Looking at Billy the Kid—Part I—That Picture

Apparently Pat Garrett on the left and Billy the Kid on the right in the second row in a New Mexico tintype circa 1879-80.  The others have been identified or are suspected of being, front row Chavez y Chavez and "Dirty" Dave Rudabaugh, Barny Mason back row next to Billy.

Note:  Last week I began working on a post about the apparent discovery of a tintype image of Billy the Kid and his killer.  It was one of those projects that rapidly got away from me and took on a life of its own.  So today, I begin a three part series.  In the first I will examine the new discovery and other real, suspected, or faked images of the West’s most famous bad man.  Tomorrow I’ll look at what is known about his life.  And I will wind up with a post on cultural interpretations of the myth surrounding him. Stay tuned.

The announcement that a blurry tintype had been discovered and painstakingly authenticated by experts created a sensation because of its subjects—five rough looking characters in big hats and boots seated staring at the camera.  The image was taken in New Mexico about 1880.  The eye first wanders to the man on the far left, gaunt with a drooping walrus moustache.  Frank Abrams, he man who found it in North Carolina, of all places, and paid $10 for it to decorate a room he rented out on Airbub, at first just thought it was a quaint curio—a picture of a bunch of anonymous cowboys.  But on closer inspection he recognized the man with the mustache—Pat Garrett, the Lincoln County Sheriff who shot and killed Billy the Kid.

That set Abrams on a quest to authenticate that picture and identify the men.  Tintype experts and Western historians verified the age of the photo and its New Mexico source. 

Tintypes—one-of-a-kind images produced on iron plates, were introduced in the 1850’s and were widely used not only by studio photographers but by traveling hucksters who set up at fairs and markets in small towns across the country giving the locals a perhaps once-in-a-life-time opportunity to preserve their likeness.  By 1880 the process was rapidly being supplanted by glass plate photography from which multiple images could be printed and which were sharper and clearer.  But the process was more expensive and the subjects sometimes had to wait days to have their photos processed and printed.  So tintypes, which could be finished in minutes and handed over to eagerly waiting customer, remained popular in places like New Mexico where they were often taken on a lark.  Think of them as stone age selfies.

A close examination of the clothing, hats, boots, and gear of the men, as well as the apparently nickel plated revolver in the hand the guy on the left, all verified the age and locality of the image.

Pat Garrett was easy to identify.  Others in the photo more difficult.

Next, Abrams had forensics and facial recognition experts went over the picture using the latest technology.  Verifying Garrett, who appeared in several other tintypes and photographs, was easy.  Working from knowledge of his known associates at the time and existing pictures of them, they concluded that the young man in the back row on the left was Billy the Kid, known to be a pal and gambling buddy of Garrett at the time.  The image is somewhat blurred, but matching feature for feature with the most famous authenticated photo, they were able to make the pronunciation.  Billy also appears to be holding something, but it is obscured by the hat of the center man and unidentifiable.

Although the picture does have some skeptics and has yet to be formally appraised if ever offered for auction because of its rarity and the presence of both legendary figures it would easily be the most expensive Western tintype ever offered and perhaps the most valuable American photo image.  

The full tintype image of a gathering and croquet game.

It is not the only recently discovered image found and claimed to be authenticated, however.  Two years ago a National Geographic Channel show claimed that a tintype found in Fresno, California showing several men and women spread around the yard of a simple wood frame building depicted Billy the Kid playing croquet, of all things in an odd striped sweater.  The photo was supposedly taken in August or September of 1878 just after Billy and his pals known as Regulators lost the final major gun battle of the Lincoln County War.  At a ranch that had been owned by John Tunstall, the rancher and merchant who Billy worshiped as a surrogate father and whose murder set off the formation of the Regulators and the range war.  Several members of the Regulators were identified as were some women including the bride and the niece of cattle baron John Chisholm, who had sided with the Regulators in the war.  The building was identified as a school house. 

Billy and others were said to have been matched facial recognition software.  Isolated and blown up the figure identified as the Kid is hard to make out beyond a youthful countenance.  He does have on a high crowned black hat that resembles the one in the familiar picture and is also wearing a sweater, a fashion choice not that commonly seen on other cowboys.  Another croquet player is pointing to him as if to make sure the photographer knows he is an important personage.   

