It’s a Wonderful Life: Celebrating an Enduring Favorite

By Gus Mollasis | December 2021

This year marks the 75^th anniversary of the classic Hollywood and holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life.

Jimmy Stewart, the film’s star, and director Frank Capra both came to recognize they were making something special. Capra went on to say in his memoir, The Name above the Title, that this was the film he always envisioned making when he first peered into the lens of a movie camera.

Interestingly, it took time for film fans to recognize the magic of this iconic film. 

The movie’s star and director weren’t even sure that they wanted to make films after both returned from serving in World War II, where they had witnessed all the nightmarish horrors of man’s inhumanity. Yet thankfully, they soldiered on with their project.

Released to a luke-warm box office back in late 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life found its voice and audience because of a public domain loophole that allowed the film to literally be played on any channel at all hours of the night and day. And that’s just what countless station managers all across North America did back in the day—forking over a paltry sum to air the black and white film of a man named George Bailey and his search to fulfill his dreams in a placed called Bedford Falls.

I happened on It’s a Wonderful Life and the plight of George Bailey when I was a young college student at home in Detroit, Michigan and tuned into Channel 9 out of Windsor, Ontario, late one night.

From the first scene I took in—George saving his younger brother Harry’s life after he fell through the ice—the movie hooked me. Grabbed my attention and my heart. And after countless viewings, it has never let go.

Years later, at a showing of this wonderful film in Detroit, I met Karolyn Grimes, the actress who played the little girl Zuzu in the film. Her character delivers one of its most iconic lines: “Every time a bell rings…an angel gets its wings.”

Zuzu, along with an angel named Clarence and a town full of people, helps the film’s protagonist, George Bailey, come to realize that he is in fact the richest man in town. It did not matter that all his big dreams did not come true. What mattered most was the tremendous impact he would have on all the people that made up his wonderful life. 

At the time, I was mourning the recent loss of my father—a real life George who never really left his small town called Detroit. Karolyn shared just how kind Jimmy Stewart had been when she was a little girl on the set playing Zuzu. “He was the best. So kind. So helpful. He was like a real-life father to me.” 

Karolyn and I admired Jimmy Stewart and what he stood for. I told her about meeting him on his front lawn on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills as he and his beloved wife Gloria were walking their cherished Golden Retrievers. Then our second meeting at his Lincoln Center Tribute in New York, when he and Gloria remembered that earlier day on his front lawn—prompted by a picture I showed them.

Our conversations helped me heal and realize that it is always a good time to count our blessings. Years later, we got to reminisce further when Karolyn called in to my At the Movies TV show. I mentioned my favorite scene is when George Bailey is at the bar and says, “I’m not a praying man… but if you can show me the way, I’m at the end of my rope.” 

She shared that this was Jimmy Stewart’s favorite scene too. Her own favorite was the scene of George at the bridge. She said, “It gets me every time—when he says, ‘I want to live again…I want to live again.’”

Some may dismiss this enduring film as “Capra Corn,” but the great director himself shrugged that off, explaining that perhaps the movie shows, “not the way life is, but the way life ought to be.” 

In the end, all that really matters is the impact we have on those who come into our own wonderful lives. So this season, do yourself a favor.

Gather with those you love. Family, friends, or the neighbor you’ve been too busy to visit. Put the phones down. Turn off all the machines except one—and together, reintroduce yourself to an old friend. A beloved friend who will entertain, engage, and enlighten you all in one sitting: It’s A Wonderful Life.