Yep, I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" again this year. But until I read Zachary D. Carter's wonderful essay in The Huffington Post (2018), there were many things I didn't know about the film or the Sicilian immigrant behind it.
Hoping to revive a career that had been disrupted by the war, Frank Capra produced the film in 1946, but it bombed, losing a half million dollars at the box office. Critics panned it and he lost the rights and the negatives as his personal fortunes nose-dived, which was accelerated by the anti-Communist furor of the 1950s. (His crime was that he had briefly flirted with Marxism when he was younger.)
He gradually reached such a hopeless state that he attempted suicide on a number of occasions.
When he looked back on making the film that ruined his career, he said: “I can’t begin to describe my sense of loneliness in making (it), a loneliness that was laced by the fear of failure. I had no one to talk to, or argue with.”
The negatives lay unvisited for almost three decades, by which time the film, considered worthless, slipped into the public domain and was free for the taking. In the mid-1970s, PBS reclaimed it and aired it first. The commercial networks soon followed.
"By the mid-1980s, courtesy of the cold-eyed calculation of a new generation of television executives, “It’s A Wonderful Life” was reborn as a piece of spiritual Americana, spoofed by Saturday Night Live, colorized and submitted to other indignities of American commerce," explains Carter.
Capra lived long enough to see his prized work become a beloved classic before he died in 1991 at the age of 94. He always maintained that "It's a Wonderful Life" was the greatest film he ever made.
For me the core message of the film -- that you have to imagine the world without you if you are ever to grasp your impact -- provides a central truth we should all cherish.
In other words, never underestimate how your words and your actions -- your very presence as a living being -- can affect those around you, for better and for worse. That's what life has taught me, and what the film celebrates.
Once you fully accept that your words and actions have hurt the people you love, yet also have helped the people that you love, there is not really all that much you can do about any of that. Some people believe in a system of trying to make amends, but even that may fall short of actually making things feel right.
Ultimately, all that is left to us is the future, based on what we say and do now. And even at times when it seems most improbable, life can indeed still turn out to be wonderful.
But you are the only one who can make it that way -- well, maybe with a little help from your friends.
***
The news:
* Trump vetoes defense bill, teeing up holiday override votes in Congress (WashPo)
* How Cities Lost Control of Police Discipline -- In the chaos of 1960s Detroit, a fledgling police union laid the groundwork for a system that, to this day, constrains discipline for officers accused of misconduct. (NYT)
* Trump Pardons Manafort, Stone, Kushner's Father and Other Cronies (CNN)
* In tent cities, a grim future grows darker (Reuters)
* The Coronavirus Is Mutating, and America’s Leaders Are Flying Blind -- Travel restrictions might make sense, but what this country really needs is better disease surveillance. (NYT)
*
A season of fear, not cheer, as virus changes Christmas (AP)
* Republicans plunge into open battle over attempts to overturn Trump’s loss (WashPo)
* Head of election monitoring group gunned down in Afghan capital (Reuters)
* For Europe, It’s Wave After Wave -- In a roller coaster year of pandemic, the one constant has been the strain on frontline workers, who are already girding themselves for the next surge. (NYT)
* Echo of Coronavirus Didn’t Keep Beer Drinkers From Corona (WSJ)
* With hospitals nearly overwhelmed, officials say California ‘cannot afford’ another holiday surge (WashPo)
* Public Schools Face Funding ‘Death Spiral’ as Enrollment Drops -- Congress is sending more relief money to schools, but coronavirus-related costs and declining state funding tied to student enrollment are driving districts toward a financial crisis. (NYT)
* It’s time for Mike Pence to choose: Trump, or the truth (WashPo)
* South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has taken a notably relaxed approach to the pandemic. This fall, nursing homes there saw a larger share of their residents die than in any other state. At Jenkins Living Center in Watertown, 24 residents have died from COVID-19 since the last week of October -- about a fifth of the residents there. Thirteen patients at Weskota Manor in Wessington Springs, over a third of its patients, died from COVID-19 this autumn, most of them in one week. [HuffPost]
* Google hired Timnit Gebru to be an outspoken critic of unethical AI. Then she was fired for it. (WashPo)
* State Investigates Second Outage-Caused Bay Area Sewage Spill in Months < https://www.kqed.org/news/11852567/state-investigates-second-outage-caused-ebmud-sewage-spill-in-months > (KQED)
* It's A Wonderful Life: The miraculous origins of a Christmas classic.(HuffPost)
***
And think of a church with nobody praying
Have you ever looked up at a sky with no blue
Then you've seen a picture of me without you
Or stood by a river where nothing was flowing
If you've seen a red rose unkissed by the dew
Then you've seen a picture of me without you
Or a quiet Sunday morning with no church bells ringing
If you've watched as the heart of a child breaks in two
Then you've seen a picture of me without you
Or a quiet Sunday morning with no church bells ringing
If you've watched as the heart of a child breaks in two
Then you've seen a picture of me without you
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