Blown up and isolated, one player points to another during a dusty game of croquet.  Could the young man in the sweater and the hat similar to the one worn in a verified image really be Billy the Kid?

After a flurry of publicity critics began to dispute the authenticity of the picture.  Their objections were outlined in a long article in True West Magazine, a respected popular history publication, by Mark Boardman.  Those objections included questions about the locale.  According to a detailed plat of Lincoln County showing virtually every known structure, no permanent building at all was shown at the ranch.  Moreover the building was constructed with planking, exceedingly rare and expensive at the time in that nearly treeless area of New Mexico where almost all buildings were constructed from adobe or stone or were even sod dugouts.  What appears to be a graded road passes by the building.  A ranch road of the period would barely be a beaten path, perhaps rutted by wagon wheels, but packed hard except for rare rains when it would turn into a river of mud.

Another objection had to do with the dating of the photo.  Southern New Mexico is blistering hot in August and September but like Billy everyone had on warm clothing.  There are numerous trees on the hills behind the building and around it—far more than the arid landscape of the real ranch—and all are leafless.  But the surviving Regulators had broken up before winter and had scattered, many running for their lives with prices on their heads.  Also, why would the Regulators who were being hunted pause for a party at a known haunt and apparently all be unarmed against a surprise attack by their enemies who dominated the surrounding territory?

Critics had other nits to pick as well as disputing the provenance of the picture which was said to be found in the possession of California family members of one of the Regulators.  The man hoping to sell the photo for millions and the producers of the National Geographic program responded defensively and for months back and forth arguments continued with each side lining up backers and supporters.  With the dust settling I suspect the skeptics are carrying the day, especially now that the attention of Western history aficionados have been drawn to the next shiny object, the Garrett group shot.

Among the more credible possible picture is this one of a 15 or 16 year old all cleaned up from a carte de visite of young Henry McCarty a/k/a Henry Atrim before he started using William H. Bonney--Billy the Kid--as an alias.

There have been other disputed or debunked photos of Billy the Kid.  One shows a downy cheeked young man in a brand new store bought suit standing stiffly erect next to a chair.  Another shows a fair-haired, hatless young man standing with a gun belt slung over one shoulder in a good suit with two men identified by one researcher as Billy’s pals Yginio Salazar and Charlie Bowdrie.  One head shot shows a young man with the kind of bushy sideburns that had been particularly popular among New York slum toughs when Billy was growing up there.  The picture is apparently a photo of a drawing or sketch and was said to have been used in early wanted posters, but those posters have not surfaced.

Perhaps the most egregious hoax was a photo of four young men standing together that was being hawked as a picture of Billy, Doc Holiday, Jesse James, and Charlie Bowdrie supposedly taken in Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1879.  There is no reason to believe that either Holiday or James crossed paths with Billy and Bowdrie or that they would have any reason to associate.  Jesse James never set foot in New Mexico.  And none of the men even look much like who they were reported to be.  None-the-less someone made a good buck selling copies of the “authentic” poster to tourists out West, via the internet, and on a variety of merchandise from coffee mugs, to cell phone cases, to duvet covers.

A patently fraudulant picture puroprting to show from left to right Billy, Doc Holiday, Jessie James, and Charlie Bowdre in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

There has been, at least until now and if the claims made about the Garrett picture hold up to inevitable scrutiny, only one absolutely authenticated picture of Billy the Kid as a grown-up gunman.  Four virtually identical tintypes—each one was an original—taken in a saloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico in late 1879 or early 1880 when he was about 18 years old.  Billy reportedly did not like the images and gave away his copies to his friends.  No wonder he didn’t like them.  They were not flattering.

