George Bailey Was Never Born iHeartPodcasts

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 three decades?  We become the first to tell the tale of how the combination of a whoops by Rashida Jones’ grandfather and a decade-long NYC viewing party launched this movie from obscurity to American icon.  We look at the endless string of TV episodes and movies inspired by Wonderful Life and talk with the writers of one of the very first, a 1979 Robin Williams starring sitcom’s “Wonderful Mork” episode, to understand the deep universal appeal of considering what the world would be like without you.  Finally, we come to 1989, peak year for “take-offs” on this movie, many decidedly dark.  Why?  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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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 learn the surprisingly pertinent answers, the story of how a Hollywood child actress turned rural everywoman – who never saw the movie until a fateful knock on her door at age 40 changed the direction of her life – found a second home and forever changed one small town.  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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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 Salon co-founder’s 9/11 era defense of Pottersville – the runaway capitalist reality where George Bailey was never born – and then the most popular, a New York Times reporter’s 2008 financial crisis tinged effort to prove George would have been prosecuted and his leadership ultimately ruined Bedford Falls.  Then, we go way back, to the surprising first critics of the movie, J. Edgar Hoover and Ayn Rand.  And we learn Jimmy Stewart’s daughter's take on what real heroism means, with implications for MAGA.  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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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 with Wonderful Life, now claimed by Paramount Global and long the exclusive television domain of Comcast’s NBC Universal.  What happened in 1993 to take “the People’s movie" back?  What does it tell us about the effects of a broader corporate trend towards consolidation and monopoly that was the dominant strategy of iconic villain Henry F. Potter?  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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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 your favorite holiday movie.  We come to know a major employer and the mayor, high school buddies in the vein of George Bailey and Sam Wainwright who have playfully fought over how best to navigate the future of the post-industrial town.  A Bert-like cop, a Violet Bick-like hairdresser and a Nick-like bartender take us up-close inside locals’ experiences.  A journalist who returns with his mother to her hometown comes away sure he’s missed a big story about the American small-town.  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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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 their more selfish ambitions to ultimately become the most progressive in history, leaving their children a far better world.  How did their parents’ generation, like George’s father, inspire them?  And how, by contrast, did the generation of George’s daughter Zuzu – the Baby Boomers – come to reverse it all?  And a new generation shows signs of being Bailey-like.  SaveGeorgeBailey.com
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