The "It's a wonderful life" book

Using never-before-published material from the Frank Capra Archives at Wesleyan University, film historian Jeanine Basinger tells the full story of this American classic. We witness its beginnings as a little story printed on a Christmas card and then see how it defeated the attempts of many writers, including Clifford Odets, to translate it to the screen. (Both the original story and excerpts from the unproduced screenplays appear in this book, the latter for the first time anywhere.). We share Frank Capra's excitement as he discovers this little story and sees in its comedy and humanity the perfect material for his first postwar film. Still without a script, Capra persuades Jimmy Stewart to star as George Bailey, and then begins the long, obsessively detailed process of production. Through the wealth of notes, journals, and diaries that Basinger has assembled, we are able to observe the creative process of a master filmmaker in a way that has rarely before been possible, following Capra as he considers everything that might conceivably touch on the finished film - from the way angels ought to talk to the way wind should sound on a wet pine branch. Then Basinger documents the film's release, and we are given a detailed view of a first-rate Hollywood publicity machine at work, amply illustrated with posters, press releases, publicity stills, and accounts of junkets and stunts, including a hilarious trip by Capra and Stewart to Beaumont, Texas.

by Leonard Maltin

Knopf · First published 1986 · 365 pages