Episodes
The People’s Movie (1974-’92)
EPISODE ONE
A fan love letter to Wonderful Life, we look at the period over the 1970s and ‘80s when the movie played around the clock on local TV and Americans fell in love with it, asking why writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s sliding-doors butterfly-effect concept of each person’s value and impact on all others acquired such currency with Americans of that place and time.
What resurrected It’s a Wonderful Life after nearly three decades? We become the first to tell the tale of how the combination of a whoops by Rashida Jones’ grandfather and a decade-long viewing party launched this movie from obscurity to American icon. We’ll look at the endless string of TV episodes, movies and music inspired by Wonderful Life and talk with the writers of one of the very first, a 1979 Robin Williams starring sitcom’s “A Wonderful Mork” episode, to understand the deep universal appeal of considering what the world would be like without you. And we look at 1989, peak year for “take-offs” on this movie – many decidedly dark. Why?
You Are Now in Bedford Falls
EPISODE TWO
A deep dive into the Wonderful Life festival in Seneca Falls, New York, which claims to be “the real Bedford Falls,” in the tradition of This American Life, also examining the intense necessity for tourism hooks in modern small towns and the story of “Zuzu Bailey” child actress Karolyn Grimes’ unexpectedly personal catalyst for her campaign to use the movie to counter cynicism and hopelessness showing itself all around us.
Annually every December since 2002, one of the last surviving people associated with the production of Wonderful Life, Karolyn “Zuzu” Grimes, travels to Seneca Falls to join thousands of fans of the movie. What about this nearly 80 year old movie keeps it so beloved? And what motivates Karolyn? We’ll learn the surprisingly pertinent answers, the story of how a Hollywood child actress turned rural everywoman – who never saw the movie until a fateful knock on her door at age 40 changed the direction of her life – found a second home and forever changed one small town, the real Bedford Falls.
Henry F. Potter, American AntiHero
EPISODE THREE
This episode goes in search of the reason why “up-side down” takes on Wonderful Life in recent years has eclipsed traditional ones, it quickly becomes a history lesson about the U.S. government’s attack on the movie’s writers, and an examination of the state of heroes and villains today.
Where are all these somewhat cynical “takes” on Wonderful Life every December coming from? What does this phenomenon tell us about the nature of how our culture has changed? We’ll look at the first to gain widespread attention, a Salon.com co-founder’s 9/11 era defense of Pottersville – the runaway capitalist reality where George Bailey was never born – and also the most popular, a New York Times reporter’s 2008 financial crisis tinged effort to prove George would have been prosecuted and his leadership ultimately have ruined Bedford Falls. Then, we go back deep, to the surprising first critics of the movie, J. Edgar Hoover and Ayn Rand. And we learn why Jimmy Stewart’s daughter's take on what real heroism means.
The Corporations’ Movie (1993-2023)
EPISODE FOUR
How was it that Wonderful Life went from a local TV free-for-all to most of the past three decades only airing during the holidays on NBC? In search of the answer, the podcast unearths a never-before-told story that up-ends many of the broadly-held assumptions and reveals much about the Potter-dominated state of modern media.
Generally, once a piece of art falls into the public domain, it stays there forever. Not so with It’s a Wonderful Life, now claimed by Paramount Global and long the exclusive television domain of Comcast’s NBC Universal. What happened in 1993 to take back “the People’s movie”? How does it represent a broader corporate trend towards consolidation and monopoly that was the dominant strategy of iconic villain Henry F. Potter? And what has been the harm caused?
EPISODE FIVE
Pottersville
If Seneca Falls New York is the “real Bedford Falls,” then what can that town tell us about what happened to the people of that place in Wonderful Life? We come to know real corollaries of the beloved characters from that movie today, learning about their hopes and struggles, and discovering much about the state of small-town America.
