It’s A Wonderful Life
Frank Sinatra once said of New York “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.” Anyone who has tried to make it in New York can attest to that. Millions leave New York as failures but succeed elsewhere, and perhaps just as many thrived in the Empire State and then left, finding it even easier to do so somewhere else.
Of all the states, New York is the one I was most anxious about writing; even though New York is my home state - it’s where I grew up and still live. Very few people are more New Yorker than I am. It should be easy,
And yet, I dreaded it. I went through movie after movie searching for the perfect one that best represents my home state. I considered that it cannot just be about “the city,” where I grew up, but also relevant to the rest of the state.
In the end, I kept coming back to the same film, as if it were a menu item I looked at, put aside, and after scouring the menu over and over again realized I was just wasting my time because the answer was staring me in the face all along. Just go with your first institution, especially when it’s your home state.
And so here we are, conveniently on Christmas, one of the most iconic Christmas films of all time, representing the Empire State: It’s A Wonderful Life.
The 1946 Frank Capra classic is loosely based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but in many ways is far darker and traumatizing. Our protagonist, George Bailey (James Stewart) takes us on a wild ride through the complexity of humanity, and how New York, a state so embroiled in the individual races for power and money, can complicate things further.
The first scene in the movie is a casual conversation between pulsating stars in the sky. They are angels talking to each other about George. It’s Christmas Eve, 1945, and George, then 38 years old, is contemplating suicide. They assign an angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) to talk George out of suicide, which Clarence accepts, albeit with some trepidation. Clarence has been dead for over 200 years but still has not earned his angel wings. Clarence makes a deal with the senior angel (is it God? It’s not clear) that he will get his wings if he saves George.
Clarence then learns about George. In 1919, he is a young boy working at the local pharmacy in Bedford Falls, New York, a fictional Upstate town that, depending on who you ask, is based on Seneca Falls, or Bedford Hills in Westchester County. In the first minute of the film, George, aged 12, does two selfless things. First, he saves his brother Henry from drowning in an icy lake, causing an infection that costs George his hearing in one ear. He later prevents the death of one of his boss’, Mr. Gower’s, customers when he sees Gower, in paralyzing grief over the death of his son, make a mistake and lacing the pills with poison. We are left to wonder how this selfless child grew up to become suicidal. Young George has also grabbed the attention of Young Mary Hatch and the two have an innocent flirtatious friendship (at one point Mary declares her love to George in his deaf ear)
Nine years later, George is talking to his parents about touring the world before college. His father Peter (Samuel S. Hinds) tries to talk him into coming to work at the family business, a savings and loan bank that helps Bedford Falls residents secure mortgages to buy houses. George refuses, however, his eyes set on a more global ambition. Peter defends his career, noting that he helps people with what would soon become a staple of post-war American life, homeownership.
George attends a graduation party and it’s a banger. Though other girls, including the vivacious Violet (Gloria Grahame), want a piece of George, he reconnects with his childhood love, Mary (Donna Reed) and the two dance the Charleston in what I can only describe feels like the 1920s version of the dancefloor scene in Saturday Night Fever (one of the many other films I considered for New York).
The new gym floor is a retractable floor over a new pool, which means the funniest thing ever is about to happen. A couple of pranksters decide to open the floor in the middle of the party, causing George and Mary to jitterbug right into the pool. Everyone else jumps in too.
I love this scene because it reminds me of the concept of “work hard, play hard,” which feels very New York. The workdays are a ratrace but the nightlife is wild. New Yorkers get so little time for recreation and fun that they make the most of it.
The scene leads to what in modern films would likely have been a love scene between George and Mary, but instead is an awkward, but funny one where Mary loses the robe she walked home in after getting wet in the pool and hides her modesty behind a bush while George mocks her. Mary gets a break when George finds out his father had a stroke and died.
This alters George’s entire future. The movie’s main villain, a morally bankrupt robber baron in the mold of Donald Trump or Leona Helmsley, Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) seeks to dissolve Bailey Savings and Loans and take control of the town’s real estate business. The argument between Potter, who calls out the generosity of George’s father as bad business, leads to George railing into him in a berating speech that feels out of character for George. We get it through, he’s defending his father’s honor.
That’s the thing about New York. We are largely descendants of recent immigrants, who thrived in our first days in America by clinging close to family and community. We are fiercely defensive of both, because they are what grounds us. There’s a reason we hear little about Potter’s family. They don’t matter to him.
George takes over the business with his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), giving the money he saved up to travel to allow Henry to go to college under the agreement that Henry will run the business when he graduates, and George can live his dream of traveling the world. Naturally, this doesn’t happen. Four years later, Henry comes home from college married to Ruth (Virginia Patton) with a job offer from her father in Buffalo. George realizes he has to run the business himself and protect his father’s legacy. George gets hosed again when after he and Mary marry, they witness a run on banks at the height of the Great Depression and use their honeymoon savings to shore up the bank. They end up having a staycation honeymoon at a local hotel where Mary, with the help of some friends, makes a feast of exotic food with posters of different far away parts of the world to honor George’s desire to travel. It’s a really sweet scene and a reminder that despite his run of bad luck, George is loved.
