Dramaturgy
OUR BLUEPRINT on “IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: LIVE AT THE BIOGRAPH!”
by Kelli Marino
Frank Capra was Hollywood’s arch-populist, a supporter of “the common people of America” rather than “the elite of America.” His films championed the average American whom he believed was good and kind, and had the right to seek happiness.
“I would sing the songs of the working stiffs, of the short changed Joes, the born poor, the afflicted. I would gamble with the long shot players who light candles in the wind, and resent with the pushed-around because of race or birth. Above all, I would fight for their causes on the screens of the world.”
Capra made a clear stand for films with a recognizable base in the world the audience lived in, or more accurately, the world they wanted to live in. These were films that – along with the romantic clichés, chases and slapstick – provided idealism. As an Italian immigrant who was granted access to the “Land of Opportunity,” Capra writes that he thought of his films as one way of saying thanks to America, its history and people.
Capra began as a prop man in silent films. His films in the 1930s enjoyed success at the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay). In 1936, Capra won Best Director for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; in 1938 he won his third Director Oscar for You Can’t Take It with You, which also won Best Picture.
During World War II, Frank Capra was commissioned as a major in the United States Army Signal Corps. He produced and directed eight documentary propaganda films between 1942 and 1948. His film Why We Fight is widely considered a masterpiece of propaganda and won an Academy Award. Prelude to War won the 1942 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Capra regarded these films as his most important works. He was decorated with a Distinguished Service Medal for his work on these films in 1945.
Near the end of World War II with his career as a military documentary film maker about to be over, Capra met with a lack of enthusiasm for his services at the major studios in Hollywood. In response, Capra and the former second-in-command at Columbia, Samuel Briskin discussed forming an independent production company, and in April 1945, they announced Liberty Films. At this same time, a relatively unknown author got his story, “The Greatest Gift” published in Good Housekeeping.
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Philip Van Doren Stern was the author whose story “The Greatest Gift,” inspired the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Inspired by a dream, Stern wrote a 4,000-word short story. Unable to find a publisher, he sent the 200 copies he had printed to friends as Christmas cards.
One of the pamphlets came to the attention of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead who purchased the motion picture rights for $10,000. After several screenwriters worked on adaptations, RKO sold the rights to the story in 1945 to Frank Capra’s production company for the same $10,000 he originally paid, plus the three script adaptations. Capra then developed an adaptation of It’s a Wonderful Life with his own crew of writers. Bank of America put forward the initial financing for It’s A Wonderful Life and it was the most costly film Capra ever made.
The five year difference between Capra’s last commercial film Arsenic and Old Lace, (shot in 1941 but not released until 1944) and making It’s A Wonderful Life in 1946 was significant. The impact of WWII made 1946 a very different era, and much had changed. In particular, much had changed for the film’s star, Jimmy Stewart who had served in the army during the war:
“Frank really saved my career. I don’t know whether I would have made it after the war if it hadn’t been for Frank. It wasn’t just a case of picking up where you’d left off, because it’s not that kind of business. It was over four and a half years that I’d been completely away from anything that had to do with the movies. Then one day Frank Capra called me and said he had an idea for a movie.
He said, ‘Now, you’re in a small town and things aren’t going very well. You begin to wish you’d never been born. And you decide to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge into the river, but an angel named Clarence comes down from heaven, and, uh, Clarence hasn’t won his wings yet. He comes down to save you when you jump into the river, but Clarence can’t swim, so you save him.’
Then Frank stopped and said, ‘This story doesn’t tell very well, does it?’ I just said, ‘Frank, if you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I’m your boy.”
It’s a Wonderful Life was a modest failure at the Box Office, though it garnered some recognition in the form of five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. While the movie remained a favorite among movie buffs and Capra fans, it was not until the movie’s copyright was allowed to lapse that it became the classic it is today. According to Bruce Elder, a movie reviewer for msn.com movies, “…during the early 1980s around Christmas […] it seemed possible to flip on the TV at random some nights and find the movie playing somewhere on the dial, and that went double for Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s. The public came out regarding the film as a lost classic. Capra lived just long enough to reap some of the belated acclaim…”