He is slovenly attired in an open vest over a cardigan sweater and a shirt with some kind of print.  Baggy trousers are stuffed into hard-worn boots.  A kerchief is loosely knotted around his neck and he is wearing an odd high crown hat bashed in on one side.  He has a Colt revolver in a holster with a cartridge belt and is holding a Winchester 73 lever action rifle by the barrel at his side.   He seems to slouch with his head a bit cocked to one side.  The hat is mashed so far down the back of his head that his ears are pushed out.  He has a slack jawed expression with his lips slightly open showing a crooked front tooth.  He looks, quite frankly stupid and perhaps even mentally retarded, a conclusion drawn by some early writers who saw copies of the picture.

The only fully authenticated image of Billy the Kid was circulated in his life-time was taken from one of four nearly identical tintypes he had taken at Ft. Sumner, New Mexico when  he was about 18 years old.  This version of the image ht as been flipped to show him correctly as right handed.

In the original, as in all tintypes, the image was reversed so that it appears that his holster is on his en left hip which made people think that he was left handed.  In fact he became enshrined in legend as The Left Handed Gun, the name of a film starring Paul Newman.  But when the image is flipped on its vertical axis like a mirror image. Corrected it is obvious that he drew right handed since his gun butt faces rear. 

Images taken from the tintypes—glass plate photos of them and etchings made for the press from those—were known in Billy’s life time.  One appeared on an authentic wanted poster and Pat Garrett used it in his book The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid ghost written by Ash Upsom, the book that virtually invented the Billy the Kid legend and is now known to be unreliable and exaggerated.

All four copies of the tintypes were believed lost but one ended up in the hands of Dan Dedrick who rustled cattle with the Kid and was passed down in his family until a great grand nephews Art and Stephen Upram allowed it to be publicly displayed at the Lincoln County Heritage Trust Museum in Lincoln for three years in the 1990’s.  It was then sent to Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York for preservation and restoration.  Rumors circulated that Kodak had had botched the job and returned the plate virtually black.  The family kept it out of sight for more than two decades.

In 2011 billionaire William Koch—yes one of the infamous right-wing funding Koch brothers—bought the tintype at auction for $2.3 million, setting of the gold rush of collectors and con men trying to find and sell new images.

Despite the ubiquitous use of the Ft. Sumner image, many historians believe it did not accurately capture the elusive young outlaw.  Most contemporary accounts describe him as quite handsome with mild blue eyes, and grin that could be shy or impish by turn.  Despite a lack of formal education—no one knows if he was literate or not, he was said to be sharp and quick witted. 

Tomorrow:  Will the Real Billy the Kid please stand up!

It’s A Wonderful Life Was a Wonderful Picture

Last Friday night my wife Kathy Brady-Murfin and I took in a production of the radio play version of It’s A Wonderful Life by the Woodstock Musical Theater Company at the Woodstock Opera House.  It was this year’s fulfillment of a tradition of attending a holiday show during the Christmas Season that began when I gave up working my night job on Friday nights.  We came in full of the Christmas spirit after taking in the spectacular annual lighting of Woodstock Square earlier in the evening.  And we had a great time.

The production had all of the virtues—and some of the problems—of community theater.  We have been attending a lot of very good professional theater in recent years and even a very good amateur production can’t be held to the same standard. 

On the plus side the silver and black art deco set by designer Barry R. Norton was spot on and the equal of any static set you could see at any theater.  The costumes by co-producers and wardrobe maven Kathy Bruhnke—a theater veteran and old personal friend were perfectly authentic 1946.  Because this was supposed to be a radio play, the costumes are for the most part meant to be the actors’ street clothes, not the characters’ clothes.  Occasionally a change of hat or cap or the addition of jacket was used as a cue to a specific character, like the uniform cap for Burt the Cop.

Director Regina Belt-Daniels chose to open up Joe Landry’s script in a couple of significant ways.  To better mirror a period radio broadcast she expanded the role of the announcer and added a close harmony female quartet to sing a program theme song, advertising jingles, and a couple of contemporary popular songs a la the Andrews Sisters.  She also greatly expanded the script’s called for cast of 5 actors, standard for live radio drama in those days with each actor playing multiple roles, to 13 including four children, who would have been voiced by an actress.  With the exception of the three leads playing George and Mary Bailey, Mr. Potter and the children, each actor still has multiple parts, but far fewer than with a 5 person cast.  This allows for better differentiation between characters portrayed by actors who may not have mastered the multiple voices required of a radio pro.  On the other hand the shuffling of all of those actors to the three microphones at the front of the sage was sometimes a tad clumsy.

