December 20, 1946: "It's a Wonderful Life" Premieres

December 20, 1946: It's a Wonderful Life premieres. Like many of the films directed by Frank Capra, it's homey, and corny, earning those films the nickname "Capra Corn." But it is one of the most beloved films ever made.

It wasn't a success at first. Indeed, it turned out to be the only motion picture that Liberty Films ever made, dragging the studio into bankruptcy. But a legal loophole put it into the public domain in 1974, and allowed anyone who wanted to show it on television to do so, as it was cheap to do so. That made it a Christmas classic.

George Bailey lives in Bedford Falls, somewhere in New York State. In 1919, when they are boys, he saves the life of his brother, Harry, but loses the hearing in one ear in the process. A girl named Mary Hatch has a childhood crush on him that doesn't go away once they grow up (with adult George played by James Stewart -- that's how he was billed in every movie, but everybody tended to call him "Jimmy Stewart" -- and adult Mary by Donna Reed).

George's father Peter (Samuel S. Hinds) and his uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) run the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan. The father dies right after George graduates from high school in 1928, and the Building & Loan's board of directors votes to make George, despite his youth, the new chairman, as Uncle Billy is an alcoholic, and not all that bright when he's sober.

George refuses, and is told by the board that if he refuses, the board will elect Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) the new chairman. Potter is the richest and meanest man in town, and if he runs the Building & Loan, he'll close it, meaning that the entire town will be at his mercy. George hates Potter, so he accepts. This means that he has to stay in town, and the money that was going to send him to college instead sends brother Harry to college.

The Great Depression soon follows, and there's a run on the banks on the day in 1932 that George and Mary get married. They use the $2,000 that they were going to spend on their honeymoon to save their customers, as Potter's bank is offering only 50 cents on the dollar. They just barely make it. (In the sequence, $242 then would be $5,169 in 2022; $20 would be $427.23; $17.50 would be $373.83; and the $2.00 the Baileys ended up with would be $42.72.

George and Mary become well-respected in town, and the parents of 4 children. When World War II arrives, Harry enlists in the U.S. Navy, and, as a pilot, shoots down planes attacking a troop ship, saving hundreds of lives. (The movie doesn't say whether the enemy planes were German or Japanese). But because of his bad ear, George is classified 4-F, and "fights the Battle of Bedford Falls," running drives for things the war effort needs, like scrap metal, rubber, and food.

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a party is being set up for the returning hero Harry. But, at the bank, Uncle Billy loses $8,000 meant for the firm's accounts -- about $171,000 in today's money. Unable to come up with the money, George runs into one awful occurrence after another (and, let's be honest, behaves very badly in response to them), and wishes he'd never been born.

All this is told by the angel Joseph (voiced by Joseph Granby), who has been hearing the prayers for George by the people of Bedford Falls. Joseph assigns George's case to an angel named Clarence Goodbody (Henry Travers), so that Clarence can finally "earn his wings." Clarence shows George  what the world would have been like if he had never been born. The results are shocking:

* Potter became the director of the Building & Loan, and closed it down. Now, he owned everything in town, and he changed its name to Pottersville.

* The major businesses in town low-class joints: Dive bars, burlesque houses, casinos that the Potter-controlled police looked the other way on.

* Without George, Bailey Park, the housing development he built through the Building & Loan, was never built, so people living in town had no alternative but to live in "Potter's slums."

* Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner), the pharmacist, spent time in prison, because George wasn't there to stop him from making a mistake with pills in 1919, which led to a local boy's death. He's now a homeless alcoholic.

* Giuseppe Martini (Bill Edmunds), operator of Martini's bar, a nice establishment, and a resident of Bailey Park, is neither. He isn't even in the alternate sequence: There is no Bailey Park, and Nick (Sheldon Leonard), who had been the head bartender at Martini's, now owns the place, naming it Nick's, and isn't nearly as friendly without Martini's influence.

* Mary is "an old maid," never married (at age 38, that was a big deal at the time), and works in the local library -- which, surprisingly, Potter didn't have shut down. Still, she's better off than most people in town.

* Worst of all, while Billy was born on time in 1911, none of the other kids who were with George that day in 1919 was able to save him from falling into the ice, and he died. So he wasn't there to save that troop transport during The War, and every American serviceman on that ship died. Clarence never says whether this affects the outcome of the war: For all we know, at Christmas '45, the war could still be going on, and the Allies could even be losing.

George changes his mind, and wants to live again. He gets his wish, goes home to face the music, and finds that all the people he'd selflessly helped over the years have come to pay him back. There's a big basket of cash, which ends up being more than the $8,000 he needs. They show him that, in the way that matters, he's "the richest man in town."

As of December 20, 2022, there are 4 surviving castmembers from It's a Wonderful Life: Ronnie Ralph, who played George's friend Sam Wainwright as a child; Carol Coombs, George & Mary's daughter Janie Bailey; Karolyn Grimes, George & Mary's daughter Zuzu Bailey; and Jimmy Hawkins, George & Mary's son Tommy Bailey.

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December 20, 1946 was a Friday. Several celebrities were born on this day: Illusionist Uri Geller, TV producer Dick Wolf, actor John Spencer, and Sonny Perdue, who was elected Governor of Georgia as a Republican, and then served as Secretary of Agriculture under Donald Trump.

Baseball was out of season. The NFL Championship Game had been played 5 days earlier, with the Chicago Bears beating the New York Giants, 24-14 at the Polo Grounds in New York. And no games were scheduled in the NHL.

There was one score on this historic day. The NBA was in its 1st season, under the name of the Basketball Association of America. One game was played that night: The Toronto Huskies beat the New York Knicks, 74-70 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. On the preceding November 1, the league's 1st-ever game was played between the same teams in the same arena, but the Knicks won it.