George Bailey Was Never Born

A fan love letter to It's a Wonderful Life, this episode dives deeply into the period over the 1970s and ‘80s when the movie played around the clock on local TV and Americans fell in love with it, asking why writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s sliding-doors butterfly-effect concept of each person’s value and impact on all others acquired such currency with Americans of that place and time.  What resurrected Wonderful Life after nearly ...

A deep dive into the Wonderful Life Festival in western New York's Seneca Falls, a town that makes a powerful case that it is “the real Bedford Falls.”  Annually every December, one of the last surviving people associated with the production of It's a Wonderful Life, Karolyn “Zuzu” Grimes, travels there to join thousands of fans.  What about this nearly 80 year old movie keeps it so beloved?  And what motivates Karolyn?  We’ll lear...

Going in search of the reason why “up-side down” takes on It's a Wonderful Life have eclipsed traditional ones in recent years, this episode quickly becomes a history lesson about the U.S. government’s attack on the movie’s writers, and an examination of the state of heroes and villains today.  What does this phenomenon tell us about the nature of how our culture has changed?  We’ll look at the first to gain widespread attention, a...

How was it that It's a Wonderful Life went from a local TV free-for-all to only airing during the holidays on NBC for most of the past three decades?  In search of the answer, the podcast unearths a never-before-told story that up-ends many of the broadly-held assumptions and reveals much about the Potter-dominated state of modern media.  Generally, once a piece of art falls into the public domain, it stays there forever.  Not so w...

If western New York's Seneca Falls is the “real Bedford Falls,” then what can that town tell us about what happened to the people of that place in It's a Wonderful Life?  We come to know real corollaries of the beloved characters from that movie today, learning about their hopes and struggles, and discovering much about the state of small-town America.  Seneca Falls is filled with citizens who might remind you of characters from yo...

The much-admired George Bailey was not a stand-out but an almost perfect representative of his Greatest Generation, as historians argue in this episode that spotlights the relationship of parents and children and the yin and yang of eras, seeking a culprit to who upside-down’d America from the ethos of It's a Wonderful Life.  Those of George’s generation, born between 1901 and ‘27, and called the Greatest, begrudgingly set aside th...

George Bailey’s do still exist today, as we witness with Seneca Falls’ community banker Menzo Case, following his efforts to create much-needed affordable housing via his own Bailey Park.  Ordinary Americans “do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community,” George famously chastises Henry F. Potter, suggesting they ought to be able to do so “in a couple of decent rooms and a bath.”  How did working people ...

Probably the episode most fans came to this podcast seeking.  After spotlights of so many influential fans' interpretations across the series, here we ask:  what did the creators of It's a Wonderful Life actually intend, and for what did they stand?  With their next of kin, we come to know them intimately, unearthing the stories of how a literal dream inside a Brooklyn apartment during the Depression by an antifascist slavery-aboli...

The most controversial moment in It's a Wonderful Life for modern fans is the fate of George Bailey’s spouse Mary in the part of the multiverse in which he had never been born.  An examination of Mary as the true hero of Bedford Falls leads to the stories of Donna Reed as unappreciated feminist, femme punk Zuzu’s Petals' Laurie Lindeen's “woman behind the man” relationship with the Replacements’ frontman and the most impactful effe...

Going meta, the last episode spotlights how this podcast came about, how co-creator Ray Nowosielski and partner Ruth Vaca were drawn into the world of It's a Wonderful Life and how the making of it proved one of the most existential years in their lives.  Listeners meet the Groundhog Day writer and the celebrities of the annual Asner Center charitable table read of Wonderful Life, a search for the perfect sequel commences and a rea...

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You heard "GEORGE BAILEY WAS NEVER BORN" creators Ruth and Ray and their story in Ep10 "Happy Ending".  Just in time for the end of the holidays, their new podcast's first episode features special guest KELLY STEWART HARCOURT, daughter of "George Bailey" himself, one of the greate...