With this sale, Paramount acquired the interest in It’s a Wonderful Life. Unable to recoup their high production cost of $2.3 million, however, Liberty Films was bought by Paramount Pictures in 1947. The film was ultimately the first release of independent production company Liberty Films. The story came to the attention of producer David Hempstead, and RKO purchased the motion-picture rights to the story for $10,000. After his unsuccessful search for a publisher, Stern decided to send his story out as small booklets to 200 friends in December of 1943. As the story goes, because of a mere clerical error, then-copyright owner Republic Pictures missed filling a renewal application on time, causing the film to lapse into the public domain and onto home television sets.īut the story of this film and the Copyright Office began in 1945, when Stern registered his privately published story “The Greatest Gift.” Appropriately, perhaps, it was a Christmas card that led to the story’s success. Some say the success of this film came, in no small part, from a 1974 filing error with the U.S. The popularity of this beloved holiday classic is made even more surprising by its poor performance at the box office upon release, resulting in a loss of $525,000 for RKO Radio Pictures. In 1943, when Philip Van Doren Stern was unable to find a publisher for his 4,100-word short story “The Greatest Gift,” he could not have guessed that it would lead to one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time – It’s a Wonderful Life. I was surprised to learn that the film’s success was in fact a recent phenomenon. Out of all the heartwarming holiday classics, I always considered It’s a Wonderful Life one of the best. It just wouldn’t feel like the holidays in our house without the annual showing of It’s a Wonderful Life, Holiday Inn, Scrooged, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Capra's celebration of the power of community and defiant optimism is orchestrated with consummate mastery, perfectly augmenting big time laughs, touching sentiment and exuberant charm with imagination and beautifully rendered tone.The following is a guest post by Samantha Kosarzycki, legal intern, Office of Public Information and Education. Underpinned by this fascinating philosophical conceit, IAWL is one of the most watchable of all movie classics. When the latter falls to ruin, George is about to throw himself off a bridge but Angel Clarence (a beguiling Henry Travers) gives him the chance to see what the world would be like if he did. George's life is subsequently played out in flashback - his scuppered hopes of travelling the world his romance with childhood sweetheart Mary (Reed) his protecting the town from the avarice of the evil banker Potter (Barrymore) with his own savings and loan company. The kind of experience movies were invented for, director Frank Capra's 1946 festive fairy tale returns with opportune timing first as a fitting tribute to the late James Stewart second, with everything from Jerry Maguire to A Life Less Ordinary being dubbed Capra-esque, as a chance to rediscover the genuine article and third, as Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without it.įor those poor impoverished souls yet to encounter its magic, IAWL focuses on George Bailey (Stewart), a small town resident so riddled with problems that he is contemplating a Yuletide suicide.
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