The cast, with varying levels of experience and skill, was necessarily uneven and some had occasional difficulty reading from a script or quickly picking up cues.  The principals were solid.  Mathew Schufreider as George channeled a young James Stewart without opting for imitation of Stewart’s voice and mannerisms.  Heidi Allen was appropriately sweet, resolute, and loyal.  Robert Wilbrandt, a local siting judge with wide community theater experience, was a perfectly villainous Mr. Potter.  But for my money the performance of the night was turned in by little Lia Hyrkas as ZuZu the only actor to work from memory without a script and who was both perfectly natural and charming.

As entertaining as the evening was, of course, nothing could make us forget the play’s source.

Despite stiff completion from films like Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, White Christmas, various versions of The Christmas Carrol, and more recent fare like Elf and the Polar Express, Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s A Wonderful Life remains the most beloved popular holiday movie and still makes lists of the best films of all time. It was the personal favorite of its director, its star James Stewart, and of its leading lady Donna Reed.

Legend has it that the film was a total failure upon its release.  Not quite so.  It opened to strong reviews and good audiences on December 20, 1946.  But it faced stiff competition in the theaters that holiday season—Disney’s Song of the South, The Best Years of Our Lives, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, and the epic Technicolor western Duel in the Sun among others.  Released just 5 days before Christmas, the film did not have time to build a holiday audience and in those days interest in Yule flicks faded as soon as the tree came down, then generally the day after the holiday or no later than New Year’s Day. 

But the big problem was the cost of the film. The independently produced film was partly financed and released by RKO Studios which bet on Capra on the strength of his enormously popular pre-war populist hits at Columbia.  He had a relatively lavish budget which he over ran the budget spending lavishly on a top cast and on the elaborate Bedford Falls sets.  In the end, it cost a $3.8 million—a lot for black and white comedy/drama—and just barely recouped the expense in its first release.  The studio didn’t make a dime.  

Despite that disappointment, the film was recognized for its importance and quality.  It was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor and won a technical effects award.  It also won Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards.  By no stretch of the imagination could it be called a failure.

Frank Capra and James Stewart share a laugh during the filming of the picture's grim suicide scene.

Capra had returned from his World War II service a changed man.  Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 he gave up his lucrative career during which he had experienced unprecedented success with films like It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizons, You Can’t Take it With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe as well as his presidency of the Director’s Guild to enlist in the Army.  He was personally tapped by Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshal to create and lead his own documentary film unit outside of the usual Signal Corps authority under Marshall’s direct command. 

As a result Col. Capra produced and directed or co-directed Why We Fight, seven feature length documentaries including Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike (1942), Divide and Conquer (1943), The Battle of Britain (1943), The Battle of Russia (1943), The Battle of China (1944), and War Comes to America (1945).  The films were shown to GIs to explain in an understandable way why they were going to war and used unprecedented battle action sequences filmed on all fronts and oceans.  Marshal considered them so powerful that they were release for theatrical showings in the U.S. and Britain.   Prelude to War was awarded an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.  Outside of that feature Capra also made The Negro Soldier in 1944 and Know Your Enemy: Japan, Here Is Germany, Tunisian Victory, and Two Down and One to Go all in 1945.  Capra always considered these films the most important of his career.

Hollywood had just been reminded of how popular a film maker Capra was when Arsenic and Old Lace, which had been hurriedly filmed for Warner Bros. in 1941 starring Cary Grant, Pricilla Lane, and Raymond Massey, was finally released after the long run of the Broadway production, was finally released in 1944.  Every studio in Hollywood wanted to sign him, but Capra, who had a bitter and contentious relationship with his longtime boss at Columbia Pictures, was determined never again to be under the thumb of a studio boss and to have total creative control over his pictures.

