A Talk with Jimmy: Seeing a 'Wonderful Life' through His Eyes

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2014)

A VISIT WITH JIMMY STEWART: Inside 'Wonderful Life,' a Wonderful Life
"'It's a Wonderful Life' sums up my philosophy of filmmaking ... to exalt the worth of the individual, to champion man ... and to dramatize the viability of the individual." _ director Frank Capra
JAMES STEWART, whom Frank Capra lovingly described as being "unusually usual," the movies' quintessential Everyman, sat down to reminisce about "It's Wonderful Life" on Nov. 16, 1987, not quite 40 years after it had opened in theaters across the country. Then 79, Stewart, in his familiar crackling Indiana drawl, explained that the movie was never really intended as a Christmas film. RKO, the movie's distributor, originally planned to premiere it on Jan. 30, 1947. But its big color film set for the holidays, "Sinbad the Sailor," had to be put on hold when Technicolor went on strike. Enter black and white 'Life" instead on Dec. 20, 1946. "Christmas was just sort of part of it, and a wonderful way to end the movie," Stewart said. "The picture didn't do well when it opened because -- and I know Frank (Capra, the movie's director) feels the same way -- it was right after World War II, and the substance of the film wasn't what people wanted to see. They wanted something sort of relaxing, a rejuvenating film, a lot of comedy -- Red Skelton, Martin and Lewis, who were just coming into their own just then. The war was a tough thing to take for the people back home here. I think they wanted something sort of wilder than this." Another thing didn't help box office when 'Life' opened: a real white Christmas that year. Snow blasted the eastern U.S. Ironically, the film actually had been shot from May through July 1946 at RKO's Encino Ranch during 80-degree weather. Snow was simulated by use of 3,000 tons of shaved ice, 300 tons of plaster, 300 tons of gypsum and 6,000 gallons of chemicals. The "snowstorm" that occurs when Stewart's character, George Bailey, attempts suicide took three weeks to create and required the largest special effects crew assembled for a movie up to that time. "Frank didn't even have the story for 'It's Wonderful Life' on paper when he invited me over to his house one day. He told me, 'I have an idea for a picture,' and started taking about an angel named Clarence who hadn't won his wings, and that I'm gonna commit suicide, and he said, 'I'm not telling this very well.'' I said, 'Frank, if you want to do a picture about an angel named Clarence who hasn't won his wings, I'm your man." The movie was Stewart's favorite. "For quite a few reasons," he said. "Number one, it was the first picture I got to do after the war, and maybe for that reason, it's sort of a sentimental favorite. But beyond that, I think the picture had the main sort of things that mean so much to me ... an idea with two basic points: There's no man who is born to be a failure, and that no man is poor who has friends. Now, from the those two sentences, the secret of the movie is made." A number of things were improvised, like the recurrent bit where George keeps knocking off the knob on the Baileys' banister railing. "The first time I walked by, it was loose and it came off when I grabbed it. We just left the bit in. Frank and I never discussed it."