Failure in "It's a Wonderful Life"

The offscreen history of It’s a Wonderful Life is nearly as surprising and fascinating as watching the story play out on screen. It’s one of those films whose true history is difficult to extrapolate from its myths and legends. Writer/director Frank Capra and star Jimmy Stewart both won Oscars before enlisting to serve in the military during World War II. Capra returned looking to recapture his crowd-pleasing box-office fastball, while Stewart wondered if he could ever be the actor he was before the war. Stewart mirrored his character’s self-doubt.

Despite being nominated for Best Picture by the Academy, the film wasn’t well-received by critics and bombed at the box office, costing the studio millions by today’s standards—it wasn’t even in the top 25 highest-grossing releases of 1947! It was not a success, and Capra’s ability to make an uplifting hit for moviegoers was no longer certain. The studio that produced the film folded shortly after the film failed. In his book on the film, Michael Newton recounts the loss of control of the film and its distribution, the negative film being left to rot, and the copyright’s lapse. The great irony is that in this loss, the film could be shown by many local television stations for free. Then in the 1970s, a clerical error put it into the public domain and its unlimited free exposure on television enabled it to slowly receive its reclamation and beloved status. For even more irony, it’s a similar small error that causes George to consider suicide.

Ah, yes. Suicide. If you click on a film called It’s a Wonderful Life with eternal good guy Jimmy Stewart smiling wide on the poster, you don't expect to find his character drunk and thinking about killing himself. It’s a gutsy move to steep a Christmas movie in such overt darkness.

I don’t have to stretch to show Dickens’s influence here. The film is based on the 1943 short story “The Greatest Gift” which itself is based on A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens even shows up in the film’s credits. The central conceit is strikingly similar, changing from a time-traveling encounter with ghosts to one with guardian angels. The main character shifts from the rapacious Scrooge to the kind George Bailey. Both have regret, but Bailey’s is a regret in his own failure, which isn’t steeped in a character flaw, but an honest mistake. Scrooge needs to be shown his failure, and Bailey his success.

Dickens and the many Christmas classics in his wake display the glimmers of light that can shine through even in the dimmest situations on the darkest humans. Despair can become joy. Death can become life. Failure can become success. A box office bomb can become the most beloved Christmas movie ever made.