Deathmatch: It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) vs. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

History

Adapted from Philip Van Doren Stern's "The Greatest Gift," "It's A Wonderful Life" was very much a Deathmatch for RKO screenwriters in 1944. After purchasing the rights in April for 10,000 and three poorly written scripts later (written by Dalton Trumbo then revised by both Clifford Odets and Marc Connelly), RKO producer David Hempstead had no choice but to release the film they had hoped to be a Cary Grant vehicle a year later. Grant would go on to make another holiday classic, "The Bishop's Wife" and Frank Capra bought the current mess of "It's A Wonderful Life" for 10,000 [and the three scripts for free] for Liberty Films, a production company he owned with many directors including George Stevens ("Giant", "A Place in the Sun"). 

A year later, Herbert Clyde Stewart and Frederick Stephani's script "It Happened on Fifth Avenue" was optioned to Liberty Films in 1945. By this point, Capra was knee-deep in cleaning Trumbo's mess of a screenplay with help from the writing duo Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. The great Dorothy Parker and Michael Wilson were also brought in to refine the dialogue. "In Joseph McBride's book on Capra, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, Jo Swerling is estimated to have redone a quarter of the script. In the end, only Capra, Swerling, and Hackett received actual writing credits." ("FRANK CAPRA | It's A Wonderful Life 1946")

Rejected, "...Fifth Avenue" went on to another new production company. the famed low budget Monogram Pictures. Now in need of a revival and convinced that B-movies were of the past, a new unit named Allied Artists Productions was made to create "costlier films." Better known for "The Ziegfeld Follies" and the "Broadway Melody" movies, veteran producer and director Roy Del Ruth took interest in this film that same year. By the end of summer 1946, Ann Harding ("Holiday" (1930), "The Lady Consents"), Victor Moore ("Make Way for Tomorrow," "The Seven Year Itch"), Cedar Rapids, IA native Don DeFore ("The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet"), and Gale Storm ("My Little Margie") were enlisted and filming began right away in August, finishing in October. The Del Ruth picture would unfortunately cost Allied Artists more than 1,200,000, but like the first child of a large family, the production company fixed their mistakes later on. But the expensive film would end up doing "solid business at the box office and generate[d] positive word of mouth." ("It Happened on Fifth Avenue - Articles - TCM.com") 

Liberty Films ended up borrowing 1,540,000 from their bank to create the now legendary Bedford Falls (modeled after Seneca Falls, NY) and all of its inhabitants including acting giant Lionel Barrymore. After 3 months of shooting from April to July in 1946, "It's A Wonderful Life" premiered in December the same year at The Globe Theater in New York City. What would follow for this relatively lackluster reviewed film came in the form of five [1947] Academy Awards nominations. A special award was given to the RKO Effects Department for a new recipe for film snow that now included "a soapy, liquid-based artificial snowflake versus the old method of painted corn flakes being blown by a wind fan."  ("FRANK CAPRA | It's A Wonderful Life 1946") "...Fifth Avenue" would also be nominated in the next year's Academy Awards for Best Original Story, losing to "Miracle on 34th Street."

Both films would end up in obscurity over time. Currently in the 20th spot on "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies," Liberty Films had no choice but to seek better finances and found their partner in Paramount Pictures. West Coast distributor M. & A. Alexander would purchase the film along with nine other "first-run feature films in a proposed 13-title package. In some cases, the Alexanders made an outright purchase [...] and on all of them they have world-wide rights. It is understood they intend doing some theatrical business on a few before releasing them for TV." (Billboard (May 28, 1955)) The film would be passed off to National Telefilm Associates (NTA) until the copyright was terminated in 1974. In the public domain and free to television and cable companies throughout the '80s, it was the syndication of the film that made it the hit that it is today. Now, "It's A Wonderful Life" is back with its mother, Paramount. 

"It Happened on Fifth Avenue" would have a later destiny. Along with 49 other films from both Monogram and Allied Artists, the Del Ruth picture would be a part of the first films licensed for TV syndication. Copyright would always remain intact, but in the 1990s, a total disappearance of both syndication and retail availability had fallen upon the quiet hit of the '40s. Despite many great efforts to place the film back into the public consciousness, "...Fifth Avenue" disappeared completely for twenty years until November 2008 when Warner Home Video released it on DVD. Turner Classic Movies now has it amongst its usual holiday fare making this woman a believer in Victor Moore's most charming role.

From Bedford Falls to New York City

Aloysius T. McKeever (Victor Moore) is a professional squatter in "the second richest man in the world" Michael J. O'Connor's New York City mansion. Practically making a career out of this, McKeever wears O'Connor's clothes, dusts, and keeps the house in order as long as it's somewhere warm. But when chance brings more people into the home (ex-G.I. Jim Bullock (DeFore) and all his G.I. friends along with O'Connor's runaway daughter), the divorced and hard-nosed Michael O'Connor himself finds he must impersonate a hobo just to observe how much Trudy (Gale Storm) has fallen in love with Jim. 

From this point on, O'Connor goes on an emotional journey that is not without some stubborn roadblocks. All the while he is treated as a servant by McKeever, O'Connor attempts to employ Jim at an international construction company far away from his daughter. Completely subservient to his surroundings and eventually his ex-wife [impersonating an impoverished cook], "Mike" begins to warm up to his family, but not to the strangers living in his home. When Jim and his friends come up with the idea to convert an old army camp into workforce housing [which incidentally is also land O'Connor has his eyes on for a business venture], a bidding war ensues which would drive a wedge between the lovebirds as well as father and daughter. 

