
- #It's a wonderful life on tv movie
- #It's a wonderful life on tv series
- #It's a wonderful life on tv tv
It’s the period of the first golden age of television and the last golden age of radio.

(It was also, not coincidentally, the period of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood blacklist.) This is the era that produced Ralph Ellison’s tremendous novel Invisible Man and the early works of writers like John Updike and John Cheever. Indeed, the period from 1945 to 1960 is one of the greatest in history in terms of mainstream, popular American art wrestling with the grimmer sides of the American dream. And often the characters fail - on both personal and societal levels. These are stories about men coming home from war and trying their damnedest to make their sacrifice worth something, by making the country a better, more moral place. So some people tried to understand the horrors these men had experienced - and their desires to plunge headfirst back into normalcy - via art. Today, we would recognize this as PTSD, but post–World War II America didn’t have such a clinical diagnosis. Men had died in battle, and many of those who returned home were wracked with mental anguish over what they had seen and done. But there was a constant question of just how great the ultimate cost would be. The evils of fascism had been defeated, and everyone could agree that was good. In the wake of World War II, many Americans were struggling with a very specific sort of mental hurdle.

It’s a Wonderful Life belongs to a very specific subgenre of popular American art To Mama Dollar and Papa Dollar. It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the best films America has ever made about itself, and that’s why I love it so much. It would be too bad if the film lost its cachet, though. Now that NBC owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the film, it’s less ubiquitous, just another annual tradition.
#It's a wonderful life on tv series
It’ll never be as forgotten as it was before that paperwork mishap, of course, but in recent years it’s been replaced in popular discourse by a new series of Christmas movies, like A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Weirdly, It’s a Wonderful Life seems to be slipping back into the mists of time. Upon release, It’s a Wonderful Life was greeted with weak box office earnings and reviews that amounted to, “It’s fine, but nothing special.” Though the film was nominated for a handful of Oscars (thanks mainly to Capra’s prestige within the industry at the time), it lost to William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, also a terrific film.
#It's a wonderful life on tv tv
Local TV stations found it to be a good way to paper over the long winter afternoons of December, their viewers discovered how good it is, and it became the classic it is today.īut if you were to tell Capra back in the late ’40s that his film would go on to become a perennial favorite, he might have scoffed at you.
#It's a wonderful life on tv movie
It’s a Wonderful Life’s status as an American classic is owed largely to a quirk of paperwork - after National Telefilm Associates, which owned the film after a long, convoluted chain of corporate sales, failed to renew its copyright in 1974, the movie fell into the public domain. And, yes, there are far more influential ones. He realizes that he has touched many people in a positive way and that his life has truly been a wonderful one.My favorite movie is Frank Capra’s immortal It’s a Wonderful Life, which celebrates its 70th birthday December 20, 2016. In a nightmarish vision in which the Potter-controlled town is sunk in sex and sin, those George loves are either dead, ruined, or miserable. He shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born. But the prayers of his loved ones result in a gentle angel named Clarence coming to earth to help George, with the promise of earning his wings. Thinking of his wife, their young children, and others he loves will be better off with him dead, he contemplates suicide. When the bank examiner discovers the shortage later that night, George realizes that he will be held responsible and sent to jail and the company will collapse, finally allowing Potter to take over the town.

Potter finds the misplaced money and hides it from Billy. But on Christmas Eve, George's Uncle Billy loses the business's $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. All that prevents him from doing so is George's modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent rich skinflint Mr. George Bailey has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls.
