POLITICS
Would It Be a Wonderful Life?
Think we’d be better off if Hillary Clinton had won? Think again.
I’ve watched It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas season for as far back as I can remember. I’ve seen it so many times I can almost recite every line. I’ll probably watch it again sometime over the next couple of weeks. What I didn’t realize until recently was the film’s inauspicious beginnings:
Initial tickets sales were disappointing, and reviews mixed. Though it [It’s a Wonderful Life] received five Academy Award nominations, it did not win any Oscars. The film did not even come close to breaking even. Years later, the movie lapsed into the public domain, which allowed it to be broadcast without royalty fees.
The basis for director Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece is The Greatest Gift, a self-published short story loosely based on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol by Civil War historian Philip Van Doren Stern. But it wasn’t until television audiences rediscovered the film that the holiday classic made a stunning turnaround, becoming one of the most beloved holiday movies of all time:
It’s a Wonderful Life is now considered one of the greatest films of all time. It is No. 1 on the American Film Institute’s list of most inspirational movies. In 1990, the Library of…
