Posted on 11/25/2007 1:17:12 PM PST by mware
While watching the new colorization of It's a Wonderful Life" on DVD - this time they got it right; no longer do you get the feeling you're watching a black-and-white film through stained glass - I thought: you know who would love this? Why, that visionary American innovator Henry F. Potter. That's right, Mr. Potter - the unsung hero of It's a Wonderful Life," the canny businessman who tried (and, alas, failed) to turn boring, repressed Bedford Falls - a town full of drunks, child beaters, vandals and racial and sexual harassers - into an exciting new destination nightspot called Pottersville
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Unethical but not criminal.
You are left with the impression that he got off Scott free but did he...His ultimate goal was to break the Savings and Loan and break George....Lifetime aspiration nearly in your grasp only to have it snatched away.
Probably died from apoplexy.
George is my kind of man.
Frank Capra was one of the ones that I still have hanging on my study, along with Dr. Jonas Salk and Sir Edmund Hillary.
There is still a little bit of me that is sad that Jimmy Steward and Bing Crosby are not with us during Christmas anymore.
Remember the “lost ending” to IAWL skit that Saturday Night Live ran several years ago? Who knew that gentle George Bailey could be such an avenging hard ass?
Yup....
“It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man’s greatest good to have everything good but himself. “
Augusine of Hippo...City of God....5th Century.
“But tell me - in the end, who would any viewer rather be - George Bailey or Potter?”
I’d rather be Wainright. Heehaw
If George Bailey had been played by John Wayne,Potter would have died at the end
I don’t think he was being sarcastic. And I think it’s sad that he thinks making money is more important than being fair and just. That a better paying job is worth one’s self-respect and integrity. That being a homemaker and devoted wife to an average guy is a step down from being a single working woman or wife to a rich guy. That a decent town without hard-drinking bars and pool halls is boring. That teasing an employee for eavesdropping is racist. That missing opportunities because you feel a greater obligation to family and neighbors is stupid. That Potter is only “unethical” for keeping money he not only knows is not his, but knows the loss will ruin another man’s business and reputation, not to speak of all the families with money and mortgages in the Bailey B&L.
And saddest of all is failing to see what matters at the end is love, not money, and that George needn’t have fretted, but just had faith.
I love the movie but that's funny.
Actually, George Bailey came back home that night fully prepared to go to jail. The “rescue” by the townspeople was a complete surprise to him.
There's an interesting biblical parallel to this, too.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the highway robbers who manhandled the hapless traveller got off scott free, too. It's one of the more sobering aspects of the New Testament, in my opinion.
George stayed in Beford Falls when his dream was to leave and travel.
He stayed to help others.
Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But few of us give up our dream and do it.
The people he helped when they were in trouble, helped him when he was in trouble.
Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But few of us do.
It’s a great movie with a timeless message well told - that’s why it’s a popular classic. It, like George and the good folks of Bedford Falls, deserves it.
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