenty four and origins Birth of a Pandemic, And
subscribe to True Stories New weekly Everybody Has a podcast
with Ruth and Ray. If you are feeling like you're
on the bridge, please call the AFSP's suicide and Crisis
Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight into your phone, or
contact the crisis text line by texting seven four to
(01:04:21):
one dash seven four to one. Consider donating to or
volunteering with AFSP or your local Habitat for Humanity, and
make George Bailey proud. We're not affiliated with them though.
Copyright twenty twenty three double asteriskkink
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