Capra and two other directing powerhouses—William Wyler and George Stevens, formed Liberty Films, The first independent company of directors since United Artists in 1919 and one of a tiny handful of independent studios like Selznick International Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Productions that aspired to produce A list films in head-to-head completion with the major studios.  With Wyler and Stevens finishing up their studio commitments, Capra was slated to helm the first product.

For source material Capra turned to an obscure short story by magazine editor and Civil War historian Philip Van Doren Stern.  Stern wrote the story after experiencing a vivid dream obviously influenced by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 1938.  He tinkered with the tale for a few years before trying unsuccessfully to find a publisher for it.  In 1943 he privately printed an edition of 200 as The Greatest Gift which he distributed to friends as Christmas gifts.  It finally found magazine placement with a literacy journal before Good Housekeeping picket it up for its January 1945 issue as The Man Who Was Never Born.

Somehow Cary Grant spotted it and expressed interest in doing a film version.  His studio, RKO bought the film rights for $10,000 where several screen writers took unsuccessful cracks at the story.  With Grant moving on to other projects like I Was a Male War Bride, the studio was more than happy to sell it to Liberty Pictures for what it had paid and expressed interest in distributing the film if Capra directed.

Capra wanted to direct all right.  Working with a team of script writers he whipped the screenplay into shape—something darker than his pre-war films although both Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and especially Meet John Doe had despairing moments but that ultimately affirmed humanity.

There was never a doubt about his lead, the frustrated small town building and loan operator George Bailey.  Although Henry Fonda may have briefly been considered, the role went to his close friend James Stewart.  Stewart had been the boyish idealist in Capra’s most successful film, Mr. Smith and been the straight man beau in the ensemble screwball comedy You Can’t Take it With You.  A small town boy himself from Indiana, Pennsylvania who had labored at his father’s Main Street Hardware Store before making the break for college and the daring leap from there to the New York stage.  Capra knew he would totally understand his character. 

Then Major James Stewart with his B-24 crew before a combat mission.  War changed the actor.

Stewart had also returned from the war deeply changed.  He was visibly aged and much more serious.  Although many Hollywood stars served with distinction in the war, none matched Stewart’s combat record.  After being drafted in 1940 as an Army private after twice being rejected for being underweight, he managed to talk his way into the Air Corp because he was a licensed pilot.  Like other stars he was first used stateside as a flying instructor and used in recruiting.  Once again he talked his way into combat in Europe as a B-24 pilot.  He rose rapidly in rank and responsibility and completed more than 20 official missions becoming a Squadron and the Group commander.  As a staff officer he assigned himself to probably twice that many missions which were completed unofficially, including several in which he led critical raids or flew dangerous pathfinder missions.  He may have flown more combat missions than any other pilot in the 8th Air Force.  Stewart was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions in combat, the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters for campaigns participated in, and the French Croix de Guerre. He was one of the few men to rise from private to full colonel in the course of the war.  Experiences like that will age and change a man.

After taking some time off to decompress from his harrowing experiences, Capra’s new film, now re-titled It’s A Wonderful Life marked Stewart's first return acting.  He was deeply unsure of himself and doubted he either could resurrect his acting career of if he wanted to.  As a founding investor in Southwest Airlines he had seriously considered throwing everything over to become the infant airline’s chief pilot.  As filming commenced he was suffering full scale post-traumatic stress syndrome fighting feeling of disorientation, rage, and self-loathing.  A large part of his healing was channeling all of that into his character of George Baily.  Always a fine, natural actor, Stewart was now doing much deeper work than he had in his pre-war years and it would open the door to more mature and challenging roles with other directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann.

Some were worried that Stewart would not be able to convincingly play the youthful George Bailey, yearning to “shake the dust” of the small town off his feet and who instead fall stupidly in love with the sweetly perfect home town girl.  But Stewart showed an uncanny ability to evoke for audience the shy, stammering youth of his early films.  They literally suspended disbelief to embrace the middle aged actor as restless young man.  Stewart would continue to be able to do that even as he aged as he demonstrated when he played boyish Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis in 1957 and especially in John Huston’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962 when both he and John Wayne had to recapitulate their youthful archetypes.

