It can take a while for a jewel to shine
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- December 21, 2024
- 675
It’s a wonder anyone my age ever saw “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Released to mixed reviews in 1946, the film had difficulty finding an audience in postwar America, its syrupy sentimentality and supernatural overtones out of step with the forward-looking times.
It’s noteworthy that it lost more than $500,000 at the box office.
Had its studio copyright not expired in 1974, freeing it to roam in what was known as “the public domain,” it would have gone away.
Having been granted a new life on cable television, however, specifically those stations owned by Ted Turner, “It’s a Wonderful Life” soon became a Christmas tradition that lasts to this day.
To borrow one of the movie’s central themes, what would today’s holiday entertainment world be like if it had never existed?
It’s almost impossible to imagine.
Though I can’t remember the exact year I first sat down and watched it all the way through, I know I was alone and living in the house I’d grown up in, Mom having died and Dad having remarried, so that puts it in the mid-'80s, making me about 30.
To fill out that biographical sketch, I was a sports editor of my hometown newspaper, involved with a woman who was weary of my wandering eye and taking care of a Springer Spaniel named Jack, who had literally jumped into my ’69 Chevy Impala and ridden home with me from the streets of Columbus, where my friend and I scooped him up to get him out of the rain and traffic.
Jack was the most good-natured dog I’d ever known, the polar opposite of our family pet Heidi, a temperamental mongrel fond of snatching sticks of butter from the kitchen table and being aloof.
She was always a needy handful, especially around the Fourth of July, when fireworks sent her scurrying behind the family room sofa for hours on end as if it were the Blitz and this was London.
Heidi had met her maker several years earlier, which left just me and Jack alone in that sprawling split level, which, if my memory serves, had six floors, counting the attic where no one ever went.
We did just fine on our own though. Owing to the strange hours I worked at the paper, he was alone for long stretches of time, so I always tried to make him happy when I was home. Jack did fine off his leash when I walked him around the neighborhood, never straying into the street or bothering anyone else out and about.
After he’d been fed and walked, we would sometimes settle in to watch television, which is how he came to be with me when “It’s a Wonderful Life” made its first appearance. I think it was a Saturday evening, and being late December, I had the night free with no high school basketball game to cover, a rare break for me.
“Let’s see what it’s all about,” I said to Jack, who rested his head on his paws and seemed to answer, “Sounds pretty good to me.”
So the two of us, safe and warm and content, did exactly that.
If Jack was disturbed by the suicidal tendencies exhibited when George Bailey faces financial ruin, he gave no indication, though he did seem to perk up when Clarence Odbody, his guardian angel, appeared and set the story steaming for its emotional conclusion.
As I said, Jack was a quiet dog, not given to excessive displays of emotion, which made him a perfect counterbalance to me, especially when George starts throwing and kicking stuff, scaring his children and casting a pall over what had been holiday cheer.
“Why do we have so many kids?” he complains to Mary, his saintly wife. “Why do we have to live in this drafty old barn?”
By this time I had become convinced George Bailey was a heel of the first degree, a self-pitying wretch utterly incapable of seeing past his own problems, and it made me dislike him intensely.
This, of course, was the genius behind Jimmy Stewart’s awesome performance and Frank Capra’s directorial brilliance, not to mention the cinematography when Bedford Falls transmogrifies into Pottersville, with its sinister shadows and sulfurous miasma.
The movie is one long act that sets up the postscript miracle, a scene which, the first time I experienced it, reduced me to a sobbing mess, smiling and laughing through my unexpected tears.
Jack took no notice of my state, having dozed off around the time Potter stole the $8,000 from feckless Uncle Billy, a black-hearted deed for which he escapes any manner of justice.
Again, though, that’s Capra’s entire point. Life, he suggests, isn’t meant to be fair or even tolerable at times. It’s quite an ordeal, one that tests the bounds of a person’s patience and capacity to endure.
“Here’s to my brother, George,” says Harry Bailey, lifting a toast. “The richest man in town.” It gets me every time, every single time.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” went largely unseen for three decades before it resurfaced on the small screen, and now it’s not only widely considered the best Christmas movie, but also consistently listed as one of the Top 10 films ever made, right up there with the finest.
And if you know all about Zuzu’s petals and Clarence’s wings, you understand the remarkable staying power of a masterful work of art.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where it’s OK to cry when you’re feeling festive.