George Bailey's emotional journey might be of a different ilk, but the motivation is much the same as O'Connor's. It comes in the form of 8,000 dollars lost by his uncle and business partner. Desperate and discovering his life insurance policy would cover the missing money, Bailey, a beloved local, legitimately considers suicide but something spiritual intervenes. With the assistance of a 2nd class angel Clarence (Henry Travers), Bailey finds out what Bedford Falls would be like if he was never born. 

O'Connor has much more on his plate than Bailey: the individual relationships between his wife and daughter, having to pretend to be of a "lower class," the growing respect of the man he refuses to have as his son-in-law, and the subservience he has to the "patriarch" that is McKeever. His humility isn't the easiest to achieve, but by the end of the movie "Mike" considers the hobo "far richer than I am." "It's A Wonderful Life" is much more simplified in the birth and the offered largesse of George Bailey. In his loved status as banker and "man of the people," despite initially a free spirit ready to leave the small town, money becomes an anchor that weighs him back onto Bedford Falls's soil. It takes the whole town to pay the money back in a sweeping emotional conclusion, showing Bailey that he could not possibly not want to exist now. O'Connor seems to have an inverted sense of "It's A Wonderful Life," always maintaining his wealth, but with barely a soul attached to the finances. Bailey with eventually no wealth, but with certainly a soul. 

Death Match Round

It's not to say I'm not completely against "It's A Wonderful Life," it's a sweet movie with Jimmy Stewart in top form. Perhaps it is the history of the script, some ideas from its previous incarnations stitched together with what Capra does so well in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington" or "Arsenic and Old Lace." If Capra was able to start completely from scratch and with the original source material, "It's A Wonderful Life" would probably be better for me personally. My biggest problem is with the last fourth of the material, sans that adorable mushroom that was Henry Travers, is Bailey's overall motivation. Van Doren Stern's original story describes Bailey's suicidal wish as "never [doing] anything really useful or interesting and it looks as if I never will, I might as well be dead" ("The Greatest Gift") from simply being stuck in the unnamed town. This is clearly embellished on in the film, the reduction of Stewart's character in a weak moment.

He goes to Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter, the antagonist to Bailey's protagonist, hoping to find a way to maintain his bank while simultaneously keeping Potter from taking over Bedford Falls. Instead, Potter puts ideas in the frantic man's head that the cops are looking for him and the D.A. is waiting at his house ready to take him into jail. The mind games bring Bailey to consider the idea of suicide from both suggestion and as a personal last resort considering the amount of his life insurance. It comes down to money and not George Pratt [Van Doren Stern's character] 's original extension of his despairing character. It would seem Capra and Swerling forgot one thing, God or his first class angels would have been omniscient, especially in offering Clarence Bailey's life story, and amplifying a suicidal thought via manipulation gives the situation more power than needed. Unfortunately, this is "It's A Wonderful Life"'s weakest hour, half hour to be precise, the imbalance between facts and manipulation among the higher power (God, not Lionel Barrymore).

"I wish I have never been born" Bailey blurts out in front of Clarence, now not so much in the fear of going to jail [and with the possible presumption of getting out if or when people testify facts against Potter's character] but outright depression that the suicide did not go as planned. Notice that the dialogue is inverted from the original text, perhaps for the benefit of the ever present Motion Picture Production Code.  From the script, the suicide is to be a catalyst to receiving life insurance money, it has no bearing on his developed soul that just ended up in this mess. Unlike the original story, his death wish comes not from himself, but from the extension of his situation, how Bailey was always held back from going out into the world in tending to the town and the family business. This part of "It's A Wonderful Life" does not have the most stable of legs, for me personally, but that does not ruin the whole film for me either. Capra's signature ease of language comes through beautifully as we learn of the life of George Bailey, the Americana aspects of living in Bedford Falls, and encapsulating a small town on the RKO ranch. I can appreciate that, but the bones of this adaptation are just not stable enough for me in the suspension of reality.

I do take more away from "It Happened on Fifth Avenue." One scene in particular covers all of what I love about this film and that is the first dinner with Mary O'Connor as the cook. With all 11 characters in the home around the dining room table that usually house the greatest of New York society, the 8 foreigners begin to assume the kind of person Michael J. O'Connor actually is. Despite the fact the man himself is sitting at the table with them and progressively feeling more and more uncomfortable, it is the idea of a "Michael J. O'Connor." that continues to be the dinner conversation. McKeever hits the nail on the head, taking a psychiatric approach that he is overall an unhappy person as with money comes problems comes discontentment. But once they are done with the idea of the O'Connor of their minds, they start in on the idea of his ex-wife and daughter who in turn become the ones uncomfortable.

This scene proves its Academy Award nomination killing so many birds with one stone and not only the human behavior of immediately hating a great power they can't see, but also so many relationships between all of these characters. The friendly joking joviality between Jim and his friends, the cool troublesome relationship "Mike" has with his daughter, "Mike"'s forgotten attraction to his ex-wife, but remaining standoffish, McKeever's towering but relateable influence to his fellow homeless, but his disappointment in an intuition he has about O'Connor. That is all the more poetic considering Victor Moore's character will never know the impact he had on the mansion's real owner and his family, but by the end of the film as he walks down to Virginia to squat at McKeever's winter home, there will be a key waiting for him under the front doormat next year.



Great Links to Check Out:
The Original Short Story "The Greatest Gift"