Cinematical

I found your number 7 comment very well put. Thanks

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Here's a column on the real-life town that many feel is the inspiration for Bedford Falls:

http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/weblog/index.ssf?/mtlogs/syr_kirst/archives/2006_12.html#214113

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I'm surprised you didn't mention how Philip Van Doren Stern, though a very successful author of strong background, missed out on both the association and the residuals when he let Capra buy the original short story (The Greatest Gift) for virtually nothing. Of course, hindsight is 20/20...

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Here, Here # 7 There are so few movies that have a message as genuinely relatable as George Bailey's. This guy is down on his luck, but you don't want him to give up. Mr. Potter is so classically evil and every bit the miser some might imagine. After all those with money must have lied, cheat or stolen to be wealthy, RIGHT! Look at Kramer. Why would someone say "When you go to sleep you will still wake up poor?" I wake up poor everyday, and so I say HERE, HERE to the George Bailey's of the world who can "stick it to the man" or Potter's out there. I recommend the SNL skit that shows the "lost ending" to "It's a Wonderful Life"that shows what really should have happened to Mr. Potter.

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There's a marvellous story by Bradley Denton, "The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians," in which irreverent comedians are reformed in the afterlife. As part of their reform, the comedians (who include Lenny Bruce and John Belushi) are forced to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every day for an eternity. I never watch the movie without visualizing a theater of comedians who worked blue, all suffering one more time through the film.

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In response to number one, the reason that we (sadly) don't see the movie airing multiple times a day through December and instead only once or twice a year - and only on NBC, is that NBC found a loophole through the copyright status of the soundtrack. They simply bought the rights to the music, and bingo - no one else could show the film without paying NBC huge royalties. Thanks a lot NBC, and Merry Christmas to you greedy jerks.

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Well that was a misleading introduction. I really did not learn anything. You must understand that some of us are true die hard fans and after seeing the movie about a million times and reading about it for twenty years, your going to have to dig deeper than that.

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I rediscovered this about a month ago and saw things I never really saw before. Mostly I saw that what I really liked about it had more to do with Donna Reed than anything else. So I got it on DVD and I've watched it a LOT. At least 20 times through and some scenes several times that. At some point I began to realize that some things were much deeper than it seemed. And one thing didn’t fit at all. I found myself having very strong feelings about this Mary who was so enticing, yet such a good, sweet girl. But there was something missing. I mean...this is Donna Reed, right? And this Mary Hatch that she was playing is really something. She’s throwing off so much sexual tension in the “lasso the moon” and the sharing the “telephone” scenes there should be St Elmo’s fire, or ball lightning or at least sparks flying off of her! So... I guess my question is: Where did she go? I mean, Whatever Happened To Mary Hatch? I don’t mean in the movie, I mean in Donna! She didn’t pick up all that fire, and spice, and passion on the set. So what changed her after the movie was done?

I was obsessed with finding the truth, now I am about sharing it, but not to put a downer on the casual fan. What we see in Mary Hatch, is all Donna. That was stuff that she brought from home! What happened to her afterward makes this film a memorial to her in my mind. When she created the Donna Reed Show, TV sensors stripped away much of her ability to express the sensual side, they even took away her double bed!

In the Parlor scene: George sticks to his "just passing by" attitude, so Mary tells him and her mother where she thinks the relationship should be with a line that ought to remove all doubt: "He's making VIOLENT love to me, mother!" Then sweet, good-girl Mary sits primly and gives him a look that should have been on the front page along with her winning the Oscar story! Denying his feelings now, when she has laid hers bare is like a slap in the face. If he didn't see the obvious and come to court her, then "What-did-you-come-here-for?
It's almost like Donna has come to the rescue of Mary's or maybe DonnaBelle's pride. The young lady who stood in the doorway so sweetly proud that he noticed her new dress- and how she filled it, doesn't fully return until Donna has managed to get her cheek to cheek with George using Sam as an unwitting accomplice. As in the only other time they have been alone together, proximity and circumstance finally does what sweet little Mary had never been able to.

Capra’s Mary is either very much like DonnaBelle Mullenger at heart and she is completely at ease being herself in front of the camera, or Donna Reed has suffered from an unimaginable lack of recognition for her ability, or both. Maybe it's DonnaBelle who slowly loses control over her emotions as she is using these precious minutes just to be close to George one last time. I don't know. I do know that I have played this scene dozens of times-in slow motion and even frame by frame, and I am totally taken by Donna Reed in it, every-single-time. I just can't convince myself that it isn't real. Donna Reed was that good. (And she is so cute doesn't it just make you ache?)

Her naturally sweet nature and pleasant attitude are a canvas that Capra uses to highlight George’s anguish more clearly. When a despondent George comes home -I feel for him. When he hugs his kid and weeps, I feel more. ...But, when Mary realizes that something is wrong and it shows on her face, I choke up a little. That little quaver in her voice, when she asks "George, what's wrong?" in the kitchen goes straight to my heart!

True to the Donna Reed many found unbelievable later, Mary gets to the bottom of the problem and calls in a lifetime of good-girl markers. When a tearful Mary tells people that a deserving George is in trouble and needs their help, who could refuse? When finally George realizes that his really is "A Wonderful Life!" My only regret is that he does not fully grasp just how much of that is due to the determination and undying love of one woman. If Mary was really Donna Reed at heart, maybe George was only being true to Jimmy Stewart.

I've posted some thoughts on some subtle details of how Donna played Mary and other things that it seems the characters knew that was never said. Eventually it may amount to something. I also tell why there never was another movie with Reed and Stewart throwing off sparks

(according to Jay Fultz "In Search of Donna Reed.")

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I really only find point 7 of interest but it is not something I, or anybody else who's seen the film, didn't already know.

An interesting yet little known thing about this film is the scene where drunken uncle Billy (the man in the left of the photograph) leaves the home coming party at the Bailey home. As he exits the frame at the end of the scene a stage hand accidentally knocks over pile of stage lighting and is the crashing sound that you hear in the film. "I'm all right, I'm alright" was an ad lib. The stage hand thought he'd be fired for ruining the shot but it worked so perfectly with the scene that Capra gave him a $100 bonus for "improving sound on the set"

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here's something else you didn't know about the movie. Capra hired a girl to throw the rock at the "Old Granville house" to break the second storey window. Donna Reed said she'd do the scene herself and nailed the window in one take...

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