The business thrives under George. He builds housing development (Bailey Park). George wins the good graces of the Martini family, Italian-American immigrants who can buy a home in Bailey Park and finally achieve the American dream. Potter realizes Bailey Park is hurting his business, as his development is just overpriced slums, so rather than improve his product, Potter decides to try to kneecap his competition. He offers George a job, but it’s rebuffed.
Misfortune doesn’t keep away from George, however. On Christmas Eve, 1945, Bedford Falls is preparing to honor Henry, who went to fight in World War II and became a war hero (George’s partial deafness meant he couldn’t go to war). Uncle Billy runs into Potter on his way to deposit $8,000 of the bank’s money, but after taunting Potter about Henry’s actions, he accidentally hides the money in a paper he gives to Potter, who realizes he now can destroy George once and for all. Billy admits he lost the money, which couldn't come at a worse time with a bank examiner checking the books (on Christmas Eve? Why?). George realized if the money didn’t turn up, he’d be ruined.
Similar to when Potter slandered his father, George snaps again, coming home and taking it out on his family, even berating his daughter’s teacher for allowing her to walk home without a jacket causing her to catch a cold. It felt close to an “abusive father” situation many of the friends I grew up with were very familiar with. A bad day of work becomes a night of rampaging at home. Embarrassed by his actions, George goes to Martini’s bar, where he runs into the teacher’s husband who clocks him in the face. Nevertheless, Mr. Martini takes his friend’s side, showing that even on the verge of disgrace, George is still loved. This is important later.
George goes to Potter., whom George is unaware has the missing money, begging for a loan and Potter gets his revenge for the tongue-lashing he got earlier. When George offers his life insurance policy as collateral, Potter declares him “more valuable dead than alive.” That causes George to spiral. He goes to the town bridge to jump off and kill himself, wishing he had never been born.
This is where Clarence steps in. He jumps in first, causing George to jump in to help save him. Notably, this is exactly how George’s story started, saving his brother from an icy pond as a young boy. Even in his darkest hour, George cannot avoid the instinct to help. After saving Clarence, George learns that he is his guardian angel, which takes some time to get used to. Clarence proves it by showing George what life would’ve been like had he never been born.
Predictably, this other world is worse. Henry dies and is buried in a cemetery where Bailey Park would be. Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville, a crime-ridden poverty-stricken town sucked dry of its resources by Potter. Mr. Gower, the pharmacist whom George stopped from accidentally killing a patient goes to prison for manslaughter. Uncle Billy is institutionalized. The soldiers on the vessel Henry saved from a kamikaze pilot all die since Henry never lived to adulthood, and Mary is an old maid. The realizations lead to the movie’s epic conclusion.
George goes back to the bridge to beg Clarence for his life back. Mary being an old maid and his children not existing did it for him. He realizes his life has meaning. Bert (Ward Bond) finds George at the bridge and George realizes his life has been restored. George runs celebrating through the town and arrives home, expecting to be arrested (and happy about it). He isn’t; a miracle happened. Mary went around Bedford Falls explaining George’s dilemma, and the townspeople who have all grown to love George (remember Martini siding with him in the fight) donate some money to help George raise the $8,000, and then some. George’s frienemy, Sam, who mocked him regularly and lived the glamorous worldly lifestyle George lived, wires him $25,000 from London. George’s brother Henry calls him “the richest man in town.” George is humbled by the support. In the pile of money, George finds a copy of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” with a note from Clarence. “No man is a failure who has friends, thanks for the wings.” George’s daughter Zuzu, pointing at a ringing bell on the Christmas tree tells her father “Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” George closes the film with a simple “attaboy Clarence,” realizing Clarence has earned his wings.
The one thing that struck me during the movie is how many scenes, notably the last one, are chaotic, with tons of commotion and crosstalk, often during happy moments. It reminded me of so many New York celebratory moments; ticker tape parades, Fourth of July fireworks, New Year’s Eve at Times Square. Where else can celebrations be more chaotic than New York? Where else can celebrations be so rambunctious?
Most of all though, It’s A Wonderful Life shows us how New York, a place where people are almost forced by the culture to be ambitious, can steal your humanity if you’re not careful. You have to work hard to survive in New York, and that work is punishing. Perhaps the biggest criticism of Capitalism is that it is soulless, and you often have to check your morals at the door to have a chance to succeed. People will take advantage of your generosity and your empathy to enrich themselves, so it is important to keep close friends, family, and community who love you and are willing to fight for you; because in New York, we are. New Yorkers have developed a reputation for being rude, mean, and unfriendly, but we mobilize for those we love, we just don’t show it until we have to.