If Stewart was the obvious choice to play George Bailey, Capra’s reliable favorite lead actress Jean Arthur was a natural choice.  She had been paired with Stewart in both of his previous Capra outings and she was interested in doing the picture despite having virtually retired from film work after her Columbia Pictures contract expired in late 1944.  She wanted to work again with Capra, but was committed to the Broadway production of Born Yesterday which was in rehearsals and out of town tryouts.  However she succumbed to increasingly crippling stage fright and dropped out of that project opening the door for Judy Holiday.  But by that time the part of Mary Bailey had been cast and the film was in production.

Donna Reed had been the wholesome girl friend pin-up that World War II GI's dreamed of coming home to. Later her devotion to them and her horror at nuclear war would make her a tireless anti-war activists and spokesperson for Another Mother for Peace.

Capra’s other favorite actress, Barbara Stanwyck, had already transitioned into playing middle age and matronly parts and was considered too old for the part although she was Arthur’s contemporary.  A string of top actresses were considered and Capra approached and was turned down by Olivia de Havilland, Martha Scott, Ann Dvorak, and Ginger Rogers mostly because the part was so small and because, as Rogers said in her memoirs because it was “to bland.”  In the end Capra turned to a younger, rising actress—Donna Reed who had attracted attention as the brave nurse in They Were Expendable and as Mickey Rooney’s sister, a wholesome small town girl, in The Human Comedy.  She was also a girl-next-door favorite pin-up of GIs during the war.  This film would make her a real star.

It seemed like every older character actor in Hollywood, especially those who played heavies was considered for sour Old Man Potter.  Edward Arnold who had appeared in both Mr. Smith and You Can’t Take it With You was one obvious choice.  Others were Charles Bickford, Edgar Buchanan, Louis Calhern, Victor Jory, Raymond Massey, Vincent Price, and even Thomas Mitchell.  Lionel Barrymore, despite having starred in You Can’t Take it With You for Capra, was not an immediately obvious choice.  In recent years his screen persona had largely been avuncular, kindly men like his Dr. Gillespie in the successful Dr. Kildare movie franchise.  What finally sold Capra on Barrymore was his annual radio turns as Scrooge in A Christmas Carrol.  Barrymore could play a mean man, even one with no hint of a lurking heart of gold.

Bulah Bondi has played the long suffering mother of ungrateful James Stewart in the tear-jerker Of Human Hearts.

Thomas Mitchel may not have made the cut playing against type as the villain America’s favorite and probably busiest character actor fit the role of gentle, addled, and pixilated Uncle Billy like a glove.  Beulah Bondi, who by the way was a graduate of my alma mater, Shimer back when it was a female seminary, was one of the movies’ busiest mothers when she wasn’t playing spinster school teachers.  In fact she had already played mother to Stewart’s ungrateful and neglectful son in the tear jerker Of Human Hearts and was Ma Smith in Mr. Smith. 

Henry Travers as Angle Second Class Clarence Oddbody.

Mitchel was also briefly considered to play Clarence Oddbody, the Angel Second Class assigned to George’s case.  But the role went to Henry Travers, a veteran English stage actor who found a second career in American films playing kindly but slightly befuddled old men.  He had received an Academy Award nomination for his part as the rose-loving gardener in Mrs. Miniver and had just finished The Bells of St. Mary’s with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman as the unwitting donor of a new school building.

Silent film star H. B. Warner, best known as Jesus Christ in Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings, had already appeared in five Capra flicks when he was tapped to play Mr. Growler, the pharmacist who employed twelve year old George Bailey.  Several other members of Capra’s informal stock company also had roles.

Gloria Grahame would go from the soiled dove of It's a Wonderful Life, to the fatal temptress in a parade of film noirs.

Small town vamp and fallen woman Violet Bick was played by 23 year old Gloria Grahame near the start of her film career.  She would go on to be the queen of film noir temptresses and bad girls.

The rest of the company was sprinkled with interesting and accomplished performers.  Ward Bond and Frank Faylen played Burt the cop and Ernie the cabdriver—and yes those character names inspired the Sesame Street puppets.  Others of note include Sheldon Leonard as Nick the Bartender, Moroni Olson as the voice of the Senior Angel who narrates George’ life story, and even a brief appearance of Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer as Freddie, Mary’s annoying high school suitor.

