Free Republic

We think of It's a Wonderful Life as a great American movie, a great Jimmy Stewart movie, a great Frank Capra movie — and, of course, as a great Christmas movie. We don't think of it as a great Italian-American movie. But we should, especially at Christmastime, when Italian-Americans — of Capra's generation and beyond — can be heard in every shop and restaurant singing many of the songs that define the season. Capra was born in Sicily, and at age 6 moved to Los Angeles. It's a Wonderful Life is spiced with subtle but significant references to his fellow...

He is America’s most iconic banker. Okay. He isn’t a real banker, but we all know and love him; he’s George Bailey from the quintessential Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Bailey, the local banker from Bedford Falls, N.Y., confronts slumlord and all-around bad guy Henry Potter for control of his father’s bank, Bailey Building and Loan. Potter tries to bribe Bailey, then tries to steal the bank from the young idealist and businessman. It was a movie, and it was the 1940s, so the good guy won. George Bailey got the bank and the girl, and the bad...

Robert J. Anderson, a former child actor best known for playing the young George Bailey in the 1946 Christmas film classic "It's a Wonderful Life," has died. He was 75. Anderson was 12 when director Frank Capra cast him as Jimmy Stewart's youthful counterpart in the heartwarming tale set in Bedford Falls. As the adult George Bailey contemplates suicide, his life is told in flashback so his guardian angel Clarence can get to know him. Young George rescues his brother from drowning, dreams about being an explorer and saves the town pharmacist, Mr. Gower, from accidentally poisoning a customer. The...

It started back at 8pm. Right now is playing the scene where Clarence grants George's wish that he was never born. His mouth stopped bleeding. Clothes dry. "I cant fly! I dont have my wings!" "Wheres my car?" Pottersville? You mean Bedford Falls! Pottersville! You think I dont know where I live?"

I always had my suspicions that the Baileys were Catholic. Although George Bailey was “touched by an angel” (second class, anyway), the issue of precisely which church the Baileys of Bedford Falls attended was never specified in Frank Capra's 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Still, The Bailey family, and George in particular, exemplify the essence of Catholic social teaching. The Baileys were entrepreneurs with a definite desire to profit from their hard work, yes — but they were ethical in their practice of free enterprise. Their desire to profit from their labor was subordinate to their devotion to the...

<p>WASHINGTON — In "It's a Wonderful Life," a suicidal George Bailey (James Stewart) is given a chance by his guardian angel to see what his hometown would have been like if he had never lived there.</p> <p>As the movie tells it, without the benevolent Bailey's generosity through his family-owned savings and loan, the community would have been a far poorer place. Many working-class people unable to buy their own homes would be stuck in slums; drunks would wander the streets. And the idyllic town of Bedford Falls would have been overrun by honky-tonk saloons, pawnshops, dance halls and burlesque houses.</p>