Seneca Falls is filled with citizens who might remind you of characters from your favorite holiday movie. We come to know a major employer and the mayor, high school buddies in the vein of George Bailey and Sam Wainwright who have playfully fought over how best to navigate the future of the post-industrial town. A Bert-like cop, a Violet Bick-like hairdresser and a Nick-like bartender take us deeply inside locals’ experiences, hopes and troubles. A journalist who returns with his mother to her hometown comes away sure he’s missed a big story about the American small town.
The George Bailey Generation
EPISODE SIX
The much-admired George Bailey was not a stand-out but an almost perfect representative of his Greatest Generation, as historians argue in this episode that spotlights the relationship of parents and children and the yin and yang of eras, seeking a culprit to who upside-down’d America from the ethos of Wonderful Life.
Those of George’s generation, born between 1901 and ‘27, and called the Greatest, begrudgingly set aside their more selfish ambitions to ultimately become the most progressive in history, leaving their children a far better world? How did their parents’ generation, like George’s father, inspire them? And how, by contrast, did the generation of George’s daughter Zuzu – the Baby Boomers – come to reverse it all? And a new generation shows signs of being Bailey-like.
Bailey Park Returns, a.k.a. A Couple of Decent Rooms & a Bath
EPISODE SEVEN
George Bailey’s do still exist today, as we witness with Seneca Falls’ community banker Menzo Case, following his efforts to create much-needed affordable housing in his town via his own Bailey Park.
Ordinary Americans “do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community,” George famously chastizes Potter, suggesting they ought to be able to do so “in a couple of decent rooms and a bath.” How did working people become priced out of owning their own homes in modern small towns? The Potters are revealed, and they are us, “NIMBYs.”
The Creators’ Movie (1938-’73)
EPISODE EIGHT
Probably the episode most fans who tuned in to a Wonderful Life podcast would have expected, after spotlighting so many interpretations by influential fans, the story of the actual intentions of the movie’s creators is put under a microscope, revealing abolitionism and anti-fascism and a concern for the common man at its core.
What did the creators of It's a Wonderful Life actually intend, and for what did they stand? With those filmmakers’ next of kin, we unearth the story of how a literal dream inside a Brooklyn apartment during the Depression by an antifascist slavery-abolition historian and Big Idea enthusiast was added to significantly by a playwright who hated his money-obsessed father, given definition by exceptionally kind and truly-in-love husband and wife screenwriters and was brought to life by a visionary who helped define the meaning of World War II and the truly heroic American actor Jimmy Stewart. Why did the movie initially fail? And what impact did that have on the dreams of its utopian director?
Mary Hatch, Hero (For Our Times)
EPISODE NINE
The most controversial moment in Wonderful Life for modern fans is the fate of George Bailey’s spouse Mary in the part of the multiverse in which he had never been born.
An examination of Mary as the true hero of Bedford Falls leads to the stories of Donna Reed as unappreciated feminist, femme punk Zuzu’s Petals frontwoman Laurie Lindeen’s “woman behind the man” relationship with the Replacements’ frontman and the most impactful effect of this holiday classic, the short story writer’s daughter’s success in using banking to bring more than 100 million out of poverty. Through conversations with influential women, from Washington Post’s gender columnist to a popular Vox television critic and transgender advocate, from a Seneca Falls’ Women’s Rights National Historic Park advocate to our own “George Bailey” theme song writer and performer, a debate over Mary heats up – with ramifications for fixing our culture!
EPISODE TEN
Happy Ending
Going meta, the last episode spotlights how podcast co-creator Ray Nowosielski and his spouse Ruth Vaca were drawn into the Wonderful Life web, how this podcast came about and how the making of it proved one of the most existential years in their lives.
Listeners meet Groundhog Day writer Danny Rubin and the celebrities of the annual Asner Center charitable table read of Wonderful Life, a search for the perfect sequel commences and a real George Bailey is lost, in this touching conclusion .
Image by
IC CHARACTERS:
Screenshot from film / Van Doren Sterns Rights
MC TRILOGY:
Frank Capra
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NBC
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Mork and Mindy