All in all it was a strong an ensemble cast as was ever assembled.

More than three blocks long the Bedford Falls set was planted with more than 20 full size oak trees in the boulevard.  Technicians won an Oscar for the developing a new kinds of chemical snow for the production.

If the film was costly due to the cost of the cast and the sets—especially the three-block-long downtown Bedford Falls with 75 stores and buildings, the long center boulevard through which a desperate George ran planted with 30 mature oak trees, and a separate residential neighborhood—at least Capra, always an efficient director, was able to finish principle shooting between April 15, 1946 and July 27, exactly the 90 day schedule.

During the filming Capra continued to tinker with the script, shooting and then junking different versions of how George’s little brother Harry fell through the ice and of the famous climatic scene.  He scrapped a version with George falling to his knees in prayer as unnecessarily over the top.

The finished film was an obvious nod to the Dickens classic that had inspired the original story writer.  But where Scrooge was a bad man with a hardened heart who had to be terrified into unlocking a kernel of long buried kindness and letting it flourish, George Bailey was a deeply frustrated man who repeatedly makes good choices when he must but barely contains seething resentment who must be shown that his own life was worth living.  This was subtle stuff and far beyond the usual black and white morality of most Hollywood fare.  Those who accuse Capra of over sentimentality in this film or glossing over the stultifying drabness and rigid conformity of the small town George always wanted to leave overlook the real anguish that underlines it.

It’s a Wonderful Life went into general release on January 7, 1947 and was 26th out of more than 400 features that year in revenue, one place ahead of another Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Street which was released late that year.  Not nearly as bad as legend would have it.

Despite the accolades the film received it might have faded in the public memory. In subsequent years Miracle on 34th Street and the 1938 and 1951 versions of A Christmas Carrol usually let the lists of favorite holiday films.  Capra’s work could easily have sunk to the level of say Christmas in Connecticut, a film admired by movie buffs but below the radar of casual viewers.

What saved it from that fate was one of the most spectacular and inexplicable business blunders in film history.

Liberty Pictures went belly-up after completing just two films, the second being Capra’s State of the Union with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.  It’s two movie film library and other assets were purchased by Columbia Picture and then repeatedly re-sold to a bewildering succession of companies.  In 1955 it was bought by a little known investment outfit called M. & A. Alexander which sold the copyright to the original nitrate film elements, music score, and the film rights to the story on The Greatest Gift as well a television syndication rights to National Telefilm Associates (NTA), syndication specialist.

In 1974 a nameless functionary at NTA flubbed the copyright renewal of the film’s visual images and it passed into public domain.  Anyone could broadcast or reproduce the film on other media without having to pay syndication fees or royalties on the film, although they did have to pay royalties for the story and music which remained under protection.  Local TV stations around the country snapped up the gift from heaven that was plopped in their laps.  Many began annual showings, often multiple showings.  In some markets every station aired the movie.  It was almost impossible to get through a holiday season without seeing the film.  Millions of Americans and multiple generations saw the film and fell in love.

In the 1980’s with the rapid spread of home VCRs several companies released tapes of the film, many of them very muddy and poor quality.  These included colorized versions denounced by both Cara and James Stewart.

In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was a successor to NTA, regained protection after a prolonged legal battle relied based on a 1990 a Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend, which involved another Stewart film, Rear Window) to enforce its claim to the copyright. While the film’s copyright had not been renewed, Republic still owned the film rights to The Greatest Gift protecting its status as a derivative work still under copyright.

Is there ever a dry eye in the living room when the bell on the Christmas tree rings and the whole town sings Auld Lang Syne to George and his family?  I didn't think so...

Although the film disappeared from local television re-broadcasts, since 1996 Paramount, which now owns the rights to the Republic library, has licensed rights to NBC which shows the film to wide audiences twice during each holiday season.

Pull out the hankies and fill the popcorn bowls.  It’s A Wonderful Life will soon be on your